Oasis’ legacy of in-fighting and rampant drug use, which almost rivals their musical reputation, came to a head in the late 1990s as they were working on the Oasis album that bandmates and producers alike have said was the hardest to record.
Fleetwood Mac had Rumours, the Beatles had Abbey Road, and Oasis had Be Here Now—an ironic title considering the fact that seemingly no one actually wanted to, well, be there.
The Oasis Album That Was Hardest to Record
Oasis was one of the hottest rock bands in the world when they embarked on their third studio album, Be Here Now. The success of Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? made for an interesting production process. Media and fan expectations, the adverse effects of fame, and the pressure of living up to their previous two records culminated in tense, impatient, and, depending on who you ask, all-around unpleasant studio time.
“The only reason anyone was there was the money,” producer Owen Morris told Q Magazine. “Noel [Gallagher] had decided Liam [Gallagher] was a s*** singer. Liam decided he hated Noel’s songs. So on we went. Massive amounts of drugs. Big fights. Bad vibes. S*** recordings.” The recordings Morris and the band began working on in October 1996 were beefy, stadium rock versions of songs Noel had recorded months before, which the band and crew nicknamed the Mustique demos.
“I have to say I c***ed up…and I think Noel did too…in not suing and referencing the demos more on the actual album sessions,” Morris later wrote on his website. “Be Here Now” would have been a far better record. I think that the Mustique demos were the last good recordings I did with Noel. It was a mistake on everyone’s part, management very much included, that we didn’t record Be Here Now in the summer of 1996. It would have been a much different album: happy probably.”
Noel Gallagher Called the Album a Major Regret
Despite the record’s initial success, critics have retroactively called Oasis’ third album, Be Here Now, one of the band’s worst, even going so far as to say it marked the definitive end to the Britpop movement. In a 2019 appearance on Reel Stories, guitarist and primary songwriter Noel Gallagher made it clear that he agreed. He admitted that he didn’t feel the band’s third album had any redeemable tracks, saying, “Whatever I had was lost.”
Gallagher said he felt like Oasis’ career would’ve taken a different, perhaps more amiable, turn if they had released Masterplan as their third album instead of Be Here Now. “That’s the one regret I have as a songwriter,” Gallagher said. “It would have been a different story completely.”
“I was so engrossed in what Oasis had become. I found it difficult to think outside of those parameters. Once you start buying fur coats, there’s a tipping point. You can’t still write songs about the man in the street after that.”
Liam Gallagher, however, feels differently about the record. “If [Noel] didn’t like the record that much, he shouldn’t have put the f***ing record out in the first place,” he told NME in 2006. “I don’t know what’s up with him, but it’s a top record, man, and I’m proud of it. It’s just a little long.” Indeed, one could chalk up the differing opinions on Be Here Now, including whether it was a good record and whether it was the hardest Oasis album to record, to the ever-growing list of disagreements between the Gallagher brothers.
Photo by James Mccauley/Shutterstock
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