FEATURE:
Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me
Oasis – Be Here Now
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THERE are a couple of albums from 1997…
IN THIS PHOTO: Oasis in 1997/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky
that I am going to feature in the coming weeks. The first is Oasis’ third studio album, Be Here Now. Whilst I was a big fan of their first two albums, by the time their third album arrived I was fourteen. I think that I was more aware of the wider music world and I was definitely buying more music. Be Here Now is one of the most fascinating albums ever. For me, it was a case of exploring an album from a band who were on top of the world. They were the biggest in the world and, as there was talk around school about Be Here Now, many of my friends got it. I can remember how people were queuing outside record shops to get the album when it came out on 21st August, 1997. The initial critical reaction was hugely positive. A lot of hyperbole was thrown around. People were reviewing Be Here Now based on Oasis’ reputation and expectation rather than how good the album actually was. I know that it is flawed, so it is not surprising that retrospective reviews have been more balanced. Many observe how it is quite bloated, overlong and in need of an edit. Some called it a ‘cocaine album’, in the sense there is braggadocio, bravado and this bold energy that runs wild. Perhaps lacking the depth, concision and anthems of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Be Here Now is still an album that has some gems.
I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for Be Here Now soon. One is from 1997, whilst the other is a more recent inspection. Maybe it was the hype and the sheer sense of anticipation around Be Here Now that means it is an album that is dear to me and encoded into my bloodstream. I recall getting the album and playing it over and over. My favourite track, Stand By Me, has a kick-ass chorus and is catchy. I like the swagger of the opener, D'You Know What I Mean?, and the brilliance of All Around the World. Listening to the album now, it is amazing how long the songs are! Maybe it was Noel Gallagher (the band’s songwriter) wanting to fill a C.D. or feeling that, because Oasis were so popular, he could get away with such lengthy songs. Maybe more suited for festival crowds, Be Here Now can be a little tiring as a listening experience. By the time you get to the closer, All Around the World (Reprise), one has listened to nearly an hour and ten minutes of music! That is double album length. If Oasis were to do the album again, I think they would shorten things and take away two or three tracks. The strengths of the album are the reliably hypnotic vocals of Liam Gallagher and the way Noel Gallagher can pen these huge tunes that get you singing along.
The band are committed and brilliant throughout. I have gone back and forth with Be Here Now in terms of opinion. I realise how vital it was in my childhood and 1997 – a year when I was struck by so many brilliant albums that have stood the test of time. By 1997, Britpop was over. Bands such as Blur were embracing new directions (their 1997 eponymous album is more indebted to bands like Pavement and U.S. guitar music than 1960s British Pop acts like The Beatles). I do like a Rock album that has plenty of confidence, though Be Here Now lacks a certain sense of focus and quality control. I knew this back in 1997. I was swept up by this album that was talked about almost like this awakening and world event. It was very exciting! I think Be Here Now stands up well enough and is a great album that should be heard. Soundtracking some of my best moments in 1997, it is a special album. This is what Rolling Stone said about Be Here Now in 1997:
“Oasis are not, and have never been, a complex listening experience; in fact, they’ve basically made the same album thrice. Like 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Be Here Now is ’60s and ’70s rock classcism writ large and loud, all broad strokes and bullish enthusiasm. As the band’s songwriter, co-producer and (for all intents and purposes) iron ruler, guitarist Noel Gallagher doesn’t spend any sweat on highbrow drama or intellectual pretense. He fires up sing-along hooks with industrial-strength glam-rock licks; he drapes his words and music in the reflected splendor of the Beatles at every available turn, mostly through song — and album-title references, and spit-shines the results with a kind of roughneck sentimentality, heard to most obvious effect in the Sunday-night-pub-chorale endings of “Magic Pie” and “All Around the World.”
It’s a formula that can go either way: brilliant, steel-plated consistency or vacuous, shopworn predictability. Gallagher and Oasis pull it off, in great part, because they do not concede any possibility of fucking up. A lot of Gallagher’s lyrics are catch-phrase cocktails of youthful optimism and hard-boy temperament: “Comin’ in out of nowhere/Singing rhapsody” (“Fade In-Out”); “Into my big mouth/You could fly a plane” (“My Big Mouth”). But the most contagious thing about buzz bombs like “My Big Mouth,” “I Hope, I Think, I Know” and “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” is the sheer physical confidence of the music, particularly in the tandem rock ribbed guitars of Gallagher and Bone-head (a k a Paul Arthurs), and the way singer Liam Gallagher literally assaults the songs written for him by his older brother.
Much has been made of the John Lennon factor in Liam’s nasally, brattish intonation. In fact, his voice is a flat, thin thing. What’s remarkable about it is its emphatic, almost fighting quality; Liam enunciates Noel’s lyrics with snappish irritation and grinds the vowels in words like fade and away into high-tension whines. By the time Liam gets done with the chorus in Noel’s Big Melodrama ballad, “Stand by Me” — “Stand by me-e-e/Nobody kno-woa-ahs/The way it’s gon-nah-h be-e-e” — it sounds full of portent, if not bona fide linear meaning.
The payoff in Noel’s writing is always in the choruses; all riffs, hooks and bridges lead there. So Noel feeds Liam words and phrases that, above all, sound good. While it’s hard to excuse jury-rigged verse like “A cold and frosty morning/There’s not a lot to say/About the things caught in my mind” (“Don’t Go Away”), sometimes in pop music, melody, muscle and mouthing off can be their own substantial reward.
But only for so long. Oasis can’t rely on this Abbey Road-meets-Never Mind the Bollocks routine forever. There are already signs of strain on Be Here Now. “Stand by Me” is a little too close to Morning Glory‘s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” for coincidence, and there is an overreliance on swollen “Hey Jude”-style finales in the ballads.
Which brings up the Beatles issue. Noel Gallagher’s love of the group is genuine. “Sing a song for me/One from Let It Be,” he writes in “Be Here Now” — a title cribbed from Lennon’s infamous quip to an interviewer who asked him about the deep, underlying philosophy of rock & roll. But Noel is starting to overplay his hand; dropping a line like “The fool on the hill and I feel fine” in the middle of “D’You Know What I Mean?” smacks of laziness more than fannish ardor.
Maybe if Oasis weren’t so ultra-mega-huge in England and smiled more onstage when they came here, it would be easier to accept them for what they are: a great pop band with a long memory. What will they, or their records, mean in 20 years’ time? Who cares? Be here now. History will take care of itself”.
I can understand why so many reviewers were glowing when Be Here Now came out. The year before, Oasis played two nights at Knebworth and were kings of the scene! It took a little for views to shift and people to reassess the value and reality of Be Here Now. When it was reissued in 2016, Drowned in Sound provided a more mixed reaction:
“It is, for sure, a less good album than Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory, being in large part the sound of a band who'd made their name writing three-to-four-minute-long indie rock songs now trying to write seven-to-nine-minute-long indie rock songs, with indie-rock not being a genre especially supportive of that sort of length, especially from a group that were hardly virtuoso musicians. It also mostly lacks the aspirational rock'n'roll swagger that had defined their early work.
The obvious exception to both these rules was the awesome lead single 'D'You Know What I Mean?', on which the gargantuan running time was justified by the fantastically bombastic deployment of FX - morse code! Backwards vocals! - and lyrics that (insofar as they meant anything) seemed to exist as monument to the scale of the band's success ("all my people right here right now, d'you know what I mean?" - millions of people did). But it's the peak of the album by a long shot, and the generally accepted wisdom is that fame and its attendant drugs had buggered up songwriter Noel Gallagher’s muse.
Though they would continue for another 12 years, Be Here Now essentially broke Oasis. While Pulp and Blur ran away from their Britpop-era success, Oasis never stopped trying to appease the multitudes that had bought their first two records. Though they would continue to be a big band, they would effectively become a nostalgia act from this point on - at their last ever gig, 12 of the 19 songs played were from the first two records and accompanying b-sides.
Nowadays this all feels like a distant tale from another age, and it should be easier to listen to the record with something like objectivity. But the truth is that it's hard to imagine it being made by a band not in their weird, impossible position. 'D'You Know What I Mean?' opens it in bombastically brilliant fashion. 'All Around the World' closes it interminably, a Beatles-y plodder far far far too enamoured of its expensive, cokey orchestra. In between there are definite moments, but the preponderance of very long songs makes it a slog to this day. That all accepted, it’s not like Noel had totally lost it: if you liked the early stuff, there’s no real reason why you’d have a problem with ‘Stand By Me’, ‘Don’t Go Away’, ‘The Girl in the Dirty Shirt’ et al, they just lack the romance of the early stuff”.
I don’t mind about the retrospection and how Be Here Now might be a case of hype over quality. To me, it is an album that provided so much joy and strength when I was in high school. It was an album that bonded me to people. I was swept away in the rush of songs like Stand By Me. With no shortage of confidence Oasis were definitely making songs to be played on big stages that got crowds united and singing along. If Be Here Now is lacking substance and the brilliance of their first two albums, it is definitely not a disaster. It received plenty of love in 1997. Many people I know who bought the album back then still listen to it now. When I was fourteen, I certainly played it an awful lot. For that reason, I will always have respect…
FOR Be Here Now.