Oasis Special: Time Flies… 1994 – 2000
One of the greatest bands of our time Oasis redefined British rock ‘n’ roll. JUICE celebrates the band’s singles collection release entitled Time Flies… 1994-2009 and its deluxe version, which features all 36 videos made by Oasis including the last, recorded live from The Roundhouse in London. Noel Gallagher talks about some of their biggest videos ever here. Ready to roll with it?
‘Roll With It’
“This song’s a bit of a throwaway for me although we did play it on our last tour and people did go f*cking ape sh!t for it. It is a good song to jump up and down to drunk. Let’s have it right. I don’t know what roll with it means or I don’t know what any of it means. It doesn’t have any significance to me the song, or the words or anything like that. I actually think when we got to Rockfield for the 1st day of recording, [Alan] Whitey had been in the band for I don’t know, a week and we all set up and this was the 1st song, this is the 1st take of the 1st song that we recorded on the 1st morning of when we started. I think we only ended up doing 2 takes of it in the end. And when we started playing with Alan [White] it was like wow f*cking hell, we’ve finally got a drummer that can play more than one style which-which is what the stuff from Morning Glory required really because there was tricky little songs on it you know like ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and that.”
‘Whatever’
“Now I was f*cking drunk in this video. Look how pissed I am there. I remember, I don’t know where I was living at the time right but I woke up in a f*cking stranger’s house the morning of this video and didn’t have a mobile or anything. This was before mobiles right? And all I remember having was someone had given me the address of the video shoot the night before we went out and fuck knows how, and I remember waking up thinking shit I’m supposed to be doing a video today. And I left this gaff wherever it was and I remember thinking I’ve got to get a black cab, that’s me really pissed, and I remember sitting down in the middle of the street, I think it might have been on Edgware Road somewhere, and falling asleep at a bus stop and then going, that, they’re the clothes I went out in the night, the night before. I remember Liam being furious that day because I think it’s the one, the one time I’ve been more drunk than he has.”
‘Wonderwall’
“I had the chords for ages and ages and ages. I think the working title of this, not that there was a working title but I think when I was going to sing the, you know my ‘Wonderwall’ I think it was called ‘Wishing Stone’ for a long time which if you think about it now is nonsense. I remember there being a f*cking debate in the studio about these drums which are about to come in, because they come in slightly in the wrong place which they’re meant to do you know. That’s how it was in my head and I remember the lad with the sunglasses on there was you know convinced he knew otherwise. And it just went, the argument went round and round and round for ages till Liam said he, he was going to refuse to sing it. Which is ludicrous when you think about it now.”
‘Stand By Me’
“F*ck, I haven’t seen this since the day it was shot probably. Is this real, is this a real video? Look at the size of Bonehead’s shirt, that’s f*cking insane. We’re wearing someone else’s clothes in all these videos. It’s f*cking bananas. I don’t know where this song come from. This whole period is, is a blur for me. Is that Phil Mitchell? No it’s not. It’s a blur for me, it’s fucking just wrapped up in the good times, man.”
‘All Around The World’
“I wrote this song right, as ludicrous as it sounds, this is the last song on our 3rd album and I wrote it and we were jamming this before, before we even had a record deal. This is obviously some parody of-I don’t know what it is. This is a parody, it’s a parody of a video. All those, I think those suits were made for us by Paul Smith. Yeah. Look at that f*cking guitar, it’s green, what a load of sh!t. If anybody’s listening to this at home, you’d be advised to probably go and f*cking mow the garden or something because this goes on for ages and ages. That-yeah, spaceship, psychedelia. Pete Doherty there. This is f*cking bananas. Size of that fish, a fish just ate a submarine. They are really ill fitting suits as well aren’t they? F*cking hell. And I bet they cost a f*cking fortune.”
‘Who Feels Love?’
“Oh this is f*cking, this is another-can we listen to this with the sound down? It sounds good this tune, it’s kind of, it’s a great production job on this. Everything sounds great about it. Except it’s a bit slow and meandering, it’s not really, I don’t know why it was a single but we’re in, yeah where are we? We’re in, we’re in Death Valley in the Nevada desert I think it is, or maybe it’s not, f*ck knows I’m not really big on geography. It’s in America though and I wrote this, I wrote the song-I wrote the song on a beach in Thailand. It must have been a f*cking good day. There’s a lot of harmonies on that aren’t there?”
‘Lyla’
“I have fond memories of this period you know. Whitey had, well Liam and Whitey had fallen out anyway about something, it’s not important and so there you go. He’d gone and we’d asked Zak to join. We recorded this particular track, I produced this, this is actually a demo. I produced this all on my own at my own studio in Wickham and it’s f*cking brilliant. Somebody once described this song as not so much a song as a stampede which if anybody ever did see us live, they’ll know what I mean by that when sixty seventy thousand people in the stadium all jumping up and down in unison to this, is a sight to behold, let me tell you. But it’s an absolute f*cking joy to play this song and a joy to sing and it was a joy to write. And it, this is not really a bad video to be honest. You know I think they let us play live. I remember it being a good, good atmosphere round the band at this point. You know it’s always good to have a new face around and Zak because he’s kind of, obviously a f*cking brilliant drummer, probably one of, one of the best 2 I’ve ever worked with between him and Sharrock and you know everyone’s on their best behaviour, and it was you know, good times as they say.”
Oasis’ Time Flies… 1994-2009 is out now in stores. More Oasis loving at www.oasisinet.com.