Creation, Abbey Road then the countryside
On 21 August 1997 Creation released Be Here Now, cut across Abbey Road, AIR, Orinoco, Master Rock and Ridge Farm with Owen Morris and Noel Gallagher producing. Sessions started at Abbey Road on 7 October 1996; Morris called the first week rough and suggested quitting, but Noel shrugged and kept going. After tabloid pressure around Liam, management moved the band to quieter rooms including Ridge Farm in Surrey. Alan White is the sole drummer on the finished LP. It is the last Oasis studio album with Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan before both left in 1999.
Noel pushed for a colossal guitar stack: longer songs, denser overdubs, brass and string arrangements by Nick Ingman on several cuts. D’You Know What I Mean? opens with helicopter noise and a delayed guitar figure; All Around the World runs past nine minutes with a long coda. Keyboard beds from Mike Rowe thicken the midrange. The Stocks House sleeve shows a Rolls-Royce in a pool, a calendar set to 21, and the band posed around the chaos, shot while Britpop excess was already the headline.
First-week UK sales smashed records for the era; shops opened at midnight and still queued into the morning. The Dom and Nic video for D’You Know What I Mean? put the band in a helicopter over a barren landscape. US Epic pushed the same singles hard. Critics soon called the mixes bloated; Noel later agreed the overdubs went too far. Chart muscle and critical hangover arrived in the same season.
I wanted it to sound big. We kept adding guitars until it felt like the room was full.
(Noel Gallagher on Be Here Now’s production approach)
D’You Know What I Mean?, Stand by Me, and All Around the World all hit the UK top five. The album debuted at number one in Britain and sold millions worldwide before the backlash settled in. Live sets from the period leaned on the same wall-of-guitars aesthetic, with song lengths that tested festival slots.
As a document it freezes Oasis at peak commercial power and peak self-indulgence. Later records stripped arrangements back; this one remains the high-water mark of how far the Gallagher brothers took the Creation-era volume before the line-up and the culture shifted. Fans still argue whether the songs needed that much paint.
