Monnow Valley had the song. It did not have the sound.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star is the first thing on Definitely Maybe. Creation released the album on 29 August 1994. The track opens with Liam Gallagher in the city and the claim in the title, sung as if it were already true. Noel wrote it before it was. The lyric is a night out imagined from Manchester, not a report from a tour bus. On the record it is the manifesto placed at the front: Liam on the vocal, Noel on lead guitar, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs on rhythm, Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan on bass, Tony McCarroll on drums.
They did not get that version the first time they tried. In early 1994 the signed band went to Monnow Valley in Wales and recorded most of the album, including this song. Noel, hearing those tapes again ahead of the 30th anniversary edition, said they had no swagger. The songs were still the songs. The playing was not loose. He reckoned they had only done 14 or 15 gigs by then, everyone in a different place, backing vocals that were not what they sounded like on a stage. Alan McGee at Creation and manager Marcus Russell would not put that version out. Noel has said he could not hear what was missing until other people, the ones who had watched them live, told him it was not it.
They re-recorded in a few days at Sawmills, a riverside studio near Fowey in Cornwall, in the spring of 1994, after more shows. By then Noel had a Marshall and a WEM Dominator. He said that was the sound. The Monnow setup had been a Vox AC30 and an HH amp. Owen Morris mixed the album loud, with Mark Coyle and the band credited as producers. The opener people learned is the Sawmills take. The Monnow version stayed in the cupboard. It came out, newly mixed, only with the anniversary edition, long after the song had already done its job as the first thirty seconds of the debut.
When you hear the Monnow Valley stuff, it’s not got a swagger to it. The songs were still great but it isn’t very loose. We’d only played 14 or 15 gigs when we got to Monnow Valley. It was too early to make that record.
(Noel Gallagher, 2024, on the scrapped Definitely Maybe session)
Live, the song was often the opener, including the short set at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 31 May 1993, the night McGee saw them and offered the Creation deal. Four songs, this one at the front, a band that was not yet a rock and roll star singing that it was. The album version, a year and a bit later, is the same claim with the amps that Noel said were missing in Wales. A promo clip followed the release. The single charts belonged to Supersonic, Shakermaker, Live Forever and Cigarettes & Alcohol. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star did not need a chart position to be the first track.
What the 1994 record actually starts with is the Sawmills master, not the diary of the failed session. Monnow had the songwriting. It did not have the band playing as one thing. Sawmills, a Marshall, a WEM, and Morris’s loud mix did. That is the opener. The anniversary tapes explain why the first attempt was canned. They do not replace the take that opens the album.
