A storeroom melody, then Creation’s first top ten
Noel Gallagher started Live Forever in 1991 in Manchester, after a pipe crushed his foot on a building site and the firm moved him to the storeroom. The lighter job left him time to write. One night he was playing his own chords against the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. The line he took was from Shine a Light: “May the good Lord shine a light on you.” He changed it to “Maybe I don’t really want to know.” For a while that was the whole song. He brought a finished version to rehearsals in early 1993. Drummer Tony McCarroll later said the band were openly awed by it. Alan McGee, who signed them to Creation, has called hearing it one of the greatest moments he had with the group.
The single came out on Creation on 8 August 1994, three weeks before Definitely Maybe. It was the third single, after Supersonic and Shakermaker. It entered the UK chart dated 20 August and peaked at number 10. That was Oasis’s first British top ten. Supersonic and Shakermaker had not done it. The sleeve is a photograph of 251 Menlove Avenue, John Lennon’s childhood house in Woolton, Liverpool, taken by Michael Spencer Jones. The UK CD carried an acoustic Up in the Sky, Cloudburst, and a live Supersonic from April 1994. The album version runs 4:36. A radio edit ran 3:43.
In the studio, Owen Morris took an acoustic guitar intro off the demo and replaced it with McCarroll’s drums on their own for a few bars. He also cut a section of Noel’s solo. He said the part he removed made him think of Slash in leather trousers, with a wind machine, on the Grand Canyon. Noel, through manager Marcus Russell, asked him not to cut the solo in half again on the final mix. What came out still has the solo, just shorter. Liam sings. Bonehead plays rhythm guitar and piano. Guigsy plays bass. The track was worked at Clear Studios in Manchester, with Mark Coyle and the band also on the production credit, and Morris on the additional production and the mix. The key sits in G, bumped by less than half a semitone in the mix.
The bit I cut made me think of Slash in leather keks with a wind machine on the Grand Canyon.
(Owen Morris, on mixing Live Forever)
The UK video was shot on 24 July 1994 and directed by Carlos Grasso. Liam sits on a chair fixed to a wall. The band buries McCarroll. Some of the clip was filmed at the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, the patch of ground kept for Lennon. A second video, for America, was directed by Nick Egan: the group in an office, with pictures of dead musicians and the footballer Bobby Moore on the wall. Both clips are on the 2004 Definitely Maybe DVD. The single that charted at home is the British release, number 10, sleeve pointing at Menlove Avenue.
Music Week had already called the track top-ten material before it charted. It did the number and stopped there in 1994. The edit Morris made is the one on the record: drums in place of the acoustic opening, a solo with the Grand Canyon section gone, Liam on the melody Noel had started in a storeroom. The album followed on 29 August, with the same take as track three. The single had already done the introducing.
