A non-album single that went in at number 3
Whatever is not a Definitely Maybe song. Later deluxe editions parked it there. The record that matters is the standalone single Creation put out on 18 December 1994, in the gap between the debut album and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Noel Gallagher wrote it. Liam sings it. It runs 6 minutes and 21 seconds, with a radio edit around 3:58. It went straight in at number 3, the band’s first UK top five.
They recorded it in 1994 at Maison Rouge in Chelsea. Owen Morris produced with Noel. The band cut the basic track first: Liam on vocal and tambourine, Noel on electric and acoustic guitar, Bonehead on rhythm guitar and piano, Guigsy on bass, Tony McCarroll on drums. The last day was the strings. The London Session Orchestra played them. Former Electric Light Orchestra violinist Wilfred Gibson was in the section. Nick Ingman arranged the strings with Noel. The single sounds like that split. A bright acoustic figure, Liam on a high open melody, then a string line the earlier Oasis singles had not had the budget for. Mark Szaszy directed the video: the band with the orchestra, not in a rehearsal room.
The B-sides did as much work as the A-side. (It’s Good) To Be Free and Half the World Away were new. Slide Away was already on the album. Half the World Away later became the theme of The Royle Family, which carried it further than this chart run. The single’s own story turned on eight notes. The verse melody sits close to Neil Innes’s 1973 song How Sweet to Be an Idiot, a tune from his solo record that had also turned up in Monty Python’s live shows. EMI, Innes’s publisher, sued. Oasis settled. Innes received a songwriting credit and a share of the royalties. On later pressings his name sits next to Noel’s. The eight notes in question are the ones under “I’m free to be whatever I” and under Innes’s title line.
I’m free to be whatever I, whatever I choose, and I’ll sing the blues if I want.
(Whatever, Oasis, 1994)
Live, they sometimes played it with the strings and sometimes without. At Knebworth in August 1996, Mark Feltham’s harmonica sat through it. They have tagged lines from Octopus’s Garden and from Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes onto the ending, the “blues” turned toward Manchester City. The studio single does not do that. It ends on the orchestra and the handclaps. It was a December release that is not a Christmas song, a bridge while Morning Glory was still being written. McCarroll is still the drummer. Within months he would not be. This single is one of the last chart records with the five who made Definitely Maybe.
The settlement did not pull it off the radio. Number 3 in December 1994 was the highest chart place they had had. The song people bought was the Maison Rouge take, Liam in front of a real string section, not the remaster that later glued the track onto a Definitely Maybe deluxe. Innes’s credit is the correction. The record is still the one Creation shipped that month, six minutes, orchestra on the last day, Noel and Morris on the production credit, and eight notes that had to be shared.
