Supergrass – Prophet 15

Track eleven, and the doorbell is familiar

The piano comes in like someone at the door. On Prophet 15, track eleven of Life on Other Planets, Supergrass lean on the doorbell figure from Wings’ Let ‘Em In and then fill the hallway with the wrong guests. Gaz Coombes sings that he is lost in a cloud and caught in a car he cannot drive. The passengers are not the band. Oscar Wilde and Peter Cook are close by. Che Guevara and Steve McQueen are right there. Then John Belushi and Lady Day, Joe the Lion and Marvin Gaye, Davy Crockett and Joan of Arc, David Banner and Roger Moore. A four-minute roll call, sung almost straight.

The track was cut while the Oxford quartet were making their fourth album with Tony Hoffer, between October 2001 and March 2002. Sessions moved through Mayfair Studios in London, Heliocentric, and Rockfield. Hoffer produced and mixed. Robert Carranza engineered. The parts are easy to separate once you know who is holding what: Gaz on keyboards and lead vocal, his brother Rob Coombes on piano and bass, Danny Goffey on drums and keyboards, Mick Quinn on acoustic guitar. It runs 4:05. Parlophone released Life on Other Planets on 30 September 2002. The album reached number 9 in the UK. Prophet 15 was not a single. Grace, Seen the Light, Rush Hour Soul and the one-minute Never Done Nothing Like That Before took the radio slots.

By then Supergrass had already done the grin of I Should Coco and the heavier push of In It for the Money. Life on Other Planets eases the hurry without dropping the jokes. Prophet 15 is the joke that wears a 1976 McCartney coat. Play Let ‘Em In, then this, and the kinship is obvious: a polite piano figure, then a list of people who might come through. McCartney opens the door to family and friends. Coombes is stuck in the car with icons who are mostly dead, and he still cannot explain how to drive. The lift is the point, not an accident you are meant to miss.