Oasis – Cloudburst

August 1994 B-side to Live Forever: Creation, pre-stadium volume

Cloudburst landed on 8 August 1994 as a B-side to Oasis’s Live Forever single on Creation Records (CRESCD 185 / CRE 185T). It did not appear on the original UK edition of Definitely Maybe. Noel Gallagher wrote it; Liam Gallagher sings; Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs plays rhythm guitar; Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan plays bass; Tony McCarroll plays drums. Oasis and Mark Coyle produced the take; Owen Morris handled additional production and the mix. The track runs about five minutes twenty-one seconds on the CD single, alongside an acoustic Up in the Sky and a live Supersonic from April 1994. Live Forever itself became a UK Top 10 single and a cornerstone of the debut album campaign; collectors hunted the B-sides as proof the band already had volume before (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.

Before stadiums and Brit Awards speeches, Oasis were still on the way up. The song starts at full volume. The guitars open loud and fast. Bonehead’s rhythm pushes straight ahead, and McCarroll hits hard, without extra drum figures. Noel plays the riffs hard, pushing strings and tape together. Liam snarls every line instead of crooning. The lyric is not the careful craft of later hits; conviction carries it. John Harris in the NME that year framed Oasis as belief that a song can change your life for three minutes. Cloudburst carries that belief without the A-side’s anthem swing. Morris and Noel’s approach around the Definitely Maybe circle favored room noise and amp heat over tidy digital polish, and this B-side carries that same heat.

Creation’s early campaign already stacked strong extras around the singles. Fans who bought the CD got a louder, dirtier Oasis than daytime radio usually played. The band was still close to council flats, borrowed gear, and rehearsal-room walls. You can hear that proximity in the scrape of the guitars and the lack of polish on the vocal. At about five minutes, the cut also refuses the short-radio edit habit: it stays long enough to feel like a rehearsal room left running, not a single trimmed for breakfast television.

Later deluxe editions of Definitely Maybe put Cloudburst back in official circulation for listeners who only knew the album cuts. Streaming catalogues did the same without sanding the edges. The song never needed an album berth on the 1994 UK LP to matter; it carries the volume of the months before the band became a national name. Put beside Live Forever on the same single and the contrast is clear: one anthem built for choruses, one blast built for volume.