Pink Museum, a Chinese meal, and an 11-hour single
In December 1993 Oasis were at the Pink Museum in Liverpool, on Hesketh Street, trying to leave with a debut single. Alan McGee at Creation had wanted Bring It On Down. In the room, engineer Dave Scott remembers the take that would not land as I Will Believe. The energy dropped. Mark Coyle was producing with Noel Gallagher. Tony Griffiths of the Real People, who had been around the band, pushed them toward something else. They had a jam from soundcheck, a slow rock figure Tony McCarroll could hold. Noel went into the back room.
He has told the story the same way since the Supersonic documentary. Someone sent out for a Chinese meal. In the time it took the others to eat it, he wrote the song. Scott’s account of the same night is more mechanical and just as short. Noel wanted a drink before the words. Whiskey hurt his head and beer felt heavy, so Scott suggested gin and tonic, which he had drunk on a plane because there was no vodka. That is where the line about feeling supersonic and wanting a gin and tonic comes from. Liam Gallagher sang the lead in one take, with a drop-in for a mistake in the middle. Tony Griffiths stacked the backing “aah”s. Scott mixed it on the studio’s 1969 Neve, with no automation, down to DAT, and thought he was printing a monitor mix. He later said the whole thing took 11 hours and, as far as he knew, was never remixed. That mix is the one on the single and on Definitely Maybe.
Elsa, in the lyric, is not a girl. She was Scott’s Rottweiler. While Noel was writing, the dog farted and jumped off the couch. Bonehead said the dog had followed through. Noel put the name in the song. The rest of the words work the same way: a yellow submarine, a train, lines that do not stop to explain themselves. Creation released Supersonic on 11 April 1994 as the debut single, with Take Me Away, a live I Will Believe, and a Columbia demo across the formats. It reached number 31 in the UK. Not a smash. The first record with their name on the label.
I went in the back room and, as bizarre as it sounds, wrote Supersonic in about however long it takes six other guys to eat a Chinese meal.
(Noel Gallagher, Oasis: Supersonic, 2016)
On Definitely Maybe, released on 29 August 1994, Supersonic is track six, between Columbia and Bring It On Down. It was not recut at Sawmills. Owen Morris produced most of the album. This song stayed the Pink Museum monitor mix: guitars hard-panned, Liam up front, the fade hiding an ending Noel later said ran on with extra guitar and radio interference. Scott thinks that memory belongs to Slide Away. The record the shops got is the 11-hour mix. Bonehead’s Gibson SG, Guigsy’s bass, McCarroll’s drums, Noel’s lead doubled and slightly detuned on Scott’s instruction so the two takes would sit together. No second pass.
Noel has said that before this single, people came to the gigs because they had read about the band, and nobody knew the songs. On the day Supersonic came out, he heard a crowd singing the words back, words written in the middle of the night and not built to mean much. Bring It On Down never became the first single. This did. The debut people still start with is the one written while the food was on the table, mixed by an engineer who thought he was only printing a rough.
