Written fast, recorded fast, left as the first take
The Shock of the Lightning is track four on Dig Out Your Soul, and it was the first single from the album. Noel Gallagher wrote it. Liam sings it. Big Brother released the single on 29 September 2008. The album followed on 6 October. When the dates were announced on 24 June, Noel told the press that if the song sounded instant it was because it had been written dead fast and recorded dead fast. He said the record basically is the demo, and that the first time you record something is usually the best. That is the production story he was willing to give it. No long account of overdubs. The take stayed.
Dig Out Your Soul was the band’s seventh studio album, produced by Dave Sardy, who had done Don’t Believe the Truth in 2005. They recorded in London at Abbey Road and mixed in Los Angeles. The lineup was not the Definitely Maybe band. Liam sang and played tambourine. Noel played electric guitar, electronics and backing vocals. Gem Archer played guitar and keyboards. Andy Bell played bass and guitar. Zak Starkey played drums. Noel had said he wanted grooves rather than the old verse, chorus and middle eight, songs that pulled you in and stayed on one drive. This track is the sample of that aim: a fast backbeat, guitars stacked without a long story, Liam pushed up, a chorus that arrives and does not wander off. The album version runs about five minutes. The radio edit is 4:13.
Radio heard it before the shops did. The embargo was 15 August 2008. Chris Moyles played it on BBC Radio 1 that morning, with Noel in the studio, a minute ahead of the official time. The video, directed by Julian House and Julian Gibbs, went up on the band’s site on 25 August and was shown on Channel 4 the same night. House and Gibbs built it as a collage: Liam singing, the others appearing in flashes, stock footage tied to the album art, a solarised look on the band shots. The opening silhouettes nod to the cover of the Rolling Stones’ Hot Rocks. It is not a performance film. One format carried a Chemical Brothers remix of Falling Down as the B-side. The A-side was still the demo Noel had refused to replace.
If The Shock of the Lightning sounds instant and compelling to you, it’s because it was written dead fast. And recorded dead fast. The Shock of the Lightning basically is the demo. And it has retained its energy.
(Noel Gallagher, press release, 24 June 2008)
It peaked at number 3 in the UK. The lead single did what a lead single from that lineup was for: proof the band still had a fast song, not another ballad. On the album it sits after Waiting for the Rapture and before I’m Outta Time, Liam’s own song. The contrast is the point of the sequence. One track is the demo Noel refused to polish into something smoother. The next is slower, and it is his brother’s. Sardy mixed the fast one in Los Angeles without, on Noel’s account, sanding off the first-take energy. The drums stay busy. The guitars do not stop to make room for a bridge.
By the middle of October 2008 the group on the single, Gem, Noel, Liam and Andy, with Starkey on the drums, were at Wembley for the photocall that announced the next summer’s stadiums. The song they were promoting was still the fast one from Abbey Road. Noel had asked for grooves instead of the old song shape. This was the one he left alone, and the one Big Brother put out first. The demo did the job of a single. That was the claim, and the chart agreed as far as number 3.
