so here we go with something that may, or possibly may not be irregularly regular, look you see. asking whether albums dismissed as "sh!t" or similar about two decades are actually all that bad is a question posed by nearly no one. due to a spontaneous, compulsive purchase of Be Here Now down at Poundland, however, here i am asking.
this album is 22 years old this year, to be sure. whereas i will argue that the 22nd anniversary of a record is always the most important one, some of you might consider a more decimal, such as the 20th, anniversary to be more important. to that end, if you would like (or prefer) such, and indeed would wish for a very sycophantic, fawning look at this particular record, the BBC went ahead and did an article similar to what this one will be about two years ago. it may be a good idea to have a look at that link anyway, for the more "factual" background to it all.
memories of the release? oh yes, i went along to the "midnight launch" of it, when record shops around the world opened at one minute past midnight on the day of release to start selling it. i took my friend Nicky. from what i recall, and she can correct me, i bought myself the record on tape and CD, and bought her the tape as a thank you for coming along. later, Mum got me the double vinyl of it.
Oasis were ludicrously huge at this time, and could do no wrong. the latter part we shall go into more detail on just now. expectations for this, their third album, were ludicrously high. but Oasis had the confidence, the arrogance and the self belief not to be crushed or pressured by such. on release it was calculated that Be Here Now was selling the equivalent of one copy every four seconds at one stage. the nearest closest comparison, when it was worked out that one in four households in the UK had a copy of Welcome To The Pleasuredome, the debut album off of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, didn't come anywhere close to it.
huge sales were of course met with glowing, fawning, sycophantic reviews. no music publication dare speak ill of Oasis, presumably out of fear of the risk of Noel bad mouthing you and your reputation is in ruins, or Liam smashing your face in. it was spoken of in exceptionally exalted terms, with the impression created that it was the single greatest record of all time, and nothing ever released after it would be anywhere near as good, so why bother.
and yet it died a relatively quick death. it feels like people fell out of love with Be Here Now as readily as they embraced it, perhaps showing that the disposable, instant gratification of the present day younglings of our society is not so new a thing. there's a few reasons why this happened (i think, or speculate), but just how many of them are the fault of the record itself is the question.
no, i am not going to go "track by track". well, yes i am, actually, with some of them, but not all. might end up being them all but i suspect it will be just highlighting one or two as points of departure. this just seems to be the best way to tackle it.
D'You Know What I Mean? the opening track of the album also happened to be the big selling lead single. problem number one. my dear friend Shaun has a rule, and that rule is "if the first track on an album is the lead single, the album is going to be sh!t". his conclusive proof of this was Pop by U2, and he was quite a fan of U2 at the time. due to the fact that Ian Brown tends to have the lead single as the first track on his albums i of course disagree with this a bit, but there is the rule for you if you wish to accept it.
as a lead single, it superbly let all know what was coming on Be Here Now. ludicrously long at 7 minutes, every form of musical instrument imaginable performed on it, meticulously produced to perfection and accompanied by a one million pound (cash) video featuring helicopters, lensed in 70mm Imax whatever and of course the sound being all Nigel Tufnel "mixed in dobly".
it was seeing the album and remembering D'You Know What I Mean? that led to the re-purchase. there's one line on the song, "i met my maker, i made him cry", that i always liked. yes, Noel might craftily regurgitate and rework songs from the past, but he does it ever so well, and delivers absolute gems of lines like this. maybe he does not do that so much now, but he did then.
for trivia fans, i don't recall it exactly, but the morse code on the go in the song. memories tell me it is either answering a question in the lyrics with the very brothers Gallagher phrase "f*** all", or it is supposed to be just saying "this means f*** all". an easter egg of sorts, then.
My Big Mouth easily the most compelling and intriguing song on the album. at face value, it's Noel making a not quite as rare as you might think admission of his failings, with particular emphasis on that incident. you know, the one which should have sank his career on the spot, when he unwisely expressed a wish that 50% of quasi rival band Blur "would get AIDS and die". oh sure, there was a backlash because of that, but a remarkably minor one when people in their masses felt it was better to overlook that so they could enjoy just how good an album Morning Glory was.
there's maybe more to the song than that particular incident though. stemming from it, perhaps, is the sense of "i am me and no one is better than me" arrogance of the lyrics around admitting he has a big mouth, basically saying it's ok for him to have one as no one can (or will) do what he does. i suspect it is also a comment, or dig, on The Stone Roses too. there are not too many ways to interpret the line "where angels fly you won't play" which don't come to a reference to Where Angels Play and the frankly total mess that The Stone Roses had become by that stage.
otherwise, it's one of the few songs not to be ludicrously layered, over bloated or extended beyond what it needs to be. possibly one of two, with the other being
Stand By Me. what was the magic of Oasis? the ability, no matter how many tens of millions in lovely cash they were sat on, to connect a concept with a massive audience. this song exemplifies this. made a meal and threw it up on sunday, i've got a lot of things to learn is a witty opening line and an experience many thousands - tens of, hundreds of - can instantly relate to. the rather simplistic, basic hook for the song - stand by me, nobody knows the way it's gonna be is anthemic chanting genius, the personification of the p!ssed up rallying cry of "you and me against the world, kidda", enthusiastically expressed in drunken euphoric displays of male bonding across the land and across the years.
in the great rush to dismiss Be Here Now as "overrated", "a rock folly", "pretentious" or just plain sh!t, perhaps all of us have been guilty of forgetting this song exists on this album. this song is of the same high - if popular rather than artistic - peerless standard the band delivered with Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger.
Fade In-Out oh dear oh dear oh dear. too nice, i have been to the album. now is the time to discuss the low point of the record, and things do not get much lower than this song.
if not every band then every guitarist has some sort of fantasy or vision of being a "blues traveller". to be fair by this point Noel "got away" with indulging this, as things like Slide Away were "blues-ish" but with a distinctly and decidedly Mancunian twang. Fade In-Out is an indulgence too far, however, with Noel apparently feeling he was perfectly capable of channeling his talents as if he could totally relate to some 1930s downtrodden and in all likelihood blind black dude in the Mississippi Delta.
what's wrong with the song? everything. the worst part is probably the groan inducing presence of uber celebrity groupie Johnny Depp on "slide guitar". easily the most embarrassing part is the presumably supposed to be anguished, pained, suffering scream in the middle of a song. from a band that at this time didn't even have the most trivial of first world problems to waste a moment on, let alone anything mildly serious.
my feeling is that if this song had never appeared on the album (or even better never existed), Be Here Now would have lasted longer with a fonder, more popular view of it. but, as Noel said at the time and has always said in retrospect, absolutely no one would say no to him or anything he wanted to do, for all evidence available made it clear he could do no wrong.
Don't Go Away would appear to be not so much a stab at a Wonderwall for this record, but a handy back up in case the people didn't quite like Stand By Me. that is maybe a touch harsh, but also true. it's a good song, i was reminded as i played the album again for the first time in around 18 or so years.
Be Here Now or if you like the titular track is positively underwhelming. it's also astonishingly disconnecting between band and audience, due to one particular line. your sh!t jokes remind me of Digsy's might mean something to the band as a private joke, but to the audience it is pretty meaningless. i mean, we know of this Digsy and that he had a dinner as one song before was called such (lasagne, i believe), but this is a lyrical reference which means absolutely nothing.
also, it makes a direct reference to a Beatles album, Let It Be. by this stage of the record we have had to endure numerous Beatles references, such as "fool on the hill" and "long and winding road". enough now, we get that you like them. too much of this song is uncharacteristically privately introverted to connect with an audience, and the album would have been much better off with this removed from it.
All Around The World is the song that tends to get a lot of criticism. stretching over 9 minutes (making it at the time the longest number one single ever), like any number of songs on the record it is about twice as long as it actually needed to be to make its point. the thing is, though, it's really good. uplifting, positive, and splendidly simple to sing along to. what more is it you want from a pop record?
not sure which, but Noel said either he offered this for a Eurovision song entry or said that it was what he would do for Eurovision. i suspect the latter, as i doubt they would ever have entered for the UK. why not? a year or so before when they were asked to do an "official" song for England for Euro 96 is answer was "f*** off we're Irish"; something not always immediately clear when you hear Bonehead speaking.
at one point Noel described Definitely Maybe as the desire and wish to be a successful rock and roll band, with Morning Glory being that successful rock and roll band. to this end, Be Here Now was the album of a successful rock and roll band thoroughly enjoying the excesses, being quite aware that in order to ensure the truck loads of cash, cocaine and call girls kept coming they needed to deliver an album which was "distinctly different to but exactly the same as" the ones before. you have to say they, in all fairness, delivered precisely what was required, expected and desired.
but this was the "start of the end" for Oasis, and not just because Bonehead and Guigsy (again) left not long after. things changed. i think it was little more than a week after the release of Be Here Now that Diana died, an event which totally changed the mood of the UK. Noel's insistence on being a prominent part of the establishment also backfired. at first it seemed wonderful that Noel was mates with Tony "call me Tony" Blair, but that became an unfortunate association when he became Bliar, developing a taste for blood and war.
from here, then, each of the Gallaghers went off and got to do exactly what they wanted. all it seems Noel wanted was to have a huge pile of cash, get praise and applause from his contemporaries and peers, to be seen as an integral part of the rock establishment and regularly invite the likes of Ronnie Wood over for dinner. Liam, you get the sense, was always Liam and always will be. his only bow to the conventions of being part of the rock establishment was the obligatory marriage to Patsy Kensit, and you really can't help but think that if at that stage his net worth was fifty million pounds he would interpret it as him having access to fifty million cans of lager. and why not.
so yeah, Be Here Now is a remarkably good "sh!t" album. well worth revisiting. sure, it might sound "over produced" and ridiculously layered, but this was from a time when such mattered. now, today, it seems that "producing a record" means very little more than ensuring it sounds "twangy" and catchy enough whilst being played on horribly compressed, sound limiting formats such as mp3 files and "streaming".
anyway, as you were.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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