British music superstars Liam Gallagher, and brother Noel struggle to win North American fans
NEW YORK - Back home in Britain, the rock gods of Oasis can pack 125,000 nightly into soccer stadiums. Now on a crucial cross-Atlantic trip, they arrive for their pre-show sound check and find only 20 fans behind police barricades.
Outside the stately Hammerstein Ballroom (which seats 3,700) in midtown Manhattan, Kate Nixa and friends were among them. They thumbed through glossy British music magazines packed with photos and stories about Oasis, due to hit the stage inside in six hours.
At dawn, the 18-year-old boarded a train to New York from Connecticut, leaving behind a high school filled with Grateful Dead and Phish-loving teens she says don't share her passion for the group fronted by the notorious Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel.
``I don't think they like how they're trying to be the Beatles,'' she says. ``Liam being a brat also turned them off.''
Right now it's the Spice Girls, not Oasis, who are the biggest British-selling act on this side of the pond. The Manchester quintet's third album, Be Here Now, has slipped to an unimpressive Number 34 on the Billboard Top 200 charts.
(In Canada, Be Here Now, released Aug. 21, has sold 200,000. Their last disc, (What's The Story - Lights, camera . . . Andrew Cunanan ) Morning Glory, sold 800,000 copies.)
That's made this an important journey to the Big Apple - a week packed with interviews, two concerts and appearances on Saturday Night Live and The Late Show With David Letterman.
They have talent and the raw charisma. They devise melodies and harmonies that stand above most other comers on today's moribund rock 'n' roll scene. But unlike the Beatles, to whom they are endlessly compared, their phenomenal success at home hasn't crossed to North America. The Beatles were superstars when they landed in Toronto in 1964.
The North American leg of Oasis' tour begins in the new year, including a Toronto date expected in February, so it's critical the band generate good press and strong word of mouth to prove they're no mirage.
Back home, Oasis is a phenomenon so large 1 million copies of Be Here Now flew out of British record shops in 19 days, smashing sales records and outstripping Spice Girls sales. Tickets for their entire tour sold out in one day.
U.K. newspapers, not just the tabloids, publish stories if one of the Gallaghers cuts his hair, ties the knot or buys a house. ``Wibbling Rivalry,'' a 14-minute recording of a dust-up (for which the brothers are famous) in the middle of an interview became a Top 40 hit in the U.K.
They brought their headline-making arrogance to the Hammerstein on Tuesday. ``Yes, I know I'm a genius, yes, I know. Don't keep telling me,'' Noel told the crowd between songs.
And this bit of self-backslapping: ``That was a damn fine version of that song, if I do say so myself.'' The liner notes of Be Here Now read: ``If we've forgotten anyone then you're not important enough!''
So why is it ``the most bad-to-the-bone, arrogant, snotty miscreant Brits to have landed in New York since 1776,'' in the words of one New York critic, are loved by the English but not North Americans, at least not in any large numbers?
In the history of rock music, only a handful of acts, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and U2 for example, have succeeded in worldwide domination, becoming something more than a one-hit wonder. And that seems less and less likely to occur again as pop music continues to fragment, splitting audiences along stylistic lines.
A few years back the Gallaghers boasted they had the stuff but in 1997 it seems only hyper-hyped novelty acts like the Spice Girls have global appeal, judging by sluggish sales by even superstars like Pearl Jam, Paul McCartney and, lately, U2.
What fuels Oasis' appeal in Britain? Timing, says John Harris. The London-based journalist, who now writes for the monthly music magazine Select, was interviewing the Gallaghers when the infamous ``Wibbling Rivalry'' recording was made.
``If you look at the point at which they broke big which was in 1994, politically and culturally this country was absolutely all over the place,'' Harris says on the line from England.
``We were very much enthralled with the Americans, Kurt Cobain was still alive, grunge music was very much the in thing but we had no indigenous youth culture of our own.''
Oasis - their Mancunian snarl a refreshing change from the plummy Tory accents that dominated the political scene - suddenly provided the country's national soundtrack, says Harris.
``We were crying out for something to really culturally unify the country, and to have a sort of undertow of optimism and big-heartedness behind it.''
Those aren't terms that immediately spring to mind with the Gallaghers' scowling and combative public image but the fact is their lyrics are filled with upbeat messages:
``You and I are going to live forever.'' ``You gotta roll with it/ you gotta say what you say/ don't let anybody get in your way.'' ``You can have it all/ but how much do you want it?''
Noel, 30, the band's songwriter, says his music's uplifting power is rooted in the band's collective personality. ``We're not morose people. We're sort of happy-go-lucky, take each day as it comes type of chaps.''
He says this backstage in the tiny Hammerstein dressing room. He's not looking particularly happy after an all-nighter and ``53 gin and tonics.''
Chief among the criticisms of Noel's songwriting is that he writes meaningless lyrics, often parroting the Beatles, like this Lennon-McCartney double whammy from ``D'You Know What I Mean:'' ``The fool on the hill/ and I feel fine.''
``Imagine if the Beatles had just filled all their songs with Elvis titles: Hello hound dog in your blue suede shoes,'' jokes Harris.
It turns out Noel is entirely onside with critics, but says he isn't aware of the plundering until he reads the lyrics on the album cover. ``The Beatles are so embedded in my subconscious anyway, it's something, on the next record, I will go out of my way to try and not to put in,'' he says breaking into a grin.
``I'm not one of the biggest fans of my lyrics,'' he says. ``I find it difficult to speak about them because I don't really spend that much time writing, I just write what sounds right to fit the song and what feels right to me,'' he says.
In fact, Noel has also been known to nail some pretty decent sound bites like, ``With all the things caught in my mind/ Damn my education/ I can't find the words to say.'' Nor is Oasis a mere clone of its idols.
``The Beatles never had this whole wall of sound guitar noise nor the pervasive influence of some of their (Oasis) songs (which) is old-school dance music,'' says Harris. ``To me it's quite a unique hybrid: Beatles, Sex Pistols, The Stooges, Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and the Faces.''
And while Liam's voice and unique phrasing - he tends to elongate words and deliver them with churlish fire - make him one of rock's best singers at the moment, far more attention is still paid by music journalists to his bizarre stage manner.
Liam sings with his hands clasped behind his back and neck craned upwards toward the microphone stand. That's when he's not stomping around, glaring at the audience in a crouched position or, as he did on Tuesday night, hurling his tambourine and microphone stand on to the stage.
It's a bit baffling to audiences accustomed to ``Hello, New York!'' but Liam's performance at the Hammerstein suggests a newfound willingness to address North American audiences more on their terms.
When Oasis played Toronto's Warehouse nightclub in late 1995, the lads, who include drummer Alan White, guitarist Paul ``Bonehead'' Arthurs and bassist Paul ``Guigsy'' McGuigan, stared at their instruments during their one-hour encoreless performance.
Here, they put on a storming two-hour show that included several bursts of air guitar and crowd strolling by Liam. There have also been props added to their U.K. tour - they emerge on stage from a giant phonebox - thought too costly for this overseas crossing.
So there's style and then there's differing British and North American reactions to the band's swagger.
To fans at home, Oasis embodies the spirit of rebellious youth from working class backgrounds.
``I suppose it's an attitude, I suppose the kids can relate to us because we're sort of similar to them in the way we were brought up,'' says Noel, who has worked as a pipefitter and roadie. The brothers both dropped out of school and admit to an early life of petty crime.
The Gallaghers' estranged father regularly beat the boys' mother, Peggy, and wasn't adverse to smacking his thick-browed sons around.
Rather than be charmed, the U.S. press tends to characterize Oasis as hooligans. ``Among The Thugs'' was the headline in the current issue of Spin magazine covering the band.
But Noel says that, unlike the Spice Girls, they don't play to the press wherever they go.
``We don't really buy into American culture really, we're sort of a bit to stubborn to be,'' he says. ``We're just from Manchester, England, and not a lot of people know where that is . . . and people have a very hard time trying to understand what we say anyway, just because of our accents and we speak so fast. The more we keep coming back the more people will get it.''
Oddly, Noel's arrogance and candor are not dissimilar to one of New York's most famous, Howard Stern. ``Any band that says (it doesn't want to sell records) is basically lying,'' says Noel. ``The goal is always, or it should be when you're in a band, is to sell as many records as possible and to make as much money as possible while you're young so you can retire and live an easy life.''
Still, Noel in particular has toned down his rhetoric about conquering the world (``We want to be the smallest band in the world now'') and even acknowledges it would be impossible for any band to have the across-the-board impact on popular music and culture the Beatles had.
Biggest or smallest, Oasis is fast reaching a point where it needs to focus on evolving and experimenting with their music, he says.
``I think we should put the band to rest for a while and go off do other things and then reconvene and see where we stand and see where music stands and see what we're inspired by and then hopefully go and make some more records.'' That won't happen until the end of the tour, Noel promises.
``They've got to go away for about two years and figure out something new to do,'' says Harris. ``That will be the test of whether he's the great history-making talent he cracks himself up to be.''