Was There Then

Ten years is an awfully long time. The Beatles' entire recording career lasted barely eight years, not much less time than it took for mankind to go from tentatively orbiting Earth to setting foot on the Moon. World War II spanned a mere six years and, once it had finished, it took West Germany nine short years to see it's sins forgiven and recover enough to win the World Cup. A lot can happen in less than a decade- four Scousers can change the world, man can touch the face of God and the sins of an entire nation can heal.

So why does 'Be Here Now' still hurt?

It's been ten years since Oasis released the most anticipated album in a generation and comprehensively underwhlemed everyone with twelve songs bloated by guitar tracks and dripping with finest Colombian mental dust. As a 16 year old in Blackburn, already au fait with the ghosts of music past, I'd clung to Oasis as my band, my music and felt exactly like everyone had done in the summer of '67 when they got Sgt. Pepper home from the shops- I was ready for a defining moment...

And I got 'The Phantom Menace'. A piece of work eternally doomed to be suffocated by it's own hype- so many people with so many expectations that not even Jesus and his trampoline act could come close to being good enough. In the years since, Oasis have remained Britian's biggest live draw, and Liam and Noel have entered the pantheon of national treasures but each successive album has been greeted with more than a touch of suspicion and the troubling notion that they're going to embarass us all over again. Even more than 'Morning Glory', which sold seventy squillion copies, and 'Definitely Maybe', which might just be the best album ever, 'Be Here Now' is the defining moment in Oasis' history.

This might explain why recently, with what could best be described as reluctant curiosity, I plucked it from my CD rack, slipped it into my Saxo's stereo, and spent 70 minutes of a Tuesday morning commute listening to, frankly, the most extraorinary and daft album on the planet.

An hour and ten minutes to get through 12 songs (or, to be precise, 11 songs and a reprise) may seem a tad excessive but then again it takes 2 minutes for the first tune 'D'Yer Know What I Mean?' to kick in. By the time it does, we've already had a jumbo jet, morse code and snatches of backwards vocals before the song arrives accompanied by the best drum noise ever. Sure enough the song's great- grandiose and bonkers in equal measure- but just listen to those skins! It sounds like Alan White and his kit are falling down the stairs! He stops tumbling for a sec whilst Noel plays a nice little wah-wah solo before setting off again towards the basement where we find the loudest apology in human history.

'My Big Mouth' arrives with a rush of several thousand guitars and feature the best middle-8 in Oasis' career. It's all about Noel apologising for constantly being controversial- though it doesn't really sound like he's sorry as Liam sings it like he's wired to the National Grid. It's a belter of a vocal that begs the question why we should ever again tolerate the chap from Snow Patrol who always sounds really nervous. So we're two songs in, two rocking bastard songs no less, and then the album plays it's masterstroke- the worst song ever.

'Magic Pie' is unequvocally shit beyond anything ever achieved in the name of music and should therefore be owned by everyone and listened to regularly. It's ponderous, Noel's vocal is awful, it's full of daft mellotron effects and the lyrics quote a Tony Blair speech. In short, it's incredible. And safe in the knowledge that you'll never here anything as bad ever again, you can now get on with the rest of the album with a certain sense of comfort.

Over the middle section of the album 'Stand By Me' rips off 'All The Young Dudes' so brazenly you feel like buying it a drink, 'I Hope, I Think, I Know' is the sound of Liam in a chariot race and 'The Girl In The Dirty Shirt' features the most romantic and touching use of the phrase 'Get your shit together' ever uttered. Then Johnny Depp shows up. Jack Sparrow's appearance on slide guitar is actually the second most notable feature of 'Fade In/Out', paling into insignificance beside an astonishing primal scream fron Noel three minutes in. So powerful is this scream that it's one of life's great pleasures to get into someone's car with a CD player, whack up the volume, fast forward to just before the right moment and then turn the ignition off. Then when the owner of the car next gets in and turns the key they'll be treated to Noel's lungs escaping at about 30,000 decibels. I guarantee they'll poo themselves. And it'll be runny too.

Following that, 'Don't Go Away' is rather sweet, the title track is boogieliscious with reliably dreadful lyrics and 'All Around The World' is so long it's proabably still being recorded in a studio somewhere. Last of all (reprise aside) is 'It's Getting Better, Man!!', the great forgotten gem of Oasis' career. There's four minutes of the sort of ecstatic drunken guitar pop that no-one does better, then a solo that builds and builds and builds before the Gallaghers start swapping vocals while the band clatters on around them into infinity. It sounds like the best night out you've ever had.

Then, after the orchestral reprise of 'All Around The World', that's pretty much it. It's massively flawed in places and it's far too long but, like Apocalypse Now, it's the result of too much money, too many drugs and more ego than both of those combined- and it's all the more fascinating for it. In fact, all that's missing is the Indonesian army giving a helping hand.

Unless that's them on backing vocals.