OASIS: Why Noel Hates 'Be Here Now' For All The Wrong Reasons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ย. 2021
- Join James Hargreaves to examine the release of the climactic album of the 1990's in the UK - Be Here Now by Oasis, what happened in the lead-up to the release and what happened in the aftermath to answer the question... Why was the album that broke all records and remains beloved by fans worldwide later criticised and rejected by the very man who wrote it?
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Many thanks, JH.
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Had my wedding reception at stocks due to the photo shoot for the album being shot there! Bit like oasis that marriage is dead and buried now!😂
Fantastic comment
They have filled in the pool now
@@Jimmywilliams_ Sacrilege.
Class! What year was that?
@@alonzoharris608 it was April 1998…
Noel hates it because it was their one chance to become even more massive and they blew it, and he feels responsible for it. It's a good record, flawed and the fanbase loves it for what it is, but if we're talking quality and mass appeal it's nowhere near the first two. For someone who mastered the pop record with Morning Glory it's definitely a step-back, and it came at a time when Noel knew if he took more time and made nore conscious decisions it could've been much better. He's not as harsh with some of the latter Oasis records because their legacy was already set in a way and also he wasn't having his best time as a songwriter, it's all a matter of perception.
yea the later albums were much worse
some great songs, but just way too long and over produced.
They did make it pretty massive I’d say.
Spot on here
If Oasis played a concert tomorrow, no one's going to complain if not a single song from the 3rd album onwards wasn't in the set list.
“It’s getting better (man)” deserves a proper mix like the way they did it live at air studios on that bbc documentary. Absolute rocker
I hope I think I know also wasn't that good in recording
I agree! That live version is superior!!
problem is Owen Morris was the guy who mixed the first 2 albums, he & noel mixed be here now and they were both hooked on coke
Always loved Be Here Now and I've never been ashamed of saying it out loud(man!!).
😂😂 great
it gets better man
Fr
As an Oasis fan in the 90's, who also bought 'Be Here Now' on the day of release... I loved the release of 'Standing On The Shoulder of Giants'. Go Let It Out was a cracking first single from the album and Gas Panic is one of the best tunes ever written!
I love the back end of the Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants album. Gas Panic, Where Did It All Go Wrong, Sunday Morning Call and Roll It Over are excellent.
Well done. I was at knebworth on the second night and the crowd didn't seem to respond too enthusiastically to "stand by me" or "my big mouth" I woke up the next day being highly impressed by kula shaker and Cast as live performances
@@allandudson9684 I was trying to think who the support acts were for the second night only yesterday. Cranberies also? I was there on the first day. Bootleg Beatles, Chemical Borthers, Ocean Colous Scene, Manic Street Preachers and The Prodigy. There were 6 of us and just walked down to ther front and was amazed we got into the front section despite the grounds almost being full. And I'm not saying they did, but bloody hell, The Prod almost upstaged Oasis.
@@allandudson9684 they would have done well to respond to Stand By Me when they didn’t play it.
@@cs0rpc Didn't they... I weren't paying much attention by that time of night, I ran out of cigarettes...😁
For me it was their Swan song. They were never the same band after this.
It was everything I wanted from an oasis album, and their live performances on this tour were off the scale. The last great rock band bar none.
@Kirk Wolfe I know what you mean, but by the time Gem and Andy joined it was already over, that's why bonehead left in the first place.
If I were to separate them it'd be during creation/post creation. Mark Coyle and Owen Morris going was a massive change too.
Saying that though people would literally wet themselves for a new oasis album.
The masterplan (the song) for me was their swansong.
I see DM, WTSMB and BHN as a trilogy of albums that defined that stereotypical Oasis Sound. It defined and era and I think they knew that too and the only way forward was to move away from it and do something different. Granted they never sounded dratiscally different, songs like Lyla and who feels love still sounded like Oasis,but not too rooted in the old oasis,if that makes sense? And I think Bell and Archer were the right people to move things forward. I like both incarnations of the band.
@@kingrubbatiti1285 Oasis MK II was on their way to the greatness with DBTT and DOYS. But life can be a nasty bitch at times, so the band split up at the end of the day.
Definitely. I love a lot of the post 90s oasis songs and Standing in the shoulder of giants is one of my favourite albums but be here now was the peak of the original oasis style
I always got the sense that Noel had already written the first 2 albums way before being signed. When BHN came about, the well had run dry and he had to start a fresh. There are some good songs on there but it always felt a bit thrown together in a panic and the mix was chaotic. I remember listening over and over and it not having quite the impact of WTSMG.
@@badgasaurus4211 Thats True. There's an early demo of around the world in the supersonic film. And that must have been pre definitely maybe?
Going Nowhere was written in 1990. There’s footage of the band rehearsing All Around the World in the Boardwalk in 1992ish. He had about 2 and a half albums worth of songs by the time they signed the record deal I would say.
he has admitted that. regretting giving away all them B-sides going on holiday to write the album didn't work.
WTSMG represents such a dramatic era in my life and so many other people’s lives.
In 1995, my employer closed its U.K. head office after being acquired by a rival. I lost my job. Bloody upsetting. I was sole breadwinner and everything depended upon my ability to make enough money to pay our mortgage and look after the four of us. The fourth member of the family was born in 1995. Imagine how stunned my wife and I were, a new baby on the way, no job soon, everything was going to change. At best, we would have to sell the dream home we’d just bought (a 1930s three bed semi in leafy Bromley / Beckenham suburbs, big garden, drive for two cars off road, extended kitchen overlooking a mature, large, south facing garden.
We’d decorated only a couple of rooms, our bedroom first, and it was a beautiful place to be.
The move to deepest rural Kent for my next job was such a dispiriting change especially for my wife, much more a city girl than the rural person I was.
We didn’t recover for about five years, when we got a fantastic house which we stayed in for 21 years.
The 1995 move was undertaken to the sound track of WTSMG. It played all the time, in the car (remember CD autochangers?), at home (remember HiFi separates?) and any pub we went into (remember juke boxes?) when we got a baby sitter.
It was on the radio all the time (remember when Radio 1 was a real force in music?).
A clutch of other albums followed, like Urban Hymns, Comfort in Sound, Free all Angels, but WTSMG was “the daddy”, I felt.
A major moment in British music, Britpop, which felt like it would last forever, but was over before we realised the special time we’d just had. Who remembers Tony Blair “A new day has dawned, has it not?” (Complete with faked glottal stop)?
Looking back, one reason why the Britpop era felt so good was that for a short while, Brits felt like we had got our power back. We held our heads high. We strode around like Ian Brown, with a swagger. (Remember “Cool Britannia”?)
No sooner did they crest, they began to subside. Pop took over, and men started to become downplayed in favour of effeminate boy bands, girl bands, female mega stars. Bands which may have had guitars but weren’t “guitar bands”, and the guitar solo started its last movement. It’s all but gone now.
1995 was perhaps the high water mark & if not, it was the last flood tide.
Never forgotten, it now pulls at my heartstrings badly to hear that & to my memory, the associated mid to late 1990s musical cannon.
Thank you, Noel & Liam.
Ok boomer
OK zoomer
I enjoyed this. Your analysis gave some interesting food for thought. But while I think you're right about there being a certain resentment from Noel at how Be Here Now represented the 'start of the end' for them, I don't agree with your take on it being his main reason. Noel was, IMO, bang on about the songs being too long. "Stand By Me" is one ideal example of an Oasis song that would've been vastly improved by being trimmed down. There are way too many choruses and suffers for being nearly 6 minutes long. Noel was a great writer of melodies (and still is), but his weakness was in arranging songs. (Who am I to critique him, though, right? But it's just my take.) They would almost always follow a very traditional structure and rarely 'surprise' the listener after you heard the first chorus. He didn't seem to have anyone around him to tell him not to go back to a verse, to reduce the number of choruses, or to cut the outros down, etc. I know repetition was important to their music, but it was taken to the nth degree on Be Here Now. I loved Oasis and was right in the thick of that whole era, but I still think they would've benefitted from a George Martin type figure in the studio for that album. It would've taken them to the next level.
Spot on.
Yeah some great songs, but way too long and over produced.
Absolutely. The reason why many Oasis fans love Be Here Now is because we can see through the flaws in production and overlong arrangements. The songs are incredible and on par with the first two albums but the production/song length, however, makes the album tedious for non-Oasis fans. Morning Glory was a rock record produced in a way that appealed to a pop audience. Be Here Now lacks this quality. A better producer - and one who could stand up to the band - would have fixed this.
Obviously Noel cant arrange music mate come on he is a Genius.
#MadFerItAmerican, here.... And that was spot on.
Yes, finally we got onto this topic, thanks mate! I am so sick of Noel's opinion on it being heard before people could think for themselves. They''ve got obsessed with his answer to a point where they think it's their opinion.
Well said! I do agree that Noel has cast such a dark cloud over the album that people listen to it with a negative bias already in place.
I'm so glad I got to hear it at the time, in 97, when there was a positive bias in place so I could actually appreciate it as it was meant to be heard!
@@JamesHargreavesGuitar Sorry- i think it’s lacklustre and bloated. The issue when most bands become too established (and get their money)- too much production and the loss of direction. The song subject matter starts not to have the connection with fans. For a fan like me at the time who saw them as a support band - that album was the point that turned me away from Oasis.
Totally agree I think it's brilliant
Brian f@¢king Wilson couldn't have sorted that dreadful production out FFS! I find that EVERY BHN tune to be better when done live!
@@richgl31the fact that the band was hooked on coke, noel was listening to led zeppelin. Owen Morris being addicted to coke when he was the guy who mixed the first two albums and had no problem cutting guitar solos, the fact both he & noel mixed it & mark Coyle was not the producer.
Be Here Now will always be a classic to me and I wasn’t even alive when it came out. I love every single second of it to bits.
i wish he would remix the whole album like he did with dyou know what i mean
i mostly listen to the brickwallhater fan remixes for songs like my big mouth and all around the world
already makes a huge difference
i personally have no problem with the length of the album
Fingers crossed the 25th anniversary release will be the entire album remixed.
Agreed 👍👍
Where did you find the remixes of MBM or AATW out of interest?
I think his original plan was to remix the whole album but for whatever reason, Noel knocked the idea on the head after finishing DYKWIM.
i've since found a better remix if anyone still cares th-cam.com/video/F5zVK43EE4o/w-d-xo.html this channel also has a few other great oasis remixes and a better remaster of the first high flying birds record including a download link for that
Definitely Maybe will always be my favourite Oasis album and is their best in my opinion. Be Here Now is underrated and a good album. I think a lot of people were expecting Morning Glory part 2 though and that was the problem. Imagine how much more Be Here Now would have sold in the first week if it had been released at the start of the week, instead of on the Thursday. The reason all the critics loved it was due to the fact that they got it so wrong with Morning Glory. Morning Glory got panned by the critics and they ended up looking stupid so they thought we aren’t doing that again!!
Morning Glory will have a place in my heart. All of its songs take me right back to April-September 1996 (I was 16) and my high school crush. Her favourite band was Oasis
James talks about Oasis like it's his doctoral work. I'm convinced he is the man of my life and there's nothing I can do about it ❤️❤️❤️
I was 17, and I quite remember when the album arrived at my hands... and, amazingly, I agree with everything you said in this video! I love long songs and there is so many details one is still discovering today in those tracks. I particularly enjoyed a recently released remastered version.
My year 11 soundtrack at school. Loved it - yes it wasn’t recorded perfectly but it encapsulated the spirit of a band who had made it to the top of the music industry and had entered the publics hearts. Who cares what Noel thinks all
That matters is what the person listening to the record thinks of it. Critics are not to be listened to at all. Who are they anyway ?
It was the end of the bands first phase - the proper lad phase before they went alittle well grown up, kids and responsibilities.
The hype was great because it had an air of mystery as opposed to now where bands record and document everything on social media .
There are a few ok songs but most of it is great - if you can play the songs on an acoustic guitar and it stands up it’s a good song !
It was all part of the journey and we were all lucky to experience it in our lifetime because now there is no group like them …
James, the world needs you. Please keep doing what you are doing. Bravo!
I don't care what anyone says be here now is an awesome album
This was released when I was 20 years old... a week off work, sat in the back of my old fave boozer, The Zodiac.
Pool table, pints and my best mate Karl...
Whole album on loop through the jukebox and the sound turned right up...
Sometimes only two of us in the back room for hours that week... This was our private listening party... and it was the best thing I'd ever heard. Moreso with the volume cranked up..
This was made for volume... not played in the background.
The guitar solo in Its Getting Better Man... F#@king WOW...
Great video... really enjoyed how this was put together.
Ahhh I only discovered your videos a few days ago and I genuinely love them! There's just smth bout them that makes them really easy to listen to. Even as background noise i find that I'm paying attention and retaining the info
the music press missed the boat on Morning Glory, so they made tried to make amends by giving Be Here Now rave reviews.
This album changed my life as a lost teenager and got me to teach myself guitar.. it got alot of stick back in the day, I remember chris evans on TFI on national TV saying the album is dead on the week of its release
I think its very underrated album.
I remember one of his guests, might have been Donna Air or someone in 98 simply asking 'where are Oasis?' To which he replied 'Well you said it'.
Also this album has so many instruments/riffs in there that every time you listen to it seems like it's always a different story (morning glory)
They should release a shorter acoustic version called Be Here Now: Naked
I remember earlier in 1997 when OK Computer had been released, Yorke reckoned they had killed Britpop with their album.
Noel didn't quite understand this, or he just put his efforts on doing the same thing than in the previos years, but bigger. Music was evolving but not in the way Noel expected.
Blur's 97 album was underrated at the time but 25 years later, Beetlebum and Song Two are major classics. I believe they understood they needed to move forward - something that Oasis didn't.
And when Noel tried to catch up with the era and released Standing on the Shoulders of giants it was too late
Noel Gallagher sometimes needs to be quiet where he often speaks his mind. I think he thinks he's being edgy, but he is damaging his legacy by saying things where silence would best serve him well. Oasis was, is, and always will be a magical force to be reckoned with.
In 1995 and 96......I remember getting so jazzed about going to Best Buy every week to see what new Oasis singles I could buy. One day, I bought the Roll With It single..and listened to "Rockin' Chair" the first time. I remember asking myself..."how is every song I hear from this band so damn good??" Eventually, I had all of the single CD's, I even bought the "Sibbling Rivalry" disc that was just them arguing..which even that was fun to listen too. Their music always has and always will put me in such a great mood. Love your channel James!
I absolutely love the Be Here Now album
I haven't been getting video notifications from your channel lately, youtube is shit sometimes. Great video!
Be here now is my favorite album while exercising,it gives you that adrenaline rush.
I’ve been binge watching your channel dude, keep it up!
I really love Be Here Now. It was the first complete Oasis album I heard, in 1998, when I was 17 years old, and since then, it has been in my heart. Every time I listen to it (last Sunday I did), it generates a beautiful nostalgia in me, because I could also feel how an era was closing. This video is very good, like all the ones you make, for a 40-year-old man, in a remote country lost at the end of the world like Argentina. I appreciate you being the "oasis nerd", and all the information and opinion. really thanks
Oasis has been my favorite band since 1994 when I saw the Live Forever video on MTV here in the US. I have everything this band has ever released and Be Here Now is still my favorite album. I bought it the day it came out as soon as the record store opened. I live in the US so there weren't any waiting lines or anything like in the UK. I was 19 at the time and played that CD every day in my dorm room at college and bought another one that I could keep in my car. I never once remember myself thinking 'hmm these songs are too long'. All Around the World is one of those songs like Hey Jude where I wish it would just keep going forever.
I think you're totally on point about them taking so long before they followed it with SOTSOG. If you disappear for 3 years you get forgotten. The Beatles made ALL of their records in like 8 years which seems ridiculous by today's standards.
According to the official Beatles story, they made Rubber Soul in less than a month! They apparently came into Abbey Rd with no new material at all in November '65; and then had the album done and out in the shops by 3rd December!! In time for Christmas. (16 songs, written; rehearsed; recorded in a couple of weeks.)
@@nellsun2521 I know, it's crazy how they did what they did in such a short period of time. We'll never see anything like that ever again. Bands today release an album every 3 years.
I still remember the day when BHN was released. I was 16 at the time. I couldn't wait to finish school that day, and I rushed into my local records store immediately afterwards, the windows of the store were covered in BHN posters and the record was visible everywhere in the store. I bought a CD and cycled quickly back home and gave it a listen while going through the album sleeve artwork and lyrics. I remember after a couple of times hearing the entire album thinking that "this sounds good but damn it's long".
Over the next few months, it started to become obvious to me that this is not MG or DM. I still enjoyed some of the songs but it became tiring to listen to the whole album. It was just too long and overproduced. Also, during that time I purchased Urban Hymns and OK Computer, which were something a bit different and both were absolutely amazing albums.
I wish they would remix the whole album again in the future like they did with DYKWIM? I still listen to BHN, but with a modified version: D' You Know What I Mean? (NG Rethink 2016), My Big Mouth, Angel Child (demo) Fade In-Out, Don't Go Away, Trip Inside (demo), Stay Young, I Hope I Think I Know, Stand By Me, Be Here Now. This track list gives the album some structure and makes it shorter. It was a colossal moment in the music history, and I always remember that release day as a great day in my life. Nostalgia...
Be here now is a album of bangers! Dont listen to the negativity.
some songs are good but way too long, and the rest are utterly crap, i mean magic pie? d'you know what i mean? (that fucking wonderwall 2) be here now is also a meh song
I'm pretty much the same age as James and I can attest that as those singles came out, right up to D'you Know What I Mean, I had no reason to suspect Noel Gallagher would ever stop producing genius level music. Hearing the B-sides to Wonderwall felt incredible. How could a band have so much material and ability that those songs could go out where people might never hear them? It was electrifying. It was an incredible time to be 15 and I'll always be grateful to Oasis - and Blur - for making it so.
But I'll always remember when the rot set in. As James says, the build up to BHN was so great that they got an hour on BBC2 to promo it. They broadcast this stupid film where Oasis were knocking round some big white mansion and wearing outrageously stupid hats, outsized flat caps. Noel and Liam sang Stand By Me and it was the first time I'd heard an Oasis song I hated. From there it was just ill-fitting white suits and endless overblown boring songs. I was crestfallen and heart broken. I never bought another Oasis record, and I didn't feel the magic again till the first High Flying Birds record, which I still hold is NG's best work since Morning Glory.
Be here now was very much of its time..it sounds like a band on the crest of a wave,having it large.I was 17/18 when it came out and it reminds me of long summer nights with it blasting out the jukebox as you walked in the pub,all your mates singing to it with their bucket hats on having a laugh without a care in the world..to me that’s what Oasis was all about..it was the spirit of youth & excitement..It’s an album that you turn up to max,get on the beers and let your hair down..if you want introspective deep chin stroking music then listen to Dark Side Of The Moon or Pink Moon by Nick Drake (both great albums by the way) ✌🏾✌🏾
The problem for Be here now is that it was released within a few months of Ok Computer and Urban Hymns. It would be one thing if it wasn't as good as the first two Oasis albums.. but it wasn't even as good as the other British albums released at the same time.
I hope you can make a separate video comparing every (album recorded) tracks from BHN against live/demos of it. And tell us how do you think it would have sound and how could it have made their first three albums one of the greatest run in recording history ✌🏻
Personally, I think the death of Princess Diana pretty much signified the end of the ‘feel good’ vibe that was sweeping Britain. Not so much ‘Britpop’, but the Cool Britannia movements. Think of what she meant to the people, what she stood for and what she believed. Urban Hymns sort of kept it going, then the Haigh Hall gig. But, by mid 1998, it was over.
Great video. I take a bit of a different view on it though. The Britpop bubble burst because it was unsustainable. Nothing as huge and all consuming as Oasis were in 95-97 could possibly last, regardless of what album Oasis put out next, or how long they left it until the follow up after Be Here Now. Culture must evolve and move on. It was a moment in time and I think that third album would have been the apex before the inevitable decline whatever happened.
Taking the album on its merits, which is a slightly different conversation to my mind, I think it's very good, perhaps great in some ways, but also deeply flawed. It's sugar rush of an album, all surface thrill but not a great deal of depth. The five star reviews it got at the time can't be taken too seriously. They were in part a reaction to the critics having misjudged WTSMG so badly, so they overcompensated in the other direction. The industry as a whole had a LOT invested in that album being a success.
And yes, the songs are ridiculously long, and the production is very abrasive and one note in my opinion. WTSMG had promised genius levels of songwriting. Be Here Now could not match it, or move it on, and ultimately, it marked the steady decline of Oasis' cultural relevance. Great bands must evolve, and for as much as I love and appreciate Oasis from 95-97, this was the moment where it became apparent that creatively they were running out of ideas.
Still, it is a very good album, there are some genius moments on it, and I agree that it gets unfairly maligned.
I think you're probably right that part of the reason Noel doesn't like it because he associates it with the beginning of the end of the phenomenon. However, if I was going to play pop psychologist, I reckon his stance on it is also an overreaction to the subsequent critical savaging it got. Almost like saying 'you can't hurt me by criticising this album, because I myself have disowned it.'
Great video! Be Here Now is my fave Oasis album. I remember feeling like they had run out of gas and I didn't even bother buying any more of their albums until I had a personal Oasis resurgence years later. It was amazing to hear all of the albums I'd not bothered with...now ALL Oasis albums get a regular spin. Be Here Now is the masterpiece and the crazy tour that supported that album was MAGIC!!
Love what you do fella, I remember it all just as you say it. But, I think it was that 1997 BBC documentary just before the Be Here Now release, in which Noel said this will be the last Oasis release this century. And then of course Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants came out early 2000.
I remember listening to it on the day on just being underwhelmed. Probably partly due to the hype, similar to the Seinfeld finale! There's a few bangers like Stand by me, Fade in/out and It's getting better man. But surely the test of a great album is how often you re-play it, and I didn't re-play it that much. I love your vids btw, very entertaining and you give a balanced perspective at all times, fair play
Exactly, It sounded good on first listen, I guess familiar but I never found myself feeling the urge to go back to it. It lacked depth, the hype had led me to believe they were going to do something groundbreaking and adventurous and the reality was it just sounded like Noel going through the motions as a songwriter.
1994-98 and oasis. The last cultural music touchstone that mattered. Pre internet. The internet devalued everything and streaming by five year olds with phones has left the charts looking like a Simon cowell playlist
I’m really glad you brought this up as I dug it out of my box of CDs in the loft a few months ago and have been playing it in the car ever since.
I have realised it’s actually a great album with some amazing songs and Liam sounds brilliant throughout.
Having had my sound engineer hat on trying to work out one of the reasons it got such a bad press, I’m convinced that the overwhelming culprit is the ridiculous amount of overdubbed guitars that not only make the timing dodgy, they obscure everything so much of the time.
There is one track that I can’t recall the name of where Alan White may as well be drumming on cardboard boxes as the multiple guitars just kill any chance of hearing the tone of the drums or the room they were recorded in.
Apparently Owen Morris was stripping back Gtr overdubs as far back as Definitely Maybe which is why it has such a cool punk sound.
If Be Here Now was remixed with some top end and with 60% of the guitars taken off and about 3 minutes edited out of the outros of most of the songs it would be a monster!
Completely agree with this. I wish they would remix. I love the album but it could be a monster like you say.
@@craigbarwell951 Yes. I like the D’You Know What I mean remix a lot. Wish they’d done the full record. A 5.1 mix would have been interesting too, given a bit of space for the instrumentation.
"f Be Here Now was remixed with some top end and with 60% of the guitars taken off and about 3 minutes edited out of the outros of most of the songs it would be a monster!"
Someone please do this. Noel?
Also, remember Be Here Now was released in the shops on a thursday and still made number 1 the following Sunday.
And when you had to shift records to top then charts.. not get a mate to refresh their played Spotify song every two seconds
It holds a special place for me. It came out when I was 16,I'd just finished school and was enjoying the summer before starting college in September. I remember going down to virgin and queuing up outside before getting in and grabbing my copy.
One of my favourite albums of all time. D’You Know What I Mean, I Hope I Think I Know, Stand By Me, Be Here Now, Girl in the Dirty Shirt. I mean, it’s fantastic.
always been my favorite album of theirs since the day it was released. never understood any dislike towards it. it's just so good !!
not one bad song on it, imo
I am a huge oasis fan and this is actually my favourite album.
Love this video mate!!! X I love it when I see/hear stuff about how “BE HERE NOW” is a brilliant album - I love this album more than any other oasis album - means so much to me, such an amazing time to be alive!!! X BE HERE NOW is one of my favourite albums of all time by ANY BAND = amazing amazing amazing from start to finish - Noel is a bell end for hating it so much - never seen anything like it since!!! 😍🙌🎶
If? You were around to buy it in 97' the Hype was unreal! We All know it's overly Produced And Long! But for me it's there 4th Best after DM/WTSMG?/TM & Then Be Here Now! It Still has some Tunes, Especially Live n A Special Place in the Oasis Catalogue! Thanks James! edit
I was never Embarrassed (94-09) or saw it when you mentioned it, but I did feel it around 05-09 when they started to sound/look/retro/older!
I agree, I was 16 when be here now came out and 19 when standing on the shoulder of giants came out, I still bought everything after but things had changed, that momentum you speak of was lost.......very well said.
Great video James do you think you can make a video on how to get a good Johnny marr tone
I love every Oasis album from the 90's, but Be Here Now will always have a special place in my heart, and not a single note I would change on it
Another great video James, really enjoyed it! 😊 Not sure if I'd hold Be Here Now in quite the same esteem, for me the best tracks are the ones that Noel had written back in 92/93, like Stand By Me, Don't Go Away and All Around the World. If you look at the streaming numbers on Spotify it's only the singles from the album that people listen to, maybe because at 70 minutes it is a bit hard to digest in one sitting with. It has a similar number of total listens to Heathen Chemistry, I think it's one for hard-core fans but is just a bit much for your average rock fan with how overwhelming the guitars and Liam's vocals are and as others have mentioned the lack of any editing of the songs, does Its Getting Better Man need to have the chorus repeated 41 times 😂
I think if Stay Young and Going Nowhere had made the album then it would have bumped it up a star but for me it's a 3/5.
Great video James I was 17 at the time and remember the hype
No dislikes and too right! James you’re the dude, this is the best! Mad for it from San Francisco!
Brilliant video. You are a fab documentary maker Richard xxx
That Harry Potter book thing for the only thing comparable in modern times was very funny James and at the same time, quite sad. Good video as always.
About halfway through 'Magic Pie' there is a clicking sound. I always thought it was just on my CD, but then one day I was listening to it on youtube and there it was again. Basically it's where they've taken out an overdub and then not bothered to clean up the recording. That's how little they cared at that point.
In fact, 'Magic Pie' pretty much sums up everything wrong with that album. It's approximately the same length as 'Champagne Supernova', but it has none of the peaks and troughs, the feeling like you've been on a rollercoaster. There's footage of them playing 'Magic Pie' on the Be Here Now tour, and even at that stage it looks tired, bloated and boring.
I loathe that song. Terrible stuff.
Other tracks... The NG remix of D'You Know What I Mean? is much better than the album version, My Big Mouth is pretty average, I Hope I Think I Know is alright I guess... I know Stand By Me has its fans, but for me it's boring... and so on. The Girl in the Dirty Shirt is the only song I really enjoy, but even that's two minutes too long. It's Gettin' Better (Man!!) would be a decent rock tune if it didn't go on and on and on and on and on and on. It's a 3 1/2 minute rocker stretched to over seven minutes.
Don't Believe the Truth is the unsung classic.
Also, around the same time as Be here now and leading up to the 00's, other well-known bands associated with britpop started to release albums in those three years that strayed away from the "britpop sound":
1997:
Blur - Blur
1998:
Pulp - This is hardcore
1999:
Blur - 13
Suede - Head music
Hi James hello from Australia. love your channel. was wondering If you could give a review of what pedals noel and bonehead might have used for first 2 albums.
Me and our kid used to perform/duet girl in the dirty shirt at our local pub jam night back in the early noughties... Always surprised me how much love there was for that song.
Great in depth video. The point about the time when SOTSOG came out is very true. I was in secondary school during those times and as much as I loved Oasis then and throughout school, something had passed and it wasn't the same and certainly kids my own age in school were absolutely not interested in a new Oasis release maybe bar a couple that I knew. They had become uncool almost so quickly, it was quite bizarre to understand why and how that suddenly seemed to happen. I certainly remember that at that time, Emo and Pop-Punk became the cool trends to be into, something which I almost refused to entertain because it all seemed a load of rubbish. I was Oasis through and through and nobody was going to tell me otherwise. But only very recently, I've come to realise that I peaked at about 9 years old musically (haha) when I recorded Knebworth off the radio and watching the new documentary, really just brought it home. It was the last great period in music before the internet did literally take over all our lives (even if it sounds like I'm just echoing a NG quote! Lol).
I felt the reception Be Here Now got in retrospect (as well as the constant fights with Liam, Bonehead's departure, etc.) sowed the seeds of Noel eventually leaving Oasis in 2009 and starting the High Flying Birds. Oasis would try to expand their sound with Stand on the Shoulder of Giants or Dig Out Your Soul with Noel allowing Liam and the others to wrote their own songs. So you can see how the aftermath of Be Here Now affected the band.
Although I love some of the post-1997 albums, I can't see them beating out Definitely Maybe or Morning Glory. Saying that, I actually like Dig Out Your Soul and Giants more than Be Here Now.
Ah memories. I remember seeing that TFI Friday live and feeling gutted that he wouldn't pick up the guitar. The day Be Here Now was released I was queued up at a convenience store before they opened, there was a massive queue and everyone was there for the album.
But I also remember sort of... Desperately TRYING to love the album, but it just didn't have the same magic.
Lol, I also remember the Harry Potter midnight release. I went for a walk just to marvel at all the queues.
Say what you like, this was the final, definitive album. I fucking love it.
Actually it was blur's fault in some part. In the same year 'Be here now' released, Blur brought their most successful album, but it was totally different of the britpop style which oasis was keeping, and blur was one of the main promoters of the britpop movement, with that and knowing that Oasis didn't do anything on that time and also Radiohead totally changed the path of music trend at the end of 90's. Those things made the britpop bubble collapse.
When I bought SOTSOG on CD, I actually had the young assistant say 'what are you buying that for?'
Thanks for the video and an interesting take. I always felt Be Here Now was the album the “masses” bought - as they wanted to “fit in” - they weren’t music fans - it was a scene to them. And they’d move on to the next one - once they’d caught up .
As an Oasis fan - 94-96 was an amazing period and the band were a gateway for new music. I don’t lament 1997 - some of the finest albums of the decade came out that year - Ok Computer, Urban Hymns, Vanishing Point and In It For The Money.
An amazing period - Oasis were the catalyst.
Great video, I can never listen to Be Here Now as a whole album I find it a difficult listen so I just cherry pick my favorite tracks from it but you are right it was definitely the end of the Brit pop movement.
20:28 I agree that Oasis’s 3 year hiatus lead to the end of Brit-Pop but at the same time I can understand why the break happened. As Liam himself has said Oasis was like a Ferrari - incredible machine but dangerous & hard to keep under control. Combine the quick rise to world chart dominance with Noel’s & Liam’s constant infighting + Bonehead and Guigsy departing and it’s totally understandable why there was that break. Every musical movement or scene inevitably comes to its end unfortunately. Keep up the great work, James. Love your channel!
As a 13 year old it was amazing, still in
F**king loved that album
Great video James ❤️ it was a great album
Just gonna say it now, this is my favourite oasis album. It's so in your face and loud, love it
Brilliant synopsis. I agree. If I recall by 1998, the charts became overwhelmed in digital synthetic music (Vengaboys, Blue, Aqua)
And of course Robbie Williams became the untouchable pop artist for a couple of years. I would say that Oasis did have a good year in 2005/06 with Dont Believe the Truth. I’ve great memories of that time too
Hit the nail on the head. I loved Be Here Now and bought the Masterplan which kept the ball rolling (cos I am an LP collector not singles) for a little longer but That was it for me never bought any more of their albums because Andy Bell and Ride were a favourite band of mine and when he joined Oasis along with Gem from Heavy Stereo it felt it was then an industry led amalgamation of bands like trying to create a Supergroup who were already Chemically perfect on Definitely Maybe . It was sad but a new scene started from America which was more exciting. Oasis have issues with tempo most of there material is at the same tempo and when The Strokes and White Stripes arrived it became exciting again. Oasis should have picked up on the 4AD band The Pixies and dynamics instead of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. However yesterday I listened to Dig Out Your Soul for the first time and it is a classic album and I had tears in my eyes listening to Liams song Out of Time I guess out of nostalgia and the fact that the words seem to be like the knowledge that the party of all our youths and true Rock n Roll has gone forever. In the video the deck playing nothing on the turntable a reference I believe to Wonderwall and those times fading into obscurity as the Cult of celebrity and internet talentless fame washes it away forever. Sad
Its a great album, one of the 3 majors. And you got it right with britpop ending btw, your work is genius.
This is a genius assessment man, one I never considered.
Great video James. You’re the best Oasis historían out there!
I agree, you could tell it was the beginning of the end, not because of the album so much, but because of the b-sides on the singles. This was the point at which the b-sides on the singles became actual b-sides in the more traditional sense, rather than just a-sides in waiting.
Haha, Stocks Golf and Country Club near Tring in Herts. Remember one of my friends worked there when they did the album cover.
Slade were massive in the early to mid 70s. Then they went on a massive extensive tour of the US which lasted 2 years. When they came back, punk had hit the UK and Slade were irrelevant.
I remember hearing Let there be Love in early 2000.
And stuff like Colour my life around 99/2000
They were stalls in Camden town market in the late 90s early 2000s were you could get CDs with outtakes and demos the kinda things you now find on TH-cam.
OK Computer killed them off. That was the 'zeitgeist' release that year. Noel was disappointed because culturally they could no longer make the same impact. It was more of the same, just a bit 'more' - not the towering artistic achievement he wanted. They couldn't expand like Radiohead could. They had a Rubber Soul and a Revolver but weren't capable of making a Sgt Pepper's. Radiohead very much were.
Hey James, I love all the Oasis videos. How about some videos on some lesser known Brit bands like South or These Animal Men?(two bands I love!) Maybe Beta Band too?!?
To me, the sad part is if you look at the tours and even the statistics of the last two Oasis albums, it becomes very clear that they were gaining momentum again a decade later and then just as that was happening Liam and Noel split, I believe they were a hair away from achieving the status they deserved around the world and not just in the UK, tragic
To me BHN is the best rock album for the 90s, supreme work. Superb. I wish Noel could hear it like I do. Idk what Noel was expecting to happen. He wanted to be "big like U2"? Oasis had the music to do it and they did. What they didn't have was the personality for that. And honestly, they didn't need to. We didn't need a other fake a** Bono. We need the rawness of Liam and Noel.
The movement died for so many reasons. Are we really not gonna talk about how most teens are absolutely unloyal to music? They like what's on the radio. If it's not on the radio anymore it's not valuable anymore. Noel is such a big fan of music that he fails to see it.
Also, Noel had such a bad experience with coc*ine right after that period that he probably remembers the period of recording BHN with certain regret.
I remember when BHN was released. I was in high school and couldn't wait to buy it in the store. I still play it start to finish regularly. Say what you want about it theres a huge debate over it. I think its a great album. Yes I wish some of those great b-sides made it on the album but it is what it is.
I bought 'Be Here Now' the day it was released and have loved it ever since. If it was an artistic failure, it was the greatest one ever made. I agree it is overproduced, you can't really hear the bass guitar and it sounds muddy most of the time, but as an artistic statement it absolutely works.
This chap presents very well. Very articulate. Credit where it's due.👍 Be here now sums up the 90s for me. Most important album for me of that decade.
I remember lads at my school going to buy the album before picking up their GCSE results. Whereas I wasn’t interested in doing either! 😂
I remember Steve Lamaque playing about 5 tracks from the album a few days before it was released. He played Be Here Now first which led straight into It's Getting Better Man and instantly thought the lyrics were terrible. The latter went on and on.
Then I heard Don't Go Away and instantly thought it was a classic. It was the perfect Oasis song and stand out and thought "this is going to be a global smash hit'. Their biggest mistake was they never released it as a single (only in America and Japan). If they had released it as the second single it would've propelled the album's sales into orbit upto Xmas. Still, this album went straight in at #2 in the America.
I wonder if they didn’t release it as a single because the Real People would take the band to court?? As it’s almost the same as a Real Peoples song.
I loved Oasis especially the first two albums and still think Be Here Now is a pretty decent album. Didn't enjoy the subsequent albums quite so much apart from Don't Believe the Truth. Was fortunate to see them at Wembley in the summer of 2009 about a month before they split. Brilliant gig. Loved the Brit Pop era.
I remember it took about a week or two after the massive build up and hype of the release, before the media (most notably Chris Evans on TFI Friday doing a sketch with the album being shocked by a defibrillator) and the public said that they didn’t like it. I bought it on vinyl and CD. I sat with my Nan and proclaimed to her (as I placed the needle on the record) that ‘Fade in/out’ would be nothing short of monumental, and she should prepare herself (keen to share with her my pride at my generation doing something great). I sat embarrassed as several minutes of dull intro numbed the excitement. The distorted hiss of 50 layered guitars and powder inspired agressive production gave it a sound you winced at. So I do think Be Here Now was the catalyst for the death of britpop. Contributed by the other indie leaders (Pulp and Blur) taking drastic shifts in musical direction. The former releasing a gloomy introspective album ‘This is Hardcore’ and the latter looking to American Lo-Fi music for inspiration to drive the self titled ‘Blur’ album. The music industry was already looking for the next big thing - weirdly French dance music, notably the band ‘Air’ - and the cringing Pop ascendency in the charts led by the Spice Girls. When Britnay Spears arrived in 1999 it was all over. All guitar music had left to fight the battle from ‘98 were ‘Post britpop’ bands like Travis and Embrace. Both fond of melodic expressions of sensitivity. The 94-97 britpop party that exploded with a cosmic big bang was over.
About the britpop wave, the same thing happened with Led Zeppelin when they realesed In Through The Outdoor in 1979, after a two year and a half of hiatus. The punk was already on the scene and it was a shock - but not a chaos when they split in 1980.
The grunge scene also died when Kurt Cobain died in 1994. They lost their leader, and the others bands had to change to survive, case like Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. On the other side of the boat, Guns and Roses also had stopped their clocks when they achieve their populariety peak in 1993. When a new album came out on the longinquous 2008, it was too late.
I will always love Be Here Now. It was part of the soundtrack to the greatest time of my life.
DYKWIM
My Big Mouth
Stand By Me
I Hope, I Think, I Know
Fade In/Out
Don't Go Away
Be Here Now
All Around the World
I rest my case, your honour.
And the tracks I didn't mention there are decent too!
Half the world away 👍🏼
Very entertaining video you’ve made here.