Be Here Now
Encyclopedia
Be Here Now is the third studio album by English rock
band Oasis
, released in August 1997. The album was highly anticipated by both music critics and fans after the band's worldwide success with their 1994 debut Definitely Maybe
and its 1995 follow-up (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
. Be Here Nows pre-release build up led to considerable hype within both the music and mainstream press. At that point, Oasis were at the height of their fame, and Be Here Now became the United Kingdom's fastest selling album to date, selling over 420,000 units on the first day of release, and over one million within two weeks. As of 2008, the album has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Oasis' management company Ignition were aware of the dangers of overexposure, and before its release sought to control the media's access to the album. Ignition's campaign included limiting pre-release radio airplay, and requesting that journalists sign gag agreements. These tactics resulted in the alienation of members of both the music and mainstream media, as well as many industry personnel connected with the band. Ignition's attempts to limit pre-release access served to fuel large scale speculation and publicity within the British music scene.
Although initial reviews were positive, retrospectively the album is viewed by much of the music press, the public, and by most members of the band as over-indulgent and bloated. In 2007, Q
magazine, having given the album a five-star rave review on its release, described the fact that Be Here Now is often thought of as "a disastrous, overblown folly—the moment when Oasis, their judgement clouded by drugs and blanket adulation, ran aground on their own sky-high self-belief." The album's producer Owen Morris
said of the recording sessions: "The only reason anyone was there was the money. Noel
had decided Liam
was a shit singer. Liam had decided he hated Noel's songs [...] Massive amounts of drugs. Big fights. Bad vibes. Shit recordings."
by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and holidaying with Johnny Depp
and Kate Moss
in Mick Jagger
's villa in Mustique
. During their last stay on the island, Noel wrote the majority of the songs that would make up Oasis's third album. He had suffered from writer's block
during the previous winter, and has since admitted he wrote only a single guitar riff in the six months following the release of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. After a few weeks "idling", he disciplined himself to a routine of songwriting where he would go "into this room in the morning, come out for lunch, go back in, come out for dinner, go back in, then go to bed." Noel has later said about the album "...most of the songs were written before I even got a record deal, I went away and wrote the lyrics in about two weeks."
In August 1996, the band performed two concerts before crowds of 250,000 at Knebworth House
, Hertfordshire
, while more than 2,500,000 fans had applied for tickets. The dates were to be the zenith of Oasis's popularity, and both the music press and the band realised it would not be possible for the band to equal the event. By this time however, there was much instability and internal conflict emerging between the band members. On 23 August 1996, Liam refused to sing for an MTV Unplugged
performance at London's Royal Festival Hall
, pleading a sore throat. Though he did attend the concert, he spent the evening heckling Noel from the upper level balcony. Four days later, Liam declined to participate in the first leg of an American tour, complaining that he needed to buy a house with his then girlfriend Patsy Kensit
. He re-joined the band a few days after for a key concert at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, but intentionally sang off-key and spat beer and saliva during the performance. The following day, The Sun led with the front page headline "America sickened by obscene Liam's spitting rampage." Amongst much internal bickering, the tour continued—with Liam—to Charlotte, North Carolina
, where Noel finally lost his patience with his brother and announced he was leaving the band. He later admitted "If the truth be known, I didn't want to be there anyway. I wasn't prepared to be in the band if people were being like that to each other." Although Noel rejoined Oasis a few weeks later, the band's management and handlers were worried. With an album's worth of songs already demo
ed, the general feeling among the Gallaghers was that they should record as soon as possible. Their manager, Marcus Russell, said in 2007 that "in retrospect, we went in the studio too quickly. The smart move would have been to take the rest of the year off. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. If you're a band and you've got a dozen songs you think are great, why not go and do it."
in London. The album's producer Owen Morris described the first week of recording as "fucking awful", and suggested to Noel that they abandon the session: "He just shrugged and said it would be all right. So on we went." Liam was under heavy tabloid focus at the time, and on 9 November 1996 was arrested and cautioned for cocaine
possession following a bender at the Q Awards. A media frenzy ensued, and the band's management made the decision to move to a studio less readily accessible to paparazzi.
The Suns showbiz editor Dominic Mohan
recalled of the period: "We had quite a few Oasis contacts on the payroll. I don't know whether any were drug dealers, but there was always a few dodgy characters about." Oasis's official photographer Jill Furmanovsky felt the media's focus, and was preyed upon by tabloid journalists living in the flat upstairs from her: "They thought I had the band hiding in my flat." In paranoia, Oasis cut themselves off from their wider circle. According to Creation publicist Johnny Hopkins: "People were being edged out of the circle around Oasis. People who knew them before they were famous rather than because they were famous." Hopkins likened the situation to a medieval court, complete with kings, courtiers and jesters. As he explained, "[o]nce you're in that situation you lose sight of reality."
On 11 November 1996, Oasis relocated the sessions to the rural Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey
. Though the band reconvened with more energy, the early recordings were compromised by the drug intake of all involved. In 2007, Morris remembered that "in the first week, someone tried to score an ounce of weed, but instead got an ounce of cocaine. Which kind of summed it up." Noel was not present during any of Liam's vocal track recordings, typifying the high drama surrounding the sessions. Morris thought that the new material was weak, but when he voiced his opinion to Noel he was cut down: "[So] I just carried on shovelling drugs up my nose." Noel, wanting to make the album as dense and "colossal" feeling as possible, layered multiple guitar tracks on several of the songs. In many instances he dubbed ten channels with identical guitar parts, in an effort to create a sonic volume. Alan McGee
, owner of Oasis's label Creation Records
, visited the studio during the mixing stage; he said, "I used to go down to the studio, and there was so much cocaine getting done at that point ... Owen was out of control, and he was the one in charge of it. The music was just fucking loud."
" to almost eight minutes, while "All Around The World
" contains three key changes and lasts for a full nine minutes. The tracks are more layered and intricate than before, and each contains multiple guitar overdubs. While Morris had previously stripped away layers of overdubs on the band's debut Definitely Maybe, during the production of Be Here Now he "seemed to gleefully encourage" such excess; "My Big Mouth" has an estimated thirty tracks of guitar overdubbed onto the song. A Rolling Stone
review described the guitar lines as composed of "elementary riffs." There was some experimentation: "D'You Know What I Mean?" contains a slowed down loop from N.W.A.
's "Straight Outta Compton
", while "Magic Pie" features psychedelically arranged vocal harmonies and a mellotron
. According to Noel, "All I did was run my elbows across the keys and this mad jazz came out and everyone laughed." The album's production is dominated by top-end high frequency tones, and according to Uncut
's Paul Lester, its use of treble is reminiscent of both late 1980s Creation Records bands such as My Bloody Valentine, and The Stooges
' famously under-produced Raw Power
.
The vocal melodies continue Noel's preference for "massed-rank sing-alongs", although Du Noyer concedes that not all are of the "pub-trashing idiot kind" of previous releases. At the time of release, Qs Phil Sutcliffe summarised the lyrics of Be Here Now as a mixture of "hookline optimism, a swarm of Beatles and other ’60s references, a gruff love song to Meg, and further tangled expressions of his inability/unwillingness to express profound emotions."
The lyrics were elsewhere described as "[running] the gamut from insightful to insipid", although Du Noyer admitted that Noel is "[to go by his lyrics] something of a closet philosopher...and often romantic to the point of big girl's blousedom." While the tracks "Don't Go Away" and "The Girl In The Dirty Shirt" were described as unabashedly sentimental, Du Noyer went on to observe that "there is compassion and sensitivity in these tracks that is not the work of oafs." Du Noyer conceded that Noel often tied himself up in "cosmic knots", but added that Gallagher had "written words that sound simple and true, and are therefore poetic without trying to be." Lester read song titles such as "Stand By Me" and "Don't Go Away" as a series of demands, both to members of his private life and his public audience.
Du Noyer praised Liam's vocal contributions and described his "Northern punk whine" as "the most distinctive individual style of our time." Lester alluded to Liam as Noel's "mouthpiece", although he qualified that Liam is the "voice of every working-class boy with half a yen to break out and make it big."
However, the extent that Ignition were willing to go to control access to the album generated more hype than could normally have been expected, and served to alienate members of both the print and broadcast media, as well as most Creation staff members. When "D'You Know What I Mean?
" was planned as the first single, Ignition decided on a late release to radio so as to avoid too much advance exposure. However, three stations broke the embargo, and Ignition panicked. According to Greengrass: "we’d been in these bloody bunker meetings for six months or something, and our plot was blown. 'Shit, it's a nightmare'." BBC Radio 1
received a CD containing three songs ten days before the album's release, on condition that disc jockey
Steve Lamacq
talked over the tracks to prevent illegal copies being made by listeners. The day after Lamacq previewed the album on his show, he received a phone call from Ignition informing him that he would not be able to preview further tracks because he didn't speak enough over the songs. Lamacq said, "I had to go on the air the next night and say, 'Sorry, but we're not getting any more tracks.' It was just absurd." According to Creation's head of marketing John Andrews, "[The campaign] made people despise Oasis within Creation. You had this Oasis camp that was like 'I'm sorry, you're not allowed come into the office between the following hours. You're not allowed mention the word Oasis.' It was like a fascist state." One employee recalled an incident "when somebody came round to check our phones because they thought The Sun
had tapped them."
When Hopkins began to circulate cassette copies of the album to the music press a few weeks later, he required that each journalist sign a contract containing a clause requiring that the cassette recipient, according to Select journalist Mark Perry, "not discuss the album with anyone—including your partner at home. It basically said don't talk to your girlfriend about it when you're at home in bed." The Mail on Sunday wrote of Russell "[He] has a mind like a steel trap and the organisational skills of Winston Churchill
." Reflecting in 1999, Greengrass admitted: "In retrospect a lot of the things we did were ridiculous. We sit in [Oasis] meetings today and we're like 'It's on the Internet. It's in Camden Market
. Whatever'. I think we've learned our lesson." According to Perry: "It seemed, particularly once you heard the album, that this was cocaine grandeur of just the most ludicrous degree. I remember listening to "All Around the World
" and laughing—actually quite pleasurably—because it seemed so ridiculous. You just thought: Christ, there is so much coke being done here."
The cover image to Be Here Now was shot in April 1997 at Stocks House
in Hertfordshire, the former home of Victor Lownes
, the head of the Playboy Clubs in the UK until 1981. It features the band standing outside the hotel surrounded by assorted props. At the centre of the image is a Rolls Royce
floating in a swimming pool. The photographer Michael Spencer Johns said the original concept involved shooting each band member in various locations around the world, but when the cost proved prohibitive, the shoot was relocated to Stocks House. Spencer remarked that the shoot "degenerated into chaos", adding that "by 8 pm, everyone was in the bar, there were schoolkids all over the set, and the lighting crew couldn't start the generator. It was Alice in Wonderland
meets Apocalypse Now
." Despite various meanings people have tried to read into the selection of the cover props, Johns said Gallagher simply selected items from the BBC props store he thought would look good in the picture. Two of the props that had considered thought in their inclusion were the inflatable globe (intended as a homage to the sleeve of Definitely Maybe) and the Rolls Royce, which was suggested by Arthurs. The release date in each region was commemorated on the calendar pictured on the sleeve; Harris said the dating "[encouraged] fans to believe that to buy a copy on the day it appeared was to participate in some kind of historical event."
charts in the United States, but its first week sales of 152,000—below expected sales of 400,000 copies—were considered a disappointment.
Contemporaneous reviews of Be Here Now were, in John Harris
's words, unanimous with "truly amazing praise." According to Harris, "To find an album that had attracted gushing notices in such profusion, one had to go back thirty years, to the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
." While Q magazine described the album as "cocaine set to music", most early reviews praised the record's length, volume and ambition. Reviews in the British music press for Oasis' previous album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? had been generally negative. When it went on to become, in the words of Select editor Alexis Petridis, "this huge kind of Zeitgeist defining record" the music press was "baffled". Realising they had gotten it wrong the last time, Petridis believes the initial glowing reviews were a concession to public opinion.
By the end of 1997, Be Here Now had sold eight million units worldwide. However, the sales volume was largely gained in the first two weeks of release, and once the album was released to UK radio stations the turnover tapered off. Buyers realised that the album was not another (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and by 1999, Melody Maker
reported that it was the album most sold to second-hand record stores. In the 2003 John Dower-directed documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop
, music critic Jon Savage
pinpointed Be Here Now as the moment where the Britpop
movement ended. Savage said that while the album "isn't the great disaster that everybody says", he noted that "[i]t was supposed to be the big, big triumphal record" of the period. Q expressed similar sentiments, writing, "So colossally did Be Here Now fall short of expectations that it killed Britpop and ushered in an era of more ambitious, less overblown music". Irish Times journalist Brian Boyd wrote: "Bloated and over-heated (much like the band themselves at the time), the album has all that dreadful braggadocio that is so characteristic of a cocaine user." Reflecting in 2007, Garry Mulholland admitted, "the fact that nothing could have lived up to the fevered expectations that surrounded its release doesn't change the facts. The third Oasis album is a loud, lumbering noise signifying nothing."
The Gallagher brothers hold differing opinions about the album. As early as July 1997, Noel was "talking down" Be Here Now in the music press, describing the production as "bland", and remarking that some of the tracks were "fucking shit". In Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, he dismissed the album, and blamed its faults on drugs and the band's indifference during recording. He suggested that the people unsatisfied with the record simply sell it. In contrast, Noel noted that his brother "thinks it fucking rocks." In the same documentary, Liam defended the record, and said that "at that time we thought it was fucking great, and I still think it's great. It just wasn't Morning Glory." In 2006, Liam said of Noel, "If he didn't like the record that much, he shouldn't have put the fucking record out in the first place...I don't know what's up with him but it's a top record, man, and I'm proud of it—it's just a little bit long."
.
Additional musicians
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
, released in August 1997. The album was highly anticipated by both music critics and fans after the band's worldwide success with their 1994 debut Definitely Maybe
Definitely Maybe
Definitely Maybe is the debut album by English rock band Oasis, released in August 1994. It was an immediate commercial and critical success in the UK, having followed on the heels of singles "Supersonic", "Shakermaker" and "Live Forever"....
and its 1995 follow-up (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
(What's the Story) Morning Glory?
Morning Glory? is the second studio album by the English rock band Oasis. It was released on 2 October 1995 through Creation Records. The album was Oasis' most enduring commercial success, charting at number one in the UK and number four in the U.S...
. Be Here Nows pre-release build up led to considerable hype within both the music and mainstream press. At that point, Oasis were at the height of their fame, and Be Here Now became the United Kingdom's fastest selling album to date, selling over 420,000 units on the first day of release, and over one million within two weeks. As of 2008, the album has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Oasis' management company Ignition were aware of the dangers of overexposure, and before its release sought to control the media's access to the album. Ignition's campaign included limiting pre-release radio airplay, and requesting that journalists sign gag agreements. These tactics resulted in the alienation of members of both the music and mainstream media, as well as many industry personnel connected with the band. Ignition's attempts to limit pre-release access served to fuel large scale speculation and publicity within the British music scene.
Although initial reviews were positive, retrospectively the album is viewed by much of the music press, the public, and by most members of the band as over-indulgent and bloated. In 2007, Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
magazine, having given the album a five-star rave review on its release, described the fact that Be Here Now is often thought of as "a disastrous, overblown folly—the moment when Oasis, their judgement clouded by drugs and blanket adulation, ran aground on their own sky-high self-belief." The album's producer Owen Morris
Owen Morris
Owen Morris is a music producer who has worked with rock bands such as Oasis, The Fratellis, The View and The Verve.He started working in the music industry as a sound engineer at Spaceward Studio in Cambridge when he was 16. He continued as an engineer until 1994 when he started producing some...
said of the recording sessions: "The only reason anyone was there was the money. Noel
Noel Gallagher
Noel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, formerly the lead guitarist, backing vocalist and principal songwriter of the English rock band Oasis. He is currently fronting his solo project, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.Raised in Burnage, Manchester with his...
had decided Liam
Liam Gallagher
William John Paul "Liam" Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, the former frontman of the English rock band Oasis and currently of the band Beady Eye. Gallagher's erratic behaviour, distinctive singing style, and abrasive attitude have been the subject of commentary in the press...
was a shit singer. Liam had decided he hated Noel's songs [...] Massive amounts of drugs. Big fights. Bad vibes. Shit recordings."
Background
By the summer of 1996, Oasis were widely considered to be, as Noel Gallagher put it, "the biggest band in the world." According to the guitarist, Oasis were "bigger than, dare I say it, fucking God." The huge commercial success of the band's two previous albums had resulted in media frenzy and an ubiquity in the mainstream press that was in danger of leading to a backlash against Oasis. Oasis members were by then being invited to functions at 10 Downing Street10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street, colloquially known in the United Kingdom as "Number 10", is the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is now always the Prime Minister....
by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and holidaying with Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
and Kate Moss
Kate Moss
Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...
in Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
's villa in Mustique
Mustique
Mustique is a small private island in the West Indies. The island is one of a group of islands called the Grenadines, most of which form part of the country of St Vincent and the Grenadines....
. During their last stay on the island, Noel wrote the majority of the songs that would make up Oasis's third album. He had suffered from writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
during the previous winter, and has since admitted he wrote only a single guitar riff in the six months following the release of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. After a few weeks "idling", he disciplined himself to a routine of songwriting where he would go "into this room in the morning, come out for lunch, go back in, come out for dinner, go back in, then go to bed." Noel has later said about the album "...most of the songs were written before I even got a record deal, I went away and wrote the lyrics in about two weeks."
In August 1996, the band performed two concerts before crowds of 250,000 at Knebworth House
Knebworth House
Knebworth House is a country house in the civil parish of Knebworth in Hertfordshire, England.-History and description:The home of the Lytton family since 1490, when Thomas Bourchier sold the reversion of the manor to Sir Robert Lytton, Knebworth House was originally a genuine red-brick Late Gothic...
, Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
, while more than 2,500,000 fans had applied for tickets. The dates were to be the zenith of Oasis's popularity, and both the music press and the band realised it would not be possible for the band to equal the event. By this time however, there was much instability and internal conflict emerging between the band members. On 23 August 1996, Liam refused to sing for an MTV Unplugged
MTV Unplugged
MTV Unplugged is a TV series showcasing many popular musical artists usually playing acoustic instruments. The show has received the George Foster Peabody Award and 3 Primetime Emmy nominations among many accolades.-Unplugged:...
performance at London's Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
, pleading a sore throat. Though he did attend the concert, he spent the evening heckling Noel from the upper level balcony. Four days later, Liam declined to participate in the first leg of an American tour, complaining that he needed to buy a house with his then girlfriend Patsy Kensit
Patsy Kensit
Patricia Jude Francis "Patsy" Kensit is an English actress, singer, model and former child star, known for her television and film appearances. Her films include Lethal Weapon 2 and she has been married to rock stars Jim Kerr and Liam Gallagher, as well as herself fronting the band Eighth Wonder...
. He re-joined the band a few days after for a key concert at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, but intentionally sang off-key and spat beer and saliva during the performance. The following day, The Sun led with the front page headline "America sickened by obscene Liam's spitting rampage." Amongst much internal bickering, the tour continued—with Liam—to Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
, where Noel finally lost his patience with his brother and announced he was leaving the band. He later admitted "If the truth be known, I didn't want to be there anyway. I wasn't prepared to be in the band if people were being like that to each other." Although Noel rejoined Oasis a few weeks later, the band's management and handlers were worried. With an album's worth of songs already demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
ed, the general feeling among the Gallaghers was that they should record as soon as possible. Their manager, Marcus Russell, said in 2007 that "in retrospect, we went in the studio too quickly. The smart move would have been to take the rest of the year off. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. If you're a band and you've got a dozen songs you think are great, why not go and do it."
Recording and production
The sessions for Be Here Now began on 7 October 1996 at EMI's Abbey Road StudiosAbbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
in London. The album's producer Owen Morris described the first week of recording as "fucking awful", and suggested to Noel that they abandon the session: "He just shrugged and said it would be all right. So on we went." Liam was under heavy tabloid focus at the time, and on 9 November 1996 was arrested and cautioned for cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
possession following a bender at the Q Awards. A media frenzy ensued, and the band's management made the decision to move to a studio less readily accessible to paparazzi.
Dominic Mohan
Dominic Mohan is a British journalist and newspaper editor.He is the Editor of The Sun newspaper in London. He joined The Sun in 1996 working on the "Bizarre" column...
recalled of the period: "We had quite a few Oasis contacts on the payroll. I don't know whether any were drug dealers, but there was always a few dodgy characters about." Oasis's official photographer Jill Furmanovsky felt the media's focus, and was preyed upon by tabloid journalists living in the flat upstairs from her: "They thought I had the band hiding in my flat." In paranoia, Oasis cut themselves off from their wider circle. According to Creation publicist Johnny Hopkins: "People were being edged out of the circle around Oasis. People who knew them before they were famous rather than because they were famous." Hopkins likened the situation to a medieval court, complete with kings, courtiers and jesters. As he explained, "[o]nce you're in that situation you lose sight of reality."
On 11 November 1996, Oasis relocated the sessions to the rural Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. Though the band reconvened with more energy, the early recordings were compromised by the drug intake of all involved. In 2007, Morris remembered that "in the first week, someone tried to score an ounce of weed, but instead got an ounce of cocaine. Which kind of summed it up." Noel was not present during any of Liam's vocal track recordings, typifying the high drama surrounding the sessions. Morris thought that the new material was weak, but when he voiced his opinion to Noel he was cut down: "[So] I just carried on shovelling drugs up my nose." Noel, wanting to make the album as dense and "colossal" feeling as possible, layered multiple guitar tracks on several of the songs. In many instances he dubbed ten channels with identical guitar parts, in an effort to create a sonic volume. Alan McGee
Alan McGee
Alan McGee has been a record label owner, musician, manager, and music blogger for The Guardian.McGee is best-known for co-forming and running the independent Creation Records label from 1983–1999, and then Poptones from 1999-2007...
, owner of Oasis's label Creation Records
Creation Records
Creation Records was a British independent record label headed by Alan McGee. Along with Dick Green and Joe Foster, McGee founded Creation in 1983. The label lasted until its demise in 1999. The name came from the 1960s band The Creation , whom McGee greatly admired. McGee, Green and Foster were...
, visited the studio during the mixing stage; he said, "I used to go down to the studio, and there was so much cocaine getting done at that point ... Owen was out of control, and he was the one in charge of it. The music was just fucking loud."
Composition
As with Oasis' previous two albums, the songs on Be Here Now are generally anthemic. The structures are traditional, and largely follow the typical verse – chorus – verse – chorus – middle eight – chorus format of guitar-based rock music. Reviewing for Nude as the News, Jonathan Cohen noted that the album is "virtually interchangeable with 1994's Definitely Maybe or its blockbuster sequel, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?", while Noel had previously remarked that he would make three albums in this generic style. Yet the songs on Be Here Now differ in that they are longer than previous releases; an extended coda brings "D'You Know What I Mean?D'You Know What I Mean?
"D'You Know What I Mean?" is a song by the English rock band Oasis. Written by Noel Gallagher, it was released as the first single from their third album Be Here Now. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart, the third Oasis song to do so. It sold 162,000 copies in its first day in the shops...
" to almost eight minutes, while "All Around The World
All Around the World (Oasis song)
"All Around the World" is a song by the English rock band Oasis, written by the band's lead guitarist and principal songwriter Noel Gallagher. Released on 12 January 1998, the track peaked at number one in the UK Singles Chart; it is the longest single ever to do so...
" contains three key changes and lasts for a full nine minutes. The tracks are more layered and intricate than before, and each contains multiple guitar overdubs. While Morris had previously stripped away layers of overdubs on the band's debut Definitely Maybe, during the production of Be Here Now he "seemed to gleefully encourage" such excess; "My Big Mouth" has an estimated thirty tracks of guitar overdubbed onto the song. A Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
review described the guitar lines as composed of "elementary riffs." There was some experimentation: "D'You Know What I Mean?" contains a slowed down loop from N.W.A.
N.W.A.
N.W.A was an American hip hop group from Compton, California, widely considered one of the seminal acts of the gangsta rap sub-genre....
's "Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton (song)
"Straight Outta Compton" is the lead single from N.W.A's second album with the same name. It was released in 1988. It also appears on N.W.A's Greatest Hits with an extended mix and The Best of N.W.A. It was voted number 19 on About.com's Top 100 Rap Songs, and is ranked number 6 on VH1's 100...
", while "Magic Pie" features psychedelically arranged vocal harmonies and a mellotron
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
. According to Noel, "All I did was run my elbows across the keys and this mad jazz came out and everyone laughed." The album's production is dominated by top-end high frequency tones, and according to Uncut
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
's Paul Lester, its use of treble is reminiscent of both late 1980s Creation Records bands such as My Bloody Valentine, and The Stooges
The Stooges
The Stooges are an American rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003...
' famously under-produced Raw Power
Raw Power
Raw Power is the third studio album by American rock band The Stooges. Though not initially commercially successful, Raw Power gained a cult fanbase in the years following its release and, like its predecessor , is generally considered an influential forerunner of punk rock.-Recording history:After...
.
The vocal melodies continue Noel's preference for "massed-rank sing-alongs", although Du Noyer concedes that not all are of the "pub-trashing idiot kind" of previous releases. At the time of release, Qs Phil Sutcliffe summarised the lyrics of Be Here Now as a mixture of "hookline optimism, a swarm of Beatles and other ’60s references, a gruff love song to Meg, and further tangled expressions of his inability/unwillingness to express profound emotions."
The lyrics were elsewhere described as "[running] the gamut from insightful to insipid", although Du Noyer admitted that Noel is "[to go by his lyrics] something of a closet philosopher...and often romantic to the point of big girl's blousedom." While the tracks "Don't Go Away" and "The Girl In The Dirty Shirt" were described as unabashedly sentimental, Du Noyer went on to observe that "there is compassion and sensitivity in these tracks that is not the work of oafs." Du Noyer conceded that Noel often tied himself up in "cosmic knots", but added that Gallagher had "written words that sound simple and true, and are therefore poetic without trying to be." Lester read song titles such as "Stand By Me" and "Don't Go Away" as a series of demands, both to members of his private life and his public audience.
Du Noyer praised Liam's vocal contributions and described his "Northern punk whine" as "the most distinctive individual style of our time." Lester alluded to Liam as Noel's "mouthpiece", although he qualified that Liam is the "voice of every working-class boy with half a yen to break out and make it big."
Promotion
When Alan McGee, Creation's publicist Johnny Hopkins, and marketing executive Emma Greengrass first heard Be Here Now at Noel Gallagher's house, each had their doubts about its artistic value, but kept their doubts to themselves. One Creation employee recalled "a lot of nodding of heads, a lot of slapping of backs." McGee later admitted to having strong misgivings at first: "I heard it in the studio and I remember saying 'We'll only sell seven million copies'...I thought it was too confrontational." However, in an interview with the music press a few days later he predicted the album would sell twenty million copies. McGee's hyperbole alarmed both Oasis and their management company Ignition, and both immediately excluded him from involvement in the release campaign. Ignition's strategy from that point on centred around an effort to suppress all publicity, and withheld access to both music and information from anybody not directly involved with the album's release. Fearful of the dangers of over-hype and bootlegging, their aim was to present the record as a "regular, everyday collection of tunes." To this end they planned a modest marketing budget, to be spent on subdued promotional activities such as street posters and music press adverts, while avoiding mainstream instruments such as billboard and TV advertising. According to Greengrass "We want to keep it low key. We want to keep control of the whole mad thing."However, the extent that Ignition were willing to go to control access to the album generated more hype than could normally have been expected, and served to alienate members of both the print and broadcast media, as well as most Creation staff members. When "D'You Know What I Mean?
D'You Know What I Mean?
"D'You Know What I Mean?" is a song by the English rock band Oasis. Written by Noel Gallagher, it was released as the first single from their third album Be Here Now. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart, the third Oasis song to do so. It sold 162,000 copies in its first day in the shops...
" was planned as the first single, Ignition decided on a late release to radio so as to avoid too much advance exposure. However, three stations broke the embargo, and Ignition panicked. According to Greengrass: "we’d been in these bloody bunker meetings for six months or something, and our plot was blown. 'Shit, it's a nightmare'." BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
received a CD containing three songs ten days before the album's release, on condition that disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
Steve Lamacq
Steve Lamacq
Steve Lamacq , sometimes known by his nicknames Lammo or "The Cat" is an English disc jockey, currently working with the BBC radio stations BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 2.-Early career:He was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire...
talked over the tracks to prevent illegal copies being made by listeners. The day after Lamacq previewed the album on his show, he received a phone call from Ignition informing him that he would not be able to preview further tracks because he didn't speak enough over the songs. Lamacq said, "I had to go on the air the next night and say, 'Sorry, but we're not getting any more tracks.' It was just absurd." According to Creation's head of marketing John Andrews, "[The campaign] made people despise Oasis within Creation. You had this Oasis camp that was like 'I'm sorry, you're not allowed come into the office between the following hours. You're not allowed mention the word Oasis.' It was like a fascist state." One employee recalled an incident "when somebody came round to check our phones because they thought The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
had tapped them."
When Hopkins began to circulate cassette copies of the album to the music press a few weeks later, he required that each journalist sign a contract containing a clause requiring that the cassette recipient, according to Select journalist Mark Perry, "not discuss the album with anyone—including your partner at home. It basically said don't talk to your girlfriend about it when you're at home in bed." The Mail on Sunday wrote of Russell "[He] has a mind like a steel trap and the organisational skills of Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
." Reflecting in 1999, Greengrass admitted: "In retrospect a lot of the things we did were ridiculous. We sit in [Oasis] meetings today and we're like 'It's on the Internet. It's in Camden Market
Camden Market
The Camden Markets are a number of adjoining large markets in Camden Town near the Hampstead Road Lock of the Regent's Canal , often called collectively "Camden Market" or "Camden Lock". The stalls sell crafts, clothing, bric-a-brac, fast food, and other things...
. Whatever'. I think we've learned our lesson." According to Perry: "It seemed, particularly once you heard the album, that this was cocaine grandeur of just the most ludicrous degree. I remember listening to "All Around the World
All Around the World (Oasis song)
"All Around the World" is a song by the English rock band Oasis, written by the band's lead guitarist and principal songwriter Noel Gallagher. Released on 12 January 1998, the track peaked at number one in the UK Singles Chart; it is the longest single ever to do so...
" and laughing—actually quite pleasurably—because it seemed so ridiculous. You just thought: Christ, there is so much coke being done here."
Album cover
Stocks House
Stocks House is a large Georgian mansion, built in 1773, that is the largest property in the village of Aldbury, Hertfordshire. It was built by owners of Stocks Farm and used as their family home for many years...
in Hertfordshire, the former home of Victor Lownes
Victor Lownes
Victor Aubrey Lownes III An executive with Playboy Enterprises in various capacities, various vice-presidencies, always a close confidant of Hugh Hefner. Headed Playboy Europe and the UK Playboy Clubs from the mid-sixties until his dismissal in the early eighties...
, the head of the Playboy Clubs in the UK until 1981. It features the band standing outside the hotel surrounded by assorted props. At the centre of the image is a Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce (car)
This a list of Rolls-Royce motor cars and includes vehicles produced by:*Rolls-Royce Limited *Rolls-Royce Motors , which was owned by Vickers between 1980 and 1998, and after that by Volkswagen...
floating in a swimming pool. The photographer Michael Spencer Johns said the original concept involved shooting each band member in various locations around the world, but when the cost proved prohibitive, the shoot was relocated to Stocks House. Spencer remarked that the shoot "degenerated into chaos", adding that "by 8 pm, everyone was in the bar, there were schoolkids all over the set, and the lighting crew couldn't start the generator. It was Alice in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
meets Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
." Despite various meanings people have tried to read into the selection of the cover props, Johns said Gallagher simply selected items from the BBC props store he thought would look good in the picture. Two of the props that had considered thought in their inclusion were the inflatable globe (intended as a homage to the sleeve of Definitely Maybe) and the Rolls Royce, which was suggested by Arthurs. The release date in each region was commemorated on the calendar pictured on the sleeve; Harris said the dating "[encouraged] fans to believe that to buy a copy on the day it appeared was to participate in some kind of historical event."
Reception
Be Here Now was released in the UK on 21 August 1997. The release date had been brought forward out of Ignition's fear that import copies of the album from the United States would arrive in Britain before that country's designated street date. Worrying that TV news cameras would interview queuing fans at a traditional midnight opening session, Ignition forced retailers to sign contracts pledging not to sell the record earlier than eight a.m. However, when the album did go on sale, the cameras showed up regardless, just in time to record the initially slow trade. It was not until lunch time that sales picked up. By the end of the first day of release, Be Here Now sold over 350,000 units and by the end of business on Saturday of that week sales had reached 696,000, making it the fastest-selling album in British history. The album debuted at number two on the BillboardBillboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
charts in the United States, but its first week sales of 152,000—below expected sales of 400,000 copies—were considered a disappointment.
Contemporaneous reviews of Be Here Now were, in John Harris
John Harris (critic)
John Rhys Harris is a British journalist, writer, and critic.-Early life:Harris was raised in Wilmslow in north Cheshire by a university lecturer and a teacher, daughter of a nuclear research chemist...
's words, unanimous with "truly amazing praise." According to Harris, "To find an album that had attracted gushing notices in such profusion, one had to go back thirty years, to the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
." While Q magazine described the album as "cocaine set to music", most early reviews praised the record's length, volume and ambition. Reviews in the British music press for Oasis' previous album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? had been generally negative. When it went on to become, in the words of Select editor Alexis Petridis, "this huge kind of Zeitgeist defining record" the music press was "baffled". Realising they had gotten it wrong the last time, Petridis believes the initial glowing reviews were a concession to public opinion.
By the end of 1997, Be Here Now had sold eight million units worldwide. However, the sales volume was largely gained in the first two weeks of release, and once the album was released to UK radio stations the turnover tapered off. Buyers realised that the album was not another (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and by 1999, Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
reported that it was the album most sold to second-hand record stores. In the 2003 John Dower-directed documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop is a 2003 documentary film written and directed by John Dower. The documentary is a study of popular culture in the United Kingdom during the mid to late 1990s...
, music critic Jon Savage
Jon Savage
Jon Savage , real name Jonathon Sage, is a Cambridge-educated writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his award winning history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming, published in 1991.-Career:...
pinpointed Be Here Now as the moment where the Britpop
Britpop
Britpop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom. Britpop emerged from the British independent music scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s...
movement ended. Savage said that while the album "isn't the great disaster that everybody says", he noted that "[i]t was supposed to be the big, big triumphal record" of the period. Q expressed similar sentiments, writing, "So colossally did Be Here Now fall short of expectations that it killed Britpop and ushered in an era of more ambitious, less overblown music". Irish Times journalist Brian Boyd wrote: "Bloated and over-heated (much like the band themselves at the time), the album has all that dreadful braggadocio that is so characteristic of a cocaine user." Reflecting in 2007, Garry Mulholland admitted, "the fact that nothing could have lived up to the fevered expectations that surrounded its release doesn't change the facts. The third Oasis album is a loud, lumbering noise signifying nothing."
The Gallagher brothers hold differing opinions about the album. As early as July 1997, Noel was "talking down" Be Here Now in the music press, describing the production as "bland", and remarking that some of the tracks were "fucking shit". In Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, he dismissed the album, and blamed its faults on drugs and the band's indifference during recording. He suggested that the people unsatisfied with the record simply sell it. In contrast, Noel noted that his brother "thinks it fucking rocks." In the same documentary, Liam defended the record, and said that "at that time we thought it was fucking great, and I still think it's great. It just wasn't Morning Glory." In 2006, Liam said of Noel, "If he didn't like the record that much, he shouldn't have put the fucking record out in the first place...I don't know what's up with him but it's a top record, man, and I'm proud of it—it's just a little bit long."
Track listing
All songs written by Noel GallagherNoel Gallagher
Noel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, formerly the lead guitarist, backing vocalist and principal songwriter of the English rock band Oasis. He is currently fronting his solo project, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.Raised in Burnage, Manchester with his...
.
- "D'You Know What I Mean?D'You Know What I Mean?"D'You Know What I Mean?" is a song by the English rock band Oasis. Written by Noel Gallagher, it was released as the first single from their third album Be Here Now. It reached number one in the UK Singles Chart, the third Oasis song to do so. It sold 162,000 copies in its first day in the shops...
" – 7:44 - "My Big Mouth" – 5:02
- "Magic Pie" – 7:19
- "Stand by MeStand by Me (Oasis song)"Stand by Me" is a song by the English rock band Oasis, written by lead guitarist, Noel Gallagher. It was the second single to be released from the band's third album, Be Here Now, and peaked at number two in the UK charts in September 1997...
" – 5:56 - "I Hope, I Think, I Know" – 4:22
- "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" – 5:49
- "Fade In-Out" – 6:52
- "Don't Go AwayDon't Go Away"Don't Go Away" is a song by English rock band Oasis from their third album, Be Here Now , written by the band's lead guitarist Noel Gallagher. The song was released as a single only in Japan, peaking at number 48 on the Oricon chart. It was also a success in the United States, where it hit #5 on...
" – 4:48 - "Be Here Now" – 5:13
- "All Around the WorldAll Around the World (Oasis song)"All Around the World" is a song by the English rock band Oasis, written by the band's lead guitarist and principal songwriter Noel Gallagher. Released on 12 January 1998, the track peaked at number one in the UK Singles Chart; it is the longest single ever to do so...
" – 9:20 - "It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)" – 7:00
- "All Around the World (Reprise)" – 2:08
Personnel
Oasis- Paul "Bonehead" ArthursPaul ArthursPaul "Bonehead" Arthurs is an English musician and one of the founding members of the English rock band Oasis, best known as their rhythm guitar player from 1991-1999.-Early life:...
– rhythmRhythm guitarRhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, acoustic guitarAcoustic guitarAn acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound... - Liam GallagherLiam GallagherWilliam John Paul "Liam" Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, the former frontman of the English rock band Oasis and currently of the band Beady Eye. Gallagher's erratic behaviour, distinctive singing style, and abrasive attitude have been the subject of commentary in the press...
– vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments... - Noel GallagherNoel GallagherNoel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician and singer-songwriter, formerly the lead guitarist, backing vocalist and principal songwriter of the English rock band Oasis. He is currently fronting his solo project, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.Raised in Burnage, Manchester with his...
– lead guitarLead guitarLead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
, vocals - Paul McGuiganPaul McGuigan (musician)Paul McGuigan , better known by his nickname, Guigsy , is an English musician and one of the four founding members of the English rock band Oasis...
– bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick.... - Alan WhiteAlan White (Oasis drummer)Alan White is an English drummer, best known as being the drummer of the English rock group Oasis between 1995 and 2004, performing on four studio albums, two compilation albums and one live album. He joined the band in May 1995 after the band's original drummer Tony McCarroll was removed from...
– drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, percussionPercussion instrumentA percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
Additional musicians
- Mark CoyleMark CoyleMark Coyle is a British music producer, known for his work with Oasis.Coyle worked as a sound technician for many Mancunian bands throughout the 1980s including the The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Coyle has been a friend of Noel Gallagher for many years, having met when working as roadies for...
– backwards parts on "D'You Know What I Mean?" - Johnny DeppJohnny DeppJohn Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
– slide guitarSlide guitarSlide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
on "Fade In-Out" - Mark Feltham – harmonicaHarmonicaThe harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
on "All Around the World" - Mike Rowe – keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
Charts
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Austrian Album Chart | 3 |
| 1997 | Australian Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | Belgian Album Chart (Flanders) | 1 |
| 1997 | Belgian Album Chart (Wallonia) | 2 |
| 1997 | Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
1 |
| 1997 | Dutch Album Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
1 |
| 1997 | Finnish Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | French Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | German Album Chart | 2 |
| 1997 | New Zealand Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | Norwegian Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | Swedish Album Chart | 1 |
| 1997 | Swiss Album Chart | 2 |
| 1997 | UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
1 |
| 1997 | US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
2 |
| Country | Certification |
|---|---|
| Argentina | Gold |
| Australia | Platinum |
| Canada | 2x Platinum |
| Germany | Gold |
| Netherlands | Gold |
| Norway | Gold |
| Switzerland | Gold |
| United Kingdom | 6x Platinum |
| United States | Platinum |
Sources
- Cavanagh, David. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize. London: Virgin Books, 2000. ISBN 0-7535-0645-9.
- Harris, JohnJohn Harris (critic)John Rhys Harris is a British journalist, writer, and critic.-Early life:Harris was raised in Wilmslow in north Cheshire by a university lecturer and a teacher, daughter of a nuclear research chemist...
. Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock. London: Da Capo Press, 2004. ISBN 0-306-81367-X