It’s easy to sneer at Oasis: for their success, their ubiquity, their idiocy, their Beatles obsession, and a great deal of their music.
But they did make a brilliant debut album that brought loud guitars and snarling vocals and “rock’n’roll” back to a landscape that had diverted into dance music; and about half of another one after that.
And you’ve got to hand it to them for acknowledging that in the setlist for their comeback concerts, which ignore pretty much everything after the first two or three albums.
Noel himself once told me in an interview that, while he was proud of whatever long-forgotten album he was promoting at the time, it was a no-brainer that an Oasis greatest hits album would “obviously” just consist of Definitely Maybe and some tracks off Morning Glory.
He also told me about the genesis of this song, which perfectly encapsulates their early swagger in its exuberant celebration of working-class life, summed up in the line: “Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?”
“We were in the studio for hours trying to find the right riff for that song and at about 3am I finally nailed it and told the others: ‘That’s it! We’ve got a hit song there!” he recalled.
“So we all went home and when I came into the studio the next day Bonehead said to me: ‘You know that riff you came up with last night? As soon as I got home I realised it was T.Rex.’
“And I said: Oh yeah you’re right, it’s Get It On. But I love that song. And I thought: ‘Fuck it, Bolan’s dead now so I’m not gonna change it. Let ’em sue us.”
In the end they weren’t sued, probably because Bolan had borrowed the riff from Chuck Berry’s song Little Queenie in the first place.
However, Noel did have to cough up nearly half a million quid and change the songwriting credits to settle a suit over their song Shakermaker’s similarity to I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing by The New Seekers – famously used in a Coca-Cola ad campaign.
And in a later court case, he had to give a co-writing credit and a share of royalties to Neil Innes for borrowing from his song How Sweet To Be An Idiot for the Oasis hit Whatever.
In a final irony, Whatever went on to be used in another Coca-Cola campaign. Whereas Cigarettes & Alcohol, which would seem perfect for the job, has yet to be used for any marketing campaign for booze or fags.