We’ve been pretty lucky with Oasis books this summer with the current Oasis cultural boom being enjoyed by seemingly the whole of the UK at the moment! It’s a bit like when you support a rubbish football team, and suddenly they’re in the Premier League and winning every week! When I saw all the new books and magazine retrospectives that were scheduled to come out I thought I’d look at a few but presumed it was all going to be history I knew well. I really enjoyed ‘A Sound So Very Loud’ by Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain and didn’t think anything could top that until I started ‘Some Might Say: The Story Of Oasis – The Official Book Of The Oasis Podcast’, the new biography slash oral history from Richard Bowes. With every page, I found myself thinking this book may have been written specifically for me. It’s the first book by a genuine fan, for genuine fans, and for me the most informative Oasis book I’ve read since I was a teenager.
Sometimes when you’re so deep into a subject, you can be underwhelmed by new books or documentaries which cater to audiences that might only have a surface level knowledge of the topic. It has been a long time since I’ve read anything new on Oasis, but Richard’s book has been a pure page-turner, with genuinely fascinating insights from people who were there at the start. I could list 100 facts that have changed my reading of Oasis’ history, but that would be a spoiler. You should really read it yourself!
I also liked the fact that the book paints, I think for the first time in any Oasis biography I’ve read, a genuine picture of the graft it takes to get a band going, even when you’re just playing the Boardwalk as they were. The quotes from people like Mary McGuigan and Tony McCarrol in particular show you they were just kind of doing the band to do something in the early days. And despite the world changing when Noel joined that band, they were pretty unique even without him. Mary makes a bold claim that the band would have made it without Liam, and you can see if vividly in those early chapters. I knew they worked hard, but the book shows with direct eyewitness accounts what that actually meant for the people involved, and really goes into fascinating detail about the band’s lives when they were ‘normal people’! The best insights come about the band’s times working their 9-5s and trying to fit in rehearsals, about their first gigs where no one attended. There’s a lot of stuff here you wouldn’t find in biographies that perhaps pander to the band’s publicists and management. There’s nothing overtly critical, but it’s great to get a balanced read on how they were in the early days, and a more detailed insight into the fundamental influence of The Real People and people like Tim Abbot and Brian Cannon. There were also times in those early days when the were seen as just a decent, very loud, local Rock ‘n’ Roll band and not much more. Hard to imagine now when they’re playing gigs recently and people are crying at just seeing them onstage!
As the book goes on, you get a sense of familiarity with the band as people, not only as a collective. I think this has changed how I viewed the band, despite reading pretty much every book or feature that has been published on them over the years. Also brilliant is the insight into the later years of the band and the solo years. You can’t get away from the sensation in retrospect that this was a band trying to find their way a bit once Guigsy and Bonehead left, and it wasn’t really until 2005 when they found their identity again. You feel they could have been onto something great in that second incarnation of the group, but in-fighting again disrupted the plans and ultimately killed the band, seemingly for good. There’s great insight into the solo years, something again which is hugely significant to the band’s history now they’ve reformed.
I’ve said for years it’s a shame how little has been written about Oasis and how generic the accounts generally are, focussing on King Tuts, the Blur rivalry, and Be Here Now fall out, then not much else. I feel this book could be the start of something important for Oasis fan culture, and really should be developed further. I could see the author, Richard Bowes becoming to Oasis what Mark Lewisohn is to The Beatles. The band could do worse than let him into their archive and add more depth to their story.
If you’re going to read a new Oasis book this summer, for all the great stuff that’s come out (special mention again to ‘A Sound So Very Loud’ and John Robb’s new book), but for real fans, this is the one to start with. Really hope this is the first of many from the author.
Some Might Say: The Story Of Oasis – The Official Book Of The Oasis Podcast is out now and can be found here, Amazon and numerous retailers.
The Oasis Podcast can be found on several streaming platforms.