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Alan McGee, the man who signed Britpop band Oasis, has recalled the story behind a memorable photo of him standing outside London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s with Liam Gallagher, suggesting that their calm-looking demeanour is misleading.
The Creation Records boss, who signed Oasis and helped them go onto become one of the biggest bands in the world, reflects on what he learnt about running an indie label in his new book, due for release in September.
In the mid-Nineties, while the band were riding high on the success of their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, the raucous frontman apparently had a row with singer Alex Lowe, who had referred to Oasis as “these c***s” in an interview with NME.
“Which he didn’t mean,” McGee clarified, “that’s just the way we talk in Glasgow. That’s affectionate!”
Unfortunately, Gallagher took issue with this and allegedly got in a physical altercation with Lowe, which continued to escalate until McGee intervened.
“I manage to get them outside, and there’s a famous picture of me and Liam outside Ronnie Scott’s where it looks like we are having a chat, but what he’s really saying is ‘McGee’s a f***ing c***!’ to my face,” McGee wrote.
“We then went to some drinking club, some posh place like upstairs at the Groucho, and we were in the very back and Liam shouts at me for two hours.
“It’s like the blast furnace treatment until he eventually runs out of steam. It was nuts.”
The following day, however, Liam apparently hugged McGee the moment he walked into a meeting, before inviting him to meet the Dalai Lama.
“That’s an example of how it was working with Oasis at the time,” he said, “and all the different sides and facets to Liam. There’s a lot of depth to him, one minute he’s brawling, and the next he’s wanting to meet the Dalai Lama.
“It’s a depth that people don’t see, wrapped in a toughness, like when he came back after Oasis had split and after Beady Eye had ended, and made a solo career for himself, which is so hard to do.”
In the same book, McGee recounts his first impression of Gallagher’s older brother, Noel.
“I liked him straight away,” he said. “He had been hustling since he was 15. That was his thing. When I signed him at 25, he was at his hustling peak. This was his moment. And mine.”
Later, McGee said that working with Oasis was “always genius, wild and unpredictable. You never knew where you were with them. They were so volatile, but I loved it.”
He also talks about the grisly aftermath of a fight between Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, during his ill-fated but short-lived stint managing The Libertines.
Alan McGee: How to Run an Indie Label is released on 5 September.
