In our rundown of the six essential Noel Gallagher Oasis b-sides that didn't make The Masterplan album we listed Going Nowhere as a must-hear track. It's also one Noel has only played live a couple of times in the past. Well, maybe he took notice as he dusted down the Stand By Me flipside for a special episode of Later… With Jools Holland for the BBC.
The full-band version with a string section proves a great showcase for the song that was originally recorded back in 1997 for the Be Here Now sessions, and he's brought it back for his US tour with Garbage too, but it actually dates back to the beginnings of Noel's songwriting for the band.
The original demo version from the early '90s was included on the 2016 reissue of Be Here Now and finds a youthful-sounding pre-fame Noel performing the same song. Indeed, his voice is barely recognisable to what it would become but the songwriting chops are undeniable.
Noel and his expanded High Flying Birds lineup also performed Pretty Boy and Open The Door, See What You Find from new album Council Skies, but this moving version of Live Forever proved a standout moment from the night.
It finds Noel reappraising the song as an older and wiser musician, and includes a new guitar solo played by Gem Archer. It's a song he admitted was a breakthrough moment for him as a writer and heralded an imperial era for Oasis.
"We were pretty good up to the moment of when I wrote Live Forever," he told That Pedal Show in the interview below. "Then when I wrote that song, I knew enough about music to know; it's gone from being indie to classic now. It was after that, that's where the benchmark was set and nothing would ever be good enough unless it was as good as that."
