Oasis spent a lot of time in Liverpool as they worked on their early recordingsDan Haygarth Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter
07:00, 12 Jul 2025
Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher of Oasis in 1994(Image: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images)
As Oasis came off stage at a gig in Glasgow in May 1993, Noel Gallagher handed over a tape recorded in Liverpool and it changed everything. The band, then consisting of brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan and Tony McCarroll, had been together for a couple of years, mainly playing venues in and around Manchester.
But they had been invited by their rehearsal partners Sister Lovers to head up to Scotland for a gig at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. Oasis were up first. In the audience was Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records.
So impressed was McGee that he offered them a record deal on the spot, but a demo tape was passed to him in order to ensure it. That demo, called ‘Live Demonstration’, had been recorded in a studio on Porter Street in Liverpool’s North Docks just months before.
More than three decades on, the Oasis reunion rolls into the North West this weekend, with a run of homecoming gigs at Manchester’s Heaton Park. Oasis are undeniably and very proudly Mancunian but here, we take a look at how the Gallaghers’ connection with Merseyside goes far beyond a well-known love of The Beatles.
We look at the story behind their early Liverpool recordings, which refined their era-defining sound.
The demo tape
Before joining Oasis, Noel had travelled around the world as a roadie for Oldham band Inspiral Carpets. When he returned from one tour, he found out his younger brother had joined a band.
Liam wanted Noel to come on board as manager. Noel had a counter proposition – he would join Oasis, take creative control and write the band’s songs.
During his time with the Inspirals, Noel had met Chris and Tony Griffiths, from Bootle band The Real People. They acted as mentors to the budding songwriter and brought his band down
Chris and Tony Griffiths from The Real People outside their former studio on Porter Street, Liverpool(Image: John Johnson)
Chris spoke to the ECHO last summer, when Oasis’ reunion was announced, about the role they played in the band’s early years.
He said: “We first met Noel on The Inspiral Carpets tour – we had just recorded our second album after success with our first. We were out touring with the Inspirals and Noel was their roadie.
“We got on like a house on fire with Noel. We all hung around in each other’s dressing rooms and then at the end of the tour, Noel used to come down to ours.
“Later we went to see Oasis at their first gig in The Boardwalk, Manchester, and we saw them in rehearsal. But we tried to get them studio time from our then-publisher Sony Music.
“In around 1992 or 1993, we went to a good few management companies because we wanted to get them into a proper studio – we couldn’t get them into one but we had a little eight track in our rehearsal room and studio on Porter Street near Bramley-Moore, so we took them down there.”
Six songs recorded in Liverpool made it onto the demo tape – namely ‘Cloudburst’, ‘Columbia’, ‘Strange Thing’, ‘Bring It On Down’, ‘Fade Away’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’. The two other tracks – ‘D’yer Wanna Be A Spaceman’ and ‘Married With Children’ – were recorded at co-producer Mark Coyle’s home.
Noel has admitted that Liverpool had an impact on some of his lyrics. He spoke about recording the demo in the 2004 documentary ‘Oasis: Definitely Maybe’, released to mark the band’s debut album’s tenth anniversary.
He explained that ‘Columbia’ was initially intended to be an instrumental song. But it was suggested he wrote some lyrics, which
He said: “We were at The Real People’s studio in Liverpool. Somebody went, as somebody always does, ‘eh la, you want to get some f***ing words to that’.”
Noel added: “You can tell the words were written in Liverpool. It’s very Scouse to go (he breaks into his best Scouse impression): ‘There we were, now here we are’.”
The Real People saw a lot of potential in Noel, but it was meeting Liam that convinced them Oasis would go places.
“I’m sure I’d met Liam at a gig”, said Chris. “I’m sure he’d come to a Real People gig and didn’t have a ticket. There was some kid on a wall outside in Northampton throwing stones at the window – I went down and got him in. I’m sure it was Liam when I thought about it years later.
“But we met Liam properly at our tour in Manchester. Both me and our kid (Tony) were like ‘who is that lad?’. There was a lad swaggering around everywhere – you could just see that he had something.”
Liam Gallagher at Maine Road football ground August 1997 to watch the Manchester City v Portsmouth match(Image: mirrorpix)
Whatever the ‘something’ Liam possessed came to the fore during the recording of the demo in north Liverpool. That was not without a push in the right direction, however.
Chris said: “When Liam came into the studio you could just tell he had something. You couldn’t tell with all of them that they’d be stars – it was Liam really and Noel.
“Noel was writing songs and they were just falling out of him. But we all were at that time. We tried to get them to shorten a bit or edit it slightly and help them on the production. We let them set up and recorded it live – you can hear that on the tape.
“You can hear the spill on each individual track. We recorded live with the vocals in the other room, or even with the instrumentals first.
“I heard some vocals Liam had done in an earlier recording but they weren’t that good. I don’t think Liam had been in with someone who was trying to produce it for him and help him.
“There were some tracks where we’d lay the tracks down and try to get Liam to sing. He just wasn’t used to it.
“Sometimes people say the phrases sound a bit like me. That can be the only reason – but he was also a fan of The Real People. “
The Liverpool-recorded demo formed the basis of ‘Definitely Maybe’, which went straight to number one in August 1994 and became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history. Before that, however, Oasis returned to Liverpool to record their first single – again with help from Chris and Tony.
The Lark Lane sessions
Inside The Motor Museum Recording Studio(Image: Liverpool Echo)
In December 1993, The Real People took Oasis into the Motor Museum recording studio on Hesketh Street, off Lark Lane. It was then called The Pink Museum and was owned by the Bootle band’s manager Hambi Haralambous.
Creation wanted a single and the plan was for Oasis to record ‘Bring it on Down’ – a particular favourite of McGee’s. It wasn’t coming together as hoped, so they changed their plan.
The result, thanks to an intervention from the Griffiths brothers and some very swift writing from Noel, was ‘Supersonic’.
Chris said: “When they more or less got signed, we got put in the studio with them because we did the demos. Because we were all matey really, it was all like a team. There was me, Tony, Dave Scott (recording engineer), Mark Coyle – we all went into the Pink.
“We were all sort of producing it. I think they were there to record something else – I think it was ‘Bring It On Down’. We were setting up and they were jamming this song. I actually thought it was a song of ours – ‘Car Outside’ – which is a little bit similar.
“They were jamming and we had a good sound so then we set up. Once again, we needed to get them to play live.
“They stopped playing what they were playing and started another song, it might have been ‘Bring It On Down’ – and they said ‘right, we’ll just record this first’. Our kid said: ‘What are you doing? What you’re playing right now doesn’t sound as good as what we were recording on the sound checks just before’.”
Tony knew whatever they were playing in the initial jam would become a hit. The intervention worked.
“We scrapped what we were doing and just recorded that brand new idea”, explained Chris. “We recorded it first and it was only after we recorded that brand new instrumental that Noel started writing the lyrics. He was in there playing and then just went out and wrote.”
Liam and Noel Gallagher in Newcastle in 1997(Image: Mirrorpix)
Noel looked back on the recording in the aforementioned documentary. He said: “We were sent to Liverpool by Creation to do some demos. And for whatever reason, the stuff that we were doing, it wasn’t really happening.
“‘Bring it on Down’ was going to be our first single, Alan McGee wanted it. We came here to do that and we couldn’t get the drumming right. So someone said ‘why don’t you go and write one?'”
Noel had the music to what would become ‘Supersonic’ ready – he needed some lyrics. So while everyone else ate a takeaway for dinner, he went away to write the words.
He explained: “The lyrics were written in one go and it took no more than half an hour to write. It was back in the days when you just said ‘f**k it’ and went off to write a song.
“We just said ‘well If we don’t get anything to show Creation, we’ve got a new tune at least. They won’t think we’re a bunch of chancers.’”
‘Supersonic’ was recorded in a single day at the Pink Museum. It was initially meant to be a demo but the version was so good they stuck with it.
It released in April 1994 reached number 31 on the singles chart and truly set Oasis on their way. Noel knew that night in Aigburth had set Oasis on the road to superstardom.
He said: “We left here that night and listened to it in the car on the way home about 20 times. It was like ‘f***ing hell man, that sounds mega’.”
Marking the Oasis reunion, the ECHO has looked back on the band’s many links to Liverpool.
You can read the full interview with Chris Griffiths from last year, our report from the Motor Museum and an interview with Scotland Road’s Peter ‘Digsy’ Deary, a friend of the band and the inspiration for their track ‘Digsy’s Dinner’.