The circus around Oasis’ third album, Be Here Now, makes the modern hoopla surrounding Frank Ocean, Kanye West, and Beyoncé look like amateur hour. Never was the hunger for new product greater, and never was the infrastructure designed to supply it in poorer shape. Back in the summer of 1997, the Manchester band’s label, Creation, and management, Ignition, were mobilized for battle, attempting to downplay the hype after months of tabloid chaos and over-saturation. Oasis had actually made another album, which should have been news enough.
Never mind that in September of ’96, Liam Gallagher had bailed on their diabolical MTV Unplugged performance before walking out on an American tour because, he claimed, he needed to buy a house. Two months later, he was arrested on London’s Oxford Street at 7.25 a.m. with his pockets full of cocaine, described by police officers as “an unkempt man, obviously the worse for wear.” The following January, Noel Gallagher left the nation clutching at pearls after declaring drug-taking to be as normal as having a cup of tea. The pair of them could barely leave their houses for the throngs of paparazzi camped outside.
The new record was also encumbered by what may have been the greatest millstone in pop music history: the double success of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s What’s the Story (Morning Glory), which had already been minted as era-defining classics. You can see why the powers that be were trying to manage expectations. Journalists issued with a cassette of Be Here Now had to sign an absurd contract stating that they wouldn’t talk about the album while in bed with their partner. Ignition brought lawsuits against nascent fansites that carried any trace of copyrighted material. They called the police on three local radio stations that broke the embargo for lead single “D’You Know What I Mean?”, and pulled a raft of exclusive tracks from the BBC Radio 1 Evening Session after it was deemed that DJ Steve Lamacq hadn’t layered enough jingles over the songs to deter home-tapers. Even label staff were forbidden to enter the office at certain hours, lest they overhear the album, and at one point, Creation got a specialist in to check whether their phones had been tapped by Murdoch rag The Sun. It’s almost as if there were stratospheric amounts of cocaine involved at every level of the operation.
It might sound like damage control, but if anyone was engaged in that, it was the British music press. They had looked foolish after underrating What’s the Story (upon which Oasis played to 250,000 people across two nights at Knebworth), and were aware that Britpop’s luster was starting to tarnish. Every major news program sent a camera crew to regional record shops on the Thursday of release (MTV UK captured a young Pete Doherty in the queue in London), and HMV issued special certificates to first-day buyers. Magazine sales were predicated on their access to to the band, a valuable commodity that could easily disappear at the first sign of dissent, as evidenced by the album’s desperate and ingratiating reviews: “Oasis’ third LP is a veritable rock’n’roll monsoon of an album; a giant jigsaw puzzle, an elemental force, a monster that cannot and will not be contained,” claimed Vox. “Dem a come fe mess up de area seeeeeeeerious,” suggested Charles Shaar Murray in Mojo. Q actually called it “cocaine set to music,” which was about the only factual statement amid the lashings of hyperbole. Of the many cultural changes that Be Here Now triggered, the shift in power from the music press to marketing men may be the most toxic and enduring.
