Oasis - Be Here Now
(“The Mustique Sequence” by soniclovenoize)
1. D’You Know What I Mean?
2. My Big Mouth
3. My Sister Lover
4. Stand By Me
5. I Hope, I Think, I Know
6. The Girl In The Dirty Shirt
7. Don’t Go Away
8. Be Here Now
9. Fade In-Out
10. Stay Young
11. All Around The World
12. It’s Getting Better (Man!!)
This is a re-imaging of the infamous 1997 Oasis album Be Here Now, intended to more closely follow Noel Gallagher’s original demos for the album. Initially demo’d in its entirety on holiday in Mustique, Gallagher and producer Owen Morris have since maintained that the final album should have been closer to its more modest demo counterpart, after the album sessions proper had succumbed to rock star vanity and massive amounts of cocaine and booze. Additionally, I have edited the runtime of nine of the twelve songs to a more reasonable length, preventing the album from becoming unnecessarily long and meandering, intending to reduce the songs to the 4-5 minute mark.. In a sense, this is an unofficial upgrade to my “Be Here Now - Concise Edit” I had made around 15 years ago–although this is slightly different as the tracklist now follows the Mustique demos.
By 1996, Oasis had quickly become the biggest rock band in the world. Arising as an indie rock band from the Manchester scene, their embrace of Beatle-esque melodies, anthemic choruses, soaring guitars and a sloppy, ‘you-get-what-you-get’ rhythm section was a refreshing alternative to the contrived pop music at the time. Their two-punch attack of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s The Story) Morning Glory proved the band as a cultural phenomenon and posterboys for the Britpop movement. The hype for their eventual third album was elevated during what was considered the apex of their stardom: performing to a quarter of a million fans at Knebworth in August of 1996, deputing a pair of new songs “My Big Mouth” and “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)”. Ultimately, fans would need to wait an additional full year to hear the finished studio recordings of these songs.
But the truth was that the entirety of the band’s third album–which would eventually be titled Be Here Now–was already mapped out and demo’d by lead guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher, along with long-time producer Owen Morris, two months prior! While vacationing at Mick Jagger’s villa in Mustique at St. Vincent and the Grenadines from May-June 1996 (along with actor Johnny Depp and his then-partner model Kate Moss), Gallagher brought along a digital 8-track recorder and some instruments to record working demos of how he saw Oasis’s third album. With Morris programming beats on a drum machine, the pair spent the month tracking virtual “full band” demos of fifteen songs– ten of which would appear on the eventual album in 1997. Each song featured fully fleshed out drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars, as well as occasional keyboards; one of the songs “Fade In-Out” even featured Depp on a lead slide guitar! Half of the songs were newly written, with the other half originating from Noel’s original songbook that also contained the first two Oasis albums and many of their b-sides.
Despite being essentially ready to go, Oasis chose to wait until October to actually record the album at Abbey Road. Famously, these sessions were unproductive and chaotic, led by five or six young lads who were more interested in the stereotype rock-star lifestyle than focusing on the craft of making a great-sounding album. Cocaine, alcohol, brotherly rows and days upon days of literally just trying to reproduce the precise drumsound of The Beatles’ “Rain” guaranteed a weak start to an album that should have secured the band’s longevity as the greatest rock band in the world. But lead singer Liam Gallagher’s apparent ambivalence, Noel’s desire to create a massive, muddy wall of guitar overdubs on every song, the ineffectiveness of bassist Guigsy and drummer Whitey and the lack of the entire project management from producer Morris drug the sessions into early 1997.
When the album was finally finished in April 1997, the resultant 72-minute album was filled with rock star access, with songs almost arbitrary reaching six minutes in length, refusing to end; the mix was cluttered, filled with superfluous guitar and orchestral overdubs; every song had been designed to be a stadium anthem, whether it was justified or not; and a number of critics felt the songwriting was just simply unimpressive. What was worse–Oasis themselves didn’t seem to care! Although the band’s persona was to be cocky rockstars who didn’t give a fuck about critics, many saw the album as simply going too far with this ethos and that Be Here Now was the beginning of the end of Britpop as a phenomenon. Both Morris and Noel Gallagher would later regret how the album came out and ruminated that Be Here Now should have sounded more like the Mustique Demos. Could that be possible?
Approximately 15 years ago, I picked up the gauntlet to trim Be Here Now into a more concise length, using a not-as-hot vinyl rip of the album as a source. This “Concise Version” was never an official reconstruction for my blog and has since been under the radar beyond Oasis fandom trading circles. Feeling it was time to revisit the project, I thought to take it one step further: could I also redesign the album to follow the alternate tracklist as presented on The Mustique Demos? Aside from the slightly re-sequenced second half of the album, the core differences are the addition of the superb b-side “Stay Young”, and that “Magic Pie” was swapped out for the b-side “My Sister Lover.” Interestingly, these little swaps make the album a bit less faux-epic and more intended to be wall-to-wall bangers as Definitely Maybe–especially when the song lengths have been reduced to keep the album moving. Although we can’t specifically “de-produce” the album, I have reduced the headroom and used Izotope Ozone 10 to gently make the drum track more focused, which in effect gives the illusion of more headroom.
My cut of The Mustique Sequence begins with a quick edit of the intro from NG’s 2016 remix of “D’You Know What I Mean” that removes the elongated intro to the album itself. Crossfad into the original CD mix of the song, I have reduced the length of the choruses by repeating the refrain only twice, rather than three times. Additionally, I have trimmed the outro down by approximately half. Those five edits actually cut the song down to 6:32 from its original 7:42. This is followed by “My Big Mouth”, which features no additional editing. Next, as heard in Noel’s Mustique Demos, is “My Sister Lover”, using the noise outro from “I Got The Fever” as the crossfade between the two. As in the first track, I have reduced each chorus to two refrains to keep the song moving along, as well as cutting the outro to half of what it was, slicing the song down to 4:54 from its original 5:59. Although I admit this is not the strongest song of the batch, its placement here as track three gives the album a forward propulsion that was completely lost with “Magic Pie”. Now we are actually interested to keep listening.
Next is “Stand By Me” that also features edited choruses to include only two refrains of the lyric, effectively reducing the song to 5:25 from its original 5:55. “I Hope, I Think, I Know” follows, untouched from the original CD mix. Although “The Girl In The Dirty Shirt” is a personal favorite of mine, it seems like the song never ends; I have edited the outro from seven to two measures long, reducing the runtime to 4:51 from its original 5:49. The same applies to “Don’t Go Away”, reducing the outro from three to one measure long, clocking in at 4:22 from its original 4:49.
For the title track, one singular bar was edited out of the intro to make it an even four and the never-ending outro was reduced from eight to four measures, taking the runtime down to 4:34 from its original 5:13, making it a mid-album bop rather than a never-ending jam sesh. Likewise, “Fade In-Out” received lots of edits in the outro, enough to reduce the runtime from 6:51 to 6:15– keeping it epic while not overstaying its welcome. This is followed by the new highlight of the album, “Stay Young”, which is untouched from the original mix. Although “The Fame” and “Angel Baby” were next in the Mustique Demos, we are excluding them here to limit this album to twelve solid songs. Thus, “Stay Young” now crossfades perfectly into “All Around The World” but what may very well be a disappointment to many Oasis fans, the song’s notorious length is reduced from 9:20 to 7:48! Although it is no longer the longest song in Oasis canon, it does remain the longest song on this album, at least. The album closes with another personal favorite, “It’s Getting Better (Man!!), reducing the never-ending-outro from eight to four measures, and thus editing the runtime from 7:03 down to 5:48! Like the demo version of the album, “All Around The World (Reprise)” is absent and thus “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)” is the album’s big finish.
Sources:
Be Here Now (original 1997 CD master)
Be Here Now (2017 remaster)
Stand By Me (1997 CD single)
D’You Know What I Mean? (1997 CD single)