It's early 1996, and Britain's top rock star
is searching the English countryside
for a location to stage one of the biggest gigs in British history.
I got the call... Knebworth, bla, bla, bla.
And I was going, "How many people?" "125,000." And I thought, "Fucking hell!"
# I'm feeling supersonic
# Give me gin and tonic
# You can have it all but how much do you want it?
Knebworth, in rural Hertfordshire,
is now the only place big enough to accomodate Oasis
and their army of supporters.
1 in 20 of the population applied to go to see Knebworth
which meant that when you walked down Oxford St. in London,
every 3 seconds you were passing someone
who was a really big Oasis fan.
Crazily big!
Knebworth House is Batman's house in the film, you know that?
When you see the Batman films and they drive through the big gates,
that's Knebworth House.
So you're going in the Batman's fucking gaff
in a Rolls Royce. Off your head!*
Knebworth is a long way from where Oasis started out, the city of Manchester,
whose council estates and independent music scene
had produced clutch of maverick bands
like the Smiths, who had a far more modest definition of success.
Where we came from, making a record yourself
was incredibly ambitious.
To be in a band that you were really into
and that you had another guy who had the same dreams as you,
that was like nearlly the whole feel for me.
For years, the indie scene was British music's best kept secret,
home to a generation of rock misfits.
'Indie', independente music, represented
almost like a membership card of the ousider gang for a lot of people too.
You know, taking on the pricks. Kicking against the pricks.
Kicking against that blandness.
But as indie morphed into brit-pop, Oasis and archrivals Blur
stormed the barricades of daytime radio and the British tabloids.
So complete was their triumph
that for a moment Noel Gallagher owned British rock.
I remember driving in this big field, sitting on the Rolls Royce
thinking I was Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, having a cigarette.
And nearly had a panic attack 'cause I'd been up all night drinking.
And then just going, "Yeah. I'll take it."
"Where do I sign?"
This is the story of the overgrounding of British indie music,
a journey from Manchester nightclubs to mansions in the home counties.
A story of success, so overwhelming,
that the next generation were forced to reinvent the music
to bring it into the 21st century.
# now you concerned about the way I feel
# Tonight I'm a rock 'n roll star
Early evening, November the 24th, 1983.
In the 'green room' of BBC TV Center,
the band that would define indie music in the 1980s
are waiting to make their debut appearance on 'Top of the Pops',
the TV showcase for everything bright and shiny in British music.
The whole day for us was really an extreme day in the life.
We went down there and felt like well and truly aliens,
which was right.
We weren't unhappy about that.
It's seven long years since punk
was supposed to have put the edge back into music.
But this particular Thursday,
the lineup promises to be worryingly safe.
Tina Turner, Simple Minds!
The Thomson Twins, Shakin' Stevens...
Packed with stars, it's entirely live and our first act's Paul Young
and 'The Love of the Common People'.
# You can live in a love of the common people
# smile from the heart of a family man.
# Daddy's gonna buy you a dream to cling to,
# Mama's gonna love you just as much as she can and she can.
The bill, like the whole of pop music at the time,
is dominated by established acts and major label stars.
It was all about people in headbands
with a bright red jacket and three backing singers
and a keyboard player and a... that kind of thing.
Tina Turner or Paul Young or whoever it was that was out at that time.
Showtime is approaching
and backstage The Smiths are feeling more and more out of place.
A couple of girls came up to me and they said,
"Are you in a band?" "Yeah, I am."
And they said, "What band?" And I said, "The Smiths."
And she said, "Oh, are you playing on tonight?" I said, "That's right. Yeah."
And she said, "Well, when are you getting changed to go on?"
Well, I kinda looked down at my clothes,
and I said, "This is it. This is what I'm wearing."
And she said, "But you're going on TV!"
To make matters worse, singer Morrissey has made it clear
that he will take the stage with a bouquet of gladioli
in place of a microphone.
The producers of the show were pulling their hair off
because Morrissey was like,
"I'm not gonna pretend that I'm singing this.
"I'll just might as well make it obvious that I'm miming.
"I'm not even gonna use a microphone."
And they didn't like that at all.
At Number 30 this week, these are The Smiths.
The Smiths are there to perform their single 'This Charming Man'.
# A punctured bicycle
# On a hillside desolate
# Will nature make a man of me yet?
# When in this charming car
# This charming man
It was like someone had gone into an office party
and thrown buckets of cold water over everyone.
That non-stop-party-feel-good vibe which Top of the Pops had always had
it was suddenly invaded by these four people
who claimed to be from Manchester
but in the context of Top of the Pops could've been from a different universe.
# This man said "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care"
# A jumped up pantry boy
# Who never knew his place
# He said "return the ring"
# He knows so much about these things
The performance is remembered for more than Morrissey's flamboyance,
for a generation of musicians it was an introduction to Johnny Marr.
The young guitarist whose intricate playing
underpinned The Smith's sound.
I remember seeing The Smiths on Top of the Pops.
I don't mean this in a kind of... sick or funny way
but I just wanted to be Johnny Marr.
He had the Brian Jones hairdo and the turtleneck,
and the big, red semi-accoustic guitar. It was like cool as fuck!
As the nation watched,
a cab was waiting at the stage door to ferry The Smiths to Euston Station.
That same night, they had a gig booked 200 miles away
at the Hacienda Nightclub in their hometown of Manchester.
That journey must have taken... it was like...
7 minutes in our mind because we were just like...
We were all super hyped up.
# This charming man
Part homecoming, part coronation
the Hacienda crowd were treated to their own version of 'This Charming Man'
by Britain's most unlikely new rock stars.
# I would go out tonight
# But I haven't got a stitch to wear
# This man said "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care"
People still talk of it in hushed tones in Manchester
and it was an incredible moment.
It was like a festival, it was like...
we have breached the barricades of the Thatcherite citadel
and now our boys have become pop stars,
and they're coming back to celebrate with their own people.
# He knows so much about these things
Goodbye!
Manchester loomed large in The Smiths' music,
with Morrissey's lyrics transforming the crumbling city
into a place of epic romance.
Those who didn't get it, wrote them off as miserable northerners.
We did a song called 'Heaven knows I'm miserable now'
so what do we expect?
# I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour
# But heaven knows I'm miserable now
# I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
# And heaven knows I'm miserable now
There's ** even there.
We had the understanding of what it felt like to be surrounded
by this Victorian atmosphere in Manchester.
For me, some of the actual sound of the music
comes out of my early impressions of my environment.
The people around me weren't well off, you know.
The women had beehives and wore coats that were on HP.*
# Two lovers entwined pass me by
# And heaven knows I'm miserable now
It was a hard life really, but you have to find beauty.
I think it's an innate human necessity, so if you're in a grim place
you would just find the beauty.
# In my life
# Oh, why do I give valuable time
# To people who don't care if I live or die?
These records were so vivid and romantic and joyous.
They were the revenge of the deserted northern places.
There's lots of snogging under bridges
and feeling people up on leather*
and 'There's ice in the sink where we bathe'.
What kind of line is that? Where do you get that from?
Together, Morressey and Marr
were the most significant song-writing partnership of the 80s.
On top of their four studio albums
they crafted a string of stand-alone singles,
including 'William it Was Really Nothing'
'Shoplifters of the World, Unite' and 'Panic'.
They all skip along those tunes. They're all ***
I think that's the great thing about that band,
they had these really up* tunes that Morrissey would then
kind of put a slant on in there. Morryssey's lyrics were very sarcastic.
It's about being on the ***, being kind of an outsider.
That kind of collision of those two things
is what made The Smiths ***
The hands-off approach of Rough Trade,
the band's independent record label,
allowed Morrissey and Marr complete control
over The Smith's music and image.
Everything about them was "We do it our way."
You know, Morrissey did the sleeves, Johnny was left to his own devices
and not told by an A&R man,
"That will be the next single you're gonna record."
It'd be up to Morrissey and Marr to decide
what song they wanted to record as the next single.
That's the kind of band we were.
We didn't have an A&R man,
we didn't have people interfering in the music.
So we were very in that self-sufficient thing.
I mean, we were really independent.
In the mid-1980s,
The Smiths were at the head of an entire sub-culture.
Indie music took in groups as diverse as The Jesus and Mary Chain,
The Fall, The Cocteau Twins and The Wedding Present.
The music itself was self-consciously anti-commercial
and difficult to seek out.
It was really exciting. To sample it
I used to go at Piccadilly Records in Manchester on a Saturday morning,
with these slightly arrogant guys, like in 'High Fidelity' behind the counter
who would snigger if you bought the wrong thing.
But the idea that you were buying into this world,
it really felt like you were on to something
that 99% of people didn't know about.
# Grass grows greener
# On the other side
Being involved in indie music meant that you were kind of making a statement.
Which is about how honest you are
and where you feel like you fit in the world.
And being odd, and being weird and being different,
is good. Let's celebrate that.
# God spits on my soul
# there's something dead
# inside my hole
Indie, independent music, represented
almost like a membership card of the outsider gang for a lot of people too.
By listening to that music you were saying,
"No, I'm one of these guys, not one of those guys."
Of all British indie bands in the 80s,
it was The Smiths who inspired the most devotion.
Their army of fans, referred to by Morrissey as his disciples,
were the biggest outsider gang of all.
We're celibate, girls! We're celibate!
As The Smiths' popularity grew,
the band were careful to stick to modest sized venues.
Their gigs always had a sense of occasion,
with the group marching onstage to the strains of Prokofiev,
as they greeted their audience eyeball to eyeball.
There was never a barrier of, "We're up here, and you're down there."
"We're great. Listen to this. You belong down there."
Quite often there was physically no gap between the audience and the stage.
Because every night they ended up on it.
We *** sometimes
because we'd be trying to give people what they wanted.
They'd be coming back with... screaming and crying, going crazy.
And that spurred us on to give it even more.
I'm getting goose bumps now talking about it.
# Hand in glove
# The sun shines out of our behinds
# No, it's not like any other love
# This one is different - because it's us
Rather than doing like a massive stadium gig
where you're 25 ft up and you can't even see
the heads of the people in front of you,
we use to prefer the little sweaty ones,
where you can see the whites of the eyes of the audience.
# Hand in glove
# The Good People laugh
# Yes, we may be hidden by rags
# But we've something they'll never have
By 1986, The Smiths had become one of Britain's most established bands.
A deal with major label EMI had been agreed,
and the band were playing larger and larger venues in the US.
But such success brought its own pressures and doubts.
The labels were always keen to say,
"One more tour and you're gonna be the next U2."
Well, not everybody wants to be U2.
# Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
I remember when we were in America, me and Morrissey having a conversation
about how we did three nights at Universal Amphitheater,
and we were both talking about how Roxy Music and T-Rex
had never got to do that.
And we were a bit scared then, really.
It wasn't like, "Right. We're so big we've gotta split up."
'Cause we weren't that big.
But we were bigger than our heros.
In the summer of 1987,
Johnny Marr shocked both his band mates and the indie world
when he walked out of The Smiths.
I remember buying the NME that Wednesday morning
that said that The Smiths had split up, and felt... orphaned.
Like a lot of people did, "That sounds ridiculous!"
And it sounds like a very Smiths fan thing to say.
***
But they had been our lifeline.
They had been the thing that we loved through
an incredibly, uniquely miserable period in British history.
And they were our band.
# Sad veiled bride please be happy
The whole era of Manchester music was coming to an end,
and a new one just beginning.
The Smiths demise conincided with the coming of 'house' music.
A sound fuelled by the new drug of the moment, ecstasy.
In the '80s we all hunched our shoulders and thought everything was terrible.
And then people started coming back from The Hacienda
having taken this drug that everyone was talking about.
And they seemed sort of euphorically well adjusted.
A real C change, actually. The whole thing was turned on its head.
It really felt like that.
Logically we'd gone from one thing to its opposite.
It was kind of a psychedelic time, it was the second summer of love.
You couldn't really listen to acid house relentlessly all the time.
People going to raves had a great time to acid house
but still wanted guitar music and songs
they could sing along to when they were home
or they were coming back from the raves.
A new wave of Manchester groups
would give indie music a psychedelic twist.
The Stone Roses led the way.
# Chimes sing Sunday morn
# Today's the day she's sworn
# To steal what she never could own
# And race from this hole she calls home
The Stone Roses' early songs... there was a sense of The Birds.
There was a sense of that kind of west coast psychedelia.
#So good to have equalised
# To lift up the lids of your eyes
And then the other thing which The Stone Roses did
was that they had rhythms at the forefront of the music,
which again, indie bands tended not to.
It's all about the rhythms
just propelling you forward, and the momentum.
Frontman, Ian Brown, walked with a Mancunian swagger,
and surrounded himself with band mates who were equally cocky.
We always had amazing pants and great haircuts.
A bunch of absolute cheeky monkeys.
100% arrogant, self-confident,
great musicians, born to do it.
So that's what we did, man.
The Roses never apologized for their arrogance.
They declared themselves the best band in the world
and had little time for the indie music that had come before them.
Independence is a joke, innit?
No good music came out of it really.
Hardly any.
Not in England, anyway.
In 1989, The Stone Roses gave indie music
a completely fresh start.
That summer they began limiting their British performances
to one-off spectaculars.
The first of these was a legendary concert at the Empress Ballroom,
in Blackpool's Winter Gardens.
The idea of the Stone Roses playing in Blackpool was great anyway
because if you're gonna be big in a band you have to make it in London.
And The Stone Roses had always been such a Manchester band
that going to Blackpool for your day out it's such a Manchester thing, you know.
That's what you did.
Going to this big breakthrough gig in Blackpool
dragged the whole London up to it.
It's perfect.
Blackpool was a gamble.
Outside of Manchester the band had struggled to fill venues
holding just a couple of hundred people.
The Empress Ballroom held a crowd of over 3,000.
We always considered that doing gigs is a bit like
walking a tight rope.
You could fall off any moment in time.
But we just enjoyed the danger of trying to overreach ourselves
and just see exactly how far we could stretch things.
Booked places that we knew we couldn't possibly fill,
just to see if we could.
Probably about 8 or 9 coaches went down from Manchester
and I was on one of them.
And it was just a really funny experience on the way down
and then a fantastic gig.
# I don't have to sell my soul he's already in me
# I don't need to sell my soul he's already in me
The thing about Empress Ballroom was suddenly all of those kids turned up,
and they all got it, you know.
You stood there right on the cusp of a wave
of a whole new pop movement.
# I wanna be adored
The band knew they had the moment.
It wasn't just another gig.
The moment was there and the band grasped it.
# I don't have to sell my soul he's already in me
# I don't need to sell my soul he's already in me
# I wanna be adored
We set out to be the biggest band on the planet,
or in Great Britain at least.
And it was a springboard to know if we were gonna achieve
what we set out to do.
We kind of moved up a gear from playing at the smaller club things.
It was just amazing. I remember Ian had this t-shirt on
with a lot of burnt 5 pound notes on his neck.
He just commanded the stage really well.
Just the atmosphere was amazing.
I thing it's got a sprung dance floor as well there.
So everyone was bouncing up and down.
The finale of the sellout show was 'I Am the Resurrection',
the band's showstopping anthem where Ian Brown
procclaims his own divinity.
# I am the resurrection and I am the light
# I couldn't ever bring myself to hate you as I'd like
The song's instrumental climax turned the gig into an enormous rave.
That crossover with the world of dance music
was one of the great things about The Stone Roses too.
The fact that you could dance to these records in clubs as well.
That was so revolutionary.
And if you listen to the long section at the end of 'I Am the Resurrection',
it is built... and it builds up and then drops,
and it builds up and it drops like a good dance floor track does.
And it's those techniques
that are often forgotten by rock 'n roll bands and the indie bands,
the fact that you've got to give it space.
The Stone Roses seemed to be the first band to kind of
take that energy and...
get you dancing.
We were always a pretty funky band anyway.
We were the blackest white guys on the planet.
And I think we had more people dancing there
than the fucking Labour Party Conference ever did.
You know what I mean? That was our *** manifesto:
Get people out, get 'em off their tits
and give them a good night out.
Blackpool transformed The Sone Roses
into the hottest indie band in Britain.
And the big time beckoned.
What the Roses did was,
they made it look like the best thing in the world
to be a successful band.
They made it look like better than being a footballer,
better than playing for England.
Once Blackpool had happened the world was ready for them.
'What the World is Waiting for', that was The Stone Roses.
Now the media spotlight fell on Manchester
helping the careers of the Roses' contemporaries
in particular, the Happy Mondays,
and their unique brand of Northern funk.
# Don't you know he can make you forget you're the man
# You're a man
# You speak so hip, man You're twistin' my melon
For a few years, what became known as Madchester,
was the pop culture capital of Britain.
The whole of the Manchester scene in the late 80s,
that came about because of the attitude of independence.
And some of the bands that are maybe a little more forgotten from that time,
like the Inspiral Carpets for example, they were at the heart of that.
And I always loved their push, like doing it themselves,
like sticking out their own records.
It seemed to be kind of at odds with the rest of the world.
# You should learn to walk, should learn to walk before you crawl
# (HERE SHE COMES) SHE COMES IN THE FALL
# (AND YOU SHOULD LEARN) TO WALK BEFORE YOU CRAWL
# (HERE SHE COMES NOW) ARMS DANCE TOGETHER IN THE FALL
# YOU DON'T WALK, YOU CRAWL
I was working for the Inspiral Carpets in their office,
and I used to go on the road with them when I was part of their roadcrew.
And it was just... the thing about that scene,
that became known as the Manchester scene,
is nobody knew what the fuck they were doing.
Everybody was just having a great fucking time.
It was like punk, really, you know.
You were kind of part of it and things were happening
that have never happened since. It was kind of wild.
It was fucking brilliant!
The Madchester sound was soon everywhere,
and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
Young pretenders Blur
were on a record label backed by the major EMI,
who ensured that the new group had the sound of the moment.
# There's no other way
# All that you can do is watch them play
Blur were first around
when the Madchester so-called 'baggy' thing was still going on.
And fairly cynically, I think,
'There's no Other Way' had been made with that in mind.
I know that their record label were quite keen that they cashed in.
So it had this big thumping breakbeat on it.
The classic baggy... kind of rhythm.
We hated The Stone Roses at the time,
but the record company, who payed for the record and the video,
wanted to get their money back.
So they were like, "You can't have backwards drums, that's stupid.
"Get these drums like The Stone Roses
"to sell loads of records."
# There's no other way
# All that you can do is watch them play
'There's no Other Way' was a top ten hit,
but lead singer Damon Albarn,
was still a long way from finding his own voice.
The only way I could kind of explain, I suppose,
is that I wasn't ready really to be making music.
I don't think really I classed ourselves as songwriters then.
There was like one or two little... There was one or two good songs
but I just wasn't confident enough to really write.
As Blur's career was just starting
the fortunes of The Stone Roses had taken a downward turn,
caught in a web of contractual wrangling and litigation,
the band was running out of steam.
It was just horrible to be...
to have created all that momentum and get to the top of your game,
and then have the rug swept out from under your feet.
'Cause basically we were in injuncted for two and a half years,
so we couldn't do gigs, record...
We should've got a paper round, or a job at a sweetshop, might as well,
we just ended up sitting about our rears and stuff and...
There was no outlet for it so basically your momentum's lost.
Although the Roses would never recapture their early magic,
the group's legacy is still considerable.
We just wanted to be able to show people
that kids from council estates or what have you,
they can pick up guitars, they can learn, they can go on and...
grab the stars if they want.
# Your knuckles whiten on the wheel
# The last thing that your hands will feel
When the Roses came along,
the goalpost kind of shifted towards us.
Because when you see people like that onstage,
it was really fucking inspiring.
And if it wasn't for that there wouldn't have been Oasis.
Oasis were five lads from Manchester with big dreams.
In the early 90s, they could always be found rehearsing
down in the basement of the city center concert venue,
the Boardwalk.
Having the rehearsal room there and all the gear set up all the time,
was a massive thing for us and we were kind of there
five nights a week.
And even if we weren't... didn't have a gig coming up,
we'd be just writing new songs, and more importantly, just hanging out.
You know, being a band.
It was a proper, little... it was our little HQ, you know what I mean?
It was just us as a unit just gelled together.
I think the time we put in...
we developped our sound downstairs there in the Boardwalk.
And it was a real basic sound.
There was nothing contrived, so it wasn't really planned like,
"Ok, I really need my guitar to...
I wanna go for this sound, I'm gonna do that."
It was "in", turn it up, go for it.
We rehearsed next door. You'd hear them in there
doing one riff from 'I Am the Walrus' over and over, an hour, to get it right.
Noel worked that band to the ground. You'd go away for two hours,
come back and they'd still be in there... doing this riff.
He basically whipped them into shape.
# I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
# See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
# I'm crying.
'I Am the Walrus' came about 'cause we didn't have so many songs
when we were doing these gigs and we had to play for...
to earn the fucking 25 quid that you were gonna get.
To put in the van, to get on.
You had to play for half an hour.
We didn't have half an hour's worth of material.
And we figured that we'd do a cover and just make it really fucking long.
# ... I am the walrus,
# goo goo gajoob.
# Mister City P'liceman sitting
And then we just used to stretch it up.
Until someone would go...
That's it. You can finish now.
And people would say to us, "What's that last tune?"
And I replied, "I just written that yesterday."
"Fucking hell! That should be a single."
"Shut up, you tit!"
# Sitting in an English garden...
But Oasis were more than a Beatles covers band,
group leader Noel Gallagher had always written songs,
and with the band in place he was able to perfect his craft.
I think the turning point it was 'Live Forever'.
And I wrote 'Live Forever' one afternoon back in Manchester,
took it down to the rehearsal room that night...
He said, "Paul, I've got this song. Really simple chords, G, D, Em, C."
It was 'Live Forever' and he just sat and he played it.
"What do you think?" and I was like...
"Yeah. That's all right. Should we have a go at that one?"
# Maybe I don't really wanna know
# How your garden grows cos I just wanna fly
And Bonehead's still convinced to this day that I've not written that song.
We played it and he was going, "You've not... That's not yours."
And he was convinced he was gonna find it on some obscure
fucking Byrds' B side or something.
The ex roadie from Burnage had written his first classic.
# ...I dont wanna die
# Maybe I just want to breathe
# Maybe I just don't believe
# Maybe you're the same as me
# We see things they'll never see
# You and I are gonna live forever
'Live Forever' has the feeling of an anthem to it
but it's subtle and small scale, and has that feeling of...
it's got that feeling of 'Born to Run'.
It's that feeling of, "It's me and you, kid, against the world."
And through this music that we love, through what we believe in,
we're going to live forever.
In a way it's saying,
"We can do something. We can mean something."
And when they say "we", they're talking about five lads off the estate.
They're not talking about anyone with special powers,
they're not talking anyone with privileged upbringing,
they're just talking about "we", "us".
# You and I are gonna live forever
With songs like 'Live Forever' up their sleeve,
the band sensed they could go all the way.
Everybody knew what 'Live Forever' meant.
When it's like, "you and me", see things that nobody else sees.
And we're gonna fucking live forever, man.
You know... people get that.
In the summer of 1993, Noel and brother Liam
found themselver talking contracts in London
at the offices of legendary indie label, Creation Records.
I remember walking into Creation Records and scrawled
just on the woodchip wall paper,
not even sprayed, just in felt pen,
in huge letters was, "Northern Ignorants".
And that was in the reception.
I remember looking at that going, "Just fucking give me the contract, man."
"I've found my home."
The top brass at Creation were just as impressed with their new charges
and their Mancunian work ethic.
They were just good people, funny people.
And wanted to graft, you know.
I don't think... no band ever walked through that office with a plan of work.
It was, "Right. Give us some dough. We wanna goout and play live."
From the moment they signed their record deal
Oasis hit the road.
Their relentless gigging built them a following across the country
with fans soon fighting each other to be allowed in.
Basically it was just like, "Right. We're gonna get down
"and we're gonna slug it, you know, do it."
You're gonna tour from London, up to the midlands,
you're gonna do North of England, you're gonna do Scotland,
and then you're gonna go right back off without a day off.
Get back down there in the van.
Of course, 150 people two weeks ago
came out, they'd seen us, they'd heard it,
they'd told their mates, "Should've checked this band last night, Oasis."
And of course, two weeks later we'd be back.
This minibus would rolling into town with us in it.
The poster would be on the wall, Oasis were back on again.
With their fan base building and building
Noel took a decision that The Stone Roses had backed away from,
they upped stakes and moved to London.
I was living with a girl at the time,
and I said, "Well, I'm going to London. Are you coming?"
And she said, "I've got a job."
And I said, "Well, I'm out of here."
And I went initially for the weekend and never went back.
I didn't even take any of my stuff.
I think I brought my guitar and maybe an old ** full of clothes,
and that was it. I left everything.
And it just turned out that I've never been back since.
Fucking brilliant!
Gallagher's timing was perfect.
Indie music's center of gravity
had also migrated from Manchester to London,
largely down to the impact of one band.
# Well she's show showing it off then
# The glitter in her lovely eyes
# Show show showing it off then
# And all the people shake their money in time
It was one of the most exciting things I'd ever heard.
It was like the cavalry coming over the hill, Suede.
"Ah! That again!" What British groups are good at.
But more importantly, it was just stuff you could just get lost in.
# ...driving me mad, come see
# Show show showing it off then
I felt independent music just showed no ambition.
I just thought, if you were Phil Collins at the time, you'd be thinking,
"Well, that's not gonna bother me, is it?"
And that's all we wanted to do, was to have...
one of our great songs replacing the rubbish that we heard on the radio.
# She sells lips
# Oh dad, she's driving me mad, come see
Suede's frontman, Brett Anderson,
was a provocative figure who traded in dark glamour,
and sexualy ambiguous lyrics.
I'd always seen sex as something
that wasn't healthy and joyous and celebratory.
I'd always seen it as something that was sinister.
So I was trying to reflect that.
I know I was quite obsessed with this idea of having
a song that was quite sexually subversive in the top ten.
It was almost like a little challenge I had with myself.
In 1993, Suede got a chance to launch an assault on mainstream music.
The NME campaigned for the band to be allowed to play at the Brit Awards,
traditionally a showcase for British music's old guard.
Everybody who was nominated hadn't put a record out for 10 years.
It was Annie Lennox, eternally Annie Lennox,
eternally Rod Stewart, eternally Phil Collins,
and NME just launched this little campaign where we said,
"This is rubbish. We shouldn't be doing this.
"We should be representing all this new exciting music."
And effectively we made the Brits put Suede on.
They basically ambushed Suede and begged them to be on their show.
Please welcome, the already legendary, Suede.
The band performed their new single, the thrillingly sinister, 'Animal Nitrate'.
We crashed the party, that was the thing.
I don't think I've ever felt more out of place
than that time that we performed in the Brits.
It was so ridiculously corporate.
# Like his dad you know that he's had
# Animal nitrate in mind
It was kind of like, these snotty little kids
getting up there and ripping it up,
and singing a song about sex in council houses and stuff like that.
# Oh it turns you on, on, on, now he has gone
# Oh what turns you on, on, on, now your animal's gone?
I was staying at my girlfriend's house at the time, in Devon,
and the family was sitting round for dinner, and I said,
"Drop your knives and forks.
"Come through and see this. This is amazing."
And we were just gawping at the TV.
I think the audience didn't really know what to make of us.
I remember finishing the song
and just looking at this sea of tuxedoed people kind of... like this.
Which was great. It was always the point of that.
It was never our intention to play some nice, little, happy-clappy song
and make everyone smile.
Quite the opposite.
When 'Animal Nitrate' was released the following week,
it charted at #7.
Suede had got their top-ten hit.
The following month, Select magazine declared Suede
the outriders of a new wave of British indie rock.
With a cover featuring its first figurehead
superimposed on a Union Jack.
I hated it.
Absolutely hated it.
I was really angry about it.
I thought it was a really... No, it wasn't cool.
I've never wanted to be photographed in front of a flag,
and I'm always finding myself superimposed on top of fucking flags.
I just hated it.
I was offered this, the little England role, d'you know what I mean.
"You want this? Here it is. It's yours if you want it."
And I'd... You must be joking.
Suede's debut album unwittingly marked the start
of what would come to be known as Britpop.
But it was another group's sound and attitude
that would define this as a new movement.
# He's a twentieth century boy
# With his hands on the rails
# Trying not to be sick again
# And holding on for tomorrow
Blur's second album, 'Modern Life is Rubbish'
was the sound of a band reborn.
'Modern Life is Rubbish', I suppose, to try to sum it up,
was me attempting to write in a classic English vein
using imagery and words that were much more modern.
So it was a weird combination,
a quiet sort of nostalgic sounding melodies
and chord progressions by these weird caustic lyrics about
England as it was at that moment.
The way that it was getting this sort of mass americanized refit.
# She's a twentieth century girl
# With her hands on the wheel
# Trying not to make him sick again
And then suddenly you realise that within Damon's writing
here was someone who had the lyrical sharpness of Ray Davies of The Kinks,
and also the kind of psychedelic outlook of Syd Barrett and so on.
So it was like, "This is something really special."
# And we can wait until tomorrow
Damon Albarn had found a lyrical focus, Britishness,
and how it was under attack from American consumer culture.
*** was actually about these areas of England, like Essex,
where he was from, sort of caught in this cultural twilight zone,
that all this American stuff was flooding over.
So everyone was building shopping malls, like Blue Water and all these places,
and obviously McDonalds, KFC and all that.
British people sort of didn't really know where they were any more,
and were living in this sanitised, corporatised environment.
Here you have your sugars
and here, you have your culture.
I just felt that the country I lived in was very confused
and I was just another person who lived there
and I just happened to be able to express it
in a probably more blatant way than most people.
And then 'Parklife' came and then obviously
everyone felt the same way as I did.
'Parklife' was the group's third album,
with lead off single, the irrepressible 'Girls & Boys'.
As soon as the guy started to play around with it,
and playing it in the studio,
Alex put on that ridiculously funky back baseline.
# Street's like a jungle
# So call the police
It was one of those things you just felt straightaway is right.
This is definitely something we should go on with.
# Down to Greece
# On holiday -
Disco drums, Duran Duran base, nasty guitars and
singing about shagging plus it sounded great when you were drunk.
# Take your chances looking for
# Girls who are boys
# Who like boys to be girls
The chorus was just so hooky, 'Girls who like boys, who like boys...'
as soon as I heard that I just though, "This is gonna be...
"Everyone's gonna relate to this straightaway."
# Avoiding all work
# Because there's none available
# Like battery thinkers
# Count your thoughts on 1 2 3 4 5 fingers
# Nothing is wasted
'Girls & Boys' was written after Damon Albarn
witnessed the hedonism of British 18 to 30 holiday makers
while he was out in Mallorca.
# But we haven't been introduced
# Girls who are boys
# Who like boys to be girls
# Who do boys like they're girls
That was written 'cos I had spent a night in Magalluf in Mallorca,
and the next night in Deiŕ, which is a totally different atmosphere.
But I just sort of, for fun,
I find it easy to go between the two.
# Always should be someone you really love
He's watched these crowds of young holiday makers
getting drunk and having sex with each other,
and he's drawn to it
but he's also absolutely appalled by it at the same time.
It's a kind of desire and also disgust.
Half of me would really would like to get in there right in the middle of it.
# Always should be someone you really love
The poppinness of 'Girls & Boys' broadened Blur's appeal
and helped 'Parklife' make its way to the top of the album charts.
Overnight 'Parklife' revolutionises
not just their fortunes, but started to revolutionise British indie music.
We're talking now No. 1 albums, No. 1 records,
your face all over the TV, all over the newspapers,
it crosses over in such a massive way.
Times were changing,
and when it was Parklife's turn at the Brits,
Blur weren't just invited to play
but also walked off with four awards.
Blur and 'Parklife'!
The winner of Best British Single goes to Blur, 'Parklife'.
Blur, Parklife!
And ladies and gentlemen, the winner are...
Blur!
In their moment of triumph, there was one other band
that Damon Albarn felt he ought to recognise.
Very good!
This should have been...
I think this should have been shared with Oasis.
Much love and respect to them.
'Definitely Maybe', the debut album from Oasis,
had followed four months after 'Parklife'.
A perfect distillation of their casual genius,
it connected with an audience that lay far outside the indie getho.
There was no one else doing it at the time.
No one was out there with guitars as a band... as a gang, really,
and sort of talking and playing from the heart.
And singing about things that people were feeling.
All songs on that Album are Noel's best, really.
# I'd like to be somebody else and not know where I've been
# I'd like to build myself a house out of plasticine
# Shake along with me
With songs like 'Live Forever' and 'Cigarettes and Alcohol'
Oasis had crafted an album that captured the spirit of the 1990s,
yet worshipped at the altar of rock history.
The key to Oasis is they are
the sound of every great moment of British pop rolled into one.
'Cigarettes and Alcohol'.
They're Slade and The Kinks... you can find even a bit of Bowie,
The Who pulls in there a few times.
It's kind of got the melody to The Beatles and the power of the Pistols,
and it's got Liam to sing that sneer of John Lydon,
the coolness of The Stone Roses.
# Is it worth the aggravation
# To find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?
It had that sort of "devil-may-care" irresponsibility about it.
'Is it worth the aggravation
to find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?'
It's just brilliant.
That's the stuff that will make 100,000 jump up and down.
'Cause he's singing about you.
It's not ***, it's not Leonard Cohen,
it's Oasis, it's a gig. All it's fun, it's like
punch the air, get whacked, life's great.
Sore head the next day.
# You might as well do the white line
# Cos when it comes on top...
# You gotta make it happen!
Songs like 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' will last forever.
You could recite those words and it's not fucking poetry but
it applies to every 16 year-old in every generation.
'Cos really all you need is a bit of action.
And some fucking fags and booze, and that's it. You're having it.
# I wanna do great things
# I don't wanna compromise
By now, Campden Town, home of britpop
was host to one enormous party.
For the first time probably since '76,
when The Clash and The Pistols and people were hanging out,
you could walk down virtually any street in London
and bump into a pop star.
And by a pop star I mean somebody who'd been on 'Top of the Pops' that week.
You could go in any pub in Campden and know that you could buy a drink
for somebody who'd been on Top of the Pops
and whose records you had bought. It was amazing.
Good evening. We're Pulp.
Hello. We're Elastica.
# Than you can count the bullets in a war
# Oh what do I know
# There's gotta be so much I don't know
It was just a celebration of being young and it was an unwritten thing,
you feel it, you can't put your finger on it,
but you know it's fucking great.
It was just people out on the streets.
Saturday nights in Campden were amazing.
And the summer was great.
The summer of 94 and 95 were amazing.
I don't think it rained once.
I sorted that out.
# I wanna know what love is,
# Is it something I do to myself,
# Something I do to myself.
*** Rock 'n roll of the fucking 90s
Forget the 60s, forget the past.
Indie music was no longer about being outside the mainstream,
it was the mainstream.
They were appealing right across the board.
To all the students, to all the guys that were working on building sites
and in vans around the country.
And their records were going multi-platinum.
No one had heard of this before. That was the domain of Celine Dion,
and Tina Turner and Phil Collins. It was unheard of.
And suddenly *** "I should know"
this kind of alternative music, the stuff that we'd always been working on,
and always thought was a kind of secondary, if not third, market
has now become the premier market.
It's what people want to listen and buy.
If there was any doubt about how far indie music had come,
it was all made clear in the week of August the 14th, 1995.
Another battle. Two of Britain's most popular pop groups
have begun the biggest chart war in 30 years.
The Manchester band Oasis, and their archrivals Blur
released new singles today,
each hoping to reach the #1 spot next week.
The music history hasn't seen anything like it
since The Beatles fought it out with the Rolling Stones in the '60s.
We bumped into Oasis in London at some launch party,
and at the time the relationship between the bands wasn't that bad.
So Blur went along.
I remember Liam coming up to Damon and right in his face,
"Fucking #1", and Damon was like, "Wow!".
And the guy was being quite aggressive.
And I think Damon felt, "Well... Let's see."
# City dweller
# Successful fella
# Thought to himself:
# "Oops, I've got a lot of money
Damon... Bless him! He don't like not being
fated as the greatest living songwriter in England.
He can't stand that.
And, of course, he wasn't at the time and I was.
And he wanted a bit of the action.
And, to be honest, he's a very clever dude
because we're still sat here, how many years now,
and still talking about the Blur-and-Oasis thing.
And, you know what annoys me the most about it all?
It's Blur and Oasis, why did they got to be put first?
It's fucking Oasis and Blur.
For fuck's sake!
But, you know, hats off to him for that.
The battle lines were drawn over the songs 'Country House' and 'Roll with it'.
Indie music, which had one set its face against commercialism,
was using sales figures to decide who was top dog.
The point is, the Blur-Oasis war signified where this music had gone.
If you'd imagine that happening seven years before, it never would.
No one would have gone in and said,
"Let's do The Smiths V The Wedding Present for the king of the indie crown."
It just wouldn't have happened.
It would've been seen as being crass and kind of hucksterish,
and all a bit of a swindle.
# But you know I think I recognize your face
# But I've never seen you before
# You gotta roll with it
# You gotta take your time
# You gotta say what you say
# Don't let anybody get in your way
# 'Cause it's all too much for me to take
I suppose it was just a way of upping the ante.
With 'Parklife' we'd swept the board at the Brits,
and you need this ongoing momentum.
That's important, you know, success is a function of success
and it needs to be seen getting bigger and bigger. That's important.
Hello, we're Blur. We're #1
and we're gonna be camping out later on Top of the Pops.
It was all good fun, weren't it?
# I'm a professional cynic
# But my heart's not in it
# I'm paying the price of living life at the limit
# Caught up in the century's anxiety"
# Yes, it preys on him
# He's getting thin (Try the simple life)
# He lives in a house
# A very big house
# In the country
It was Blur who won the race to #1
but the Oasis camp weren't at all shaken.
The band's second album had been completed
and those that heard it knew that the game wasn't over.
I was quite proud of it, though, in one way, I suppose, as well.
Even though we came second.
'Cause I knew we were just gonna do 'em on the album.
Just beat 'em to bits on the album.
So it was like, "*** we're gonna sell more."
The songs on 'What's the Story, Morning Glory'
saw the group move away from the raw sound of their debut.
What happened with the second Oasis album
was that Noel began to take seriously being the voice of a generation,
or the lyricist of a generation.
And started to self-consciously write anthems.
He wanted the music to be bigger.
Of all the anthems on the album,
one song would come to define the new Oasis.
My earliest memory of 'Wonderwall' was...
There was these drums accoustic **, a guide base that Noel had put down.
And to hear it stripped down like that it really sounded as a reggae song.
It's got a real reggae feel to it.
I remember Liam coming in like, "What's?! I'm not singing on that.
"It's like a reggae song." And Noel was like, "Well, it's not a reggae song.
"When I've finished it, it's drums, base and guitar. Chill out."
So this big argument. Liam storming out.
That's my earliest memory, really, of the song.
Liam running and saying he's not playing reggae songs.
# Today is gonna be the day
# That they're gonna throw it back to you
# By now you should've somehow
# Realized what you gotta do
# I don't believe that anybody
# Feels the way I do about you now
# Backbeat, the word is on the street
# That the fire in your heart is out
# I'm sure you've heard it all before
# But you never really had a doubt
# I don't believe that anybody
# Feels the way I do about you now
I don't know why that song...
kind of took on a life of its own.
You have to ask somebody that likes it.
I think it's a really good song. I wish I'd written it.
Great song. Great vocals on it. It's a good voice, Liam.
I think that's their finest moment.
# Because maybe
# You're gonna be the one that saves me
# And after all
# You're my wonderwall
It wasn't called Wonderwall for a fucking long, long time.
It was called something appalling like "Wishing Stone", or something stupid.
There it was, the George Harrison film.
Brilliant.
What's a "wonderwall"? Who cares?
It sounds great.
# I don't believe that anybody
# Feels the way I do about you now
'Wonderwall' brought Oasis an entirely new fan base,
most of whom had never bought an indie record before in their life.
The squares got involved.
And when the squares get involved with your music,
you fucking become massive.
Seriously.
'Wonderwall' is not an edgy tune, is it?
I can't believe how many records it sold.
It was incredible.
I became a millionaire four times in one week.
One week.
# And after all
# You're my wonderwall
And Damon Albarn told stories
that he would go out to the pub, or into a shop, or whatever.
And as soon as people saw him they'd either start singing Oasis songs,
or they put one on the stereo.
It just became inescapable.
# And after all
# You're my wonderwall
And then six months later, Damon and all that lot were saying,
"This is fucking hard. I've got people shouting at me in the streets.
"And everywhere I go into a pub someone puts an Oasis..."
Well... That's what it fucking is, man.
That's how fucking hot it is in the kitchen.
Those nancy boy all got a bit fucking freaked out by fame.
Went to a priory, and rehab, and all got psychiatrists and all that.
I kept going straight back to the bar.
We were just fucking having it.
'What's the Story' propelled Oasis
into the orbit of stadium rock acts such as U2.
Having sold out indoor arenas and then football stadiums,
they were soon running out of venues that could contain them.
And so in early 1996,
Noel Gallagher found himself traveling up the drive to Knebworth.
A concert venue synonymous with the biggest names in rock.
Noel came back and said, "You wanna see the size of this site.
"It's huge, but we're gonna do it."
We were confident we could do it.
I didn't know what to expect of it.
It was like, "Ok, we're gonna do this huge, big gig in a great, big field."
"How many does that hold?" "It's like 125,000 people."
"And we're gonna do two nights? That's a quarter of a million people."
And it was just like, "My God!"
It was decided that we were gonna do it,
and I was like, "Right. If we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it properly.
"It's gonna be all day. It's gonna be a festival.
"It's gonna be a fair ground
"and we're gonna get the best bands that there is around at the minute."
Do it fucking properly.
Not just print a load of tickets and hope everybody turns up.
Just to make it an event. And make a statement.
It was just beyond...
I think there was actually ticket applications for the concert,
there was about 2.7 million ticket applications.
We could have sold night after night after night after night.
They had the anthems for it. They had the Wanderwalls and stuff.
And it felt like a huge mass coming together for the nation.
So you had grown men with their arms around each other,
crying and hugging each other singing along to songs
in a mass communal field.
People wanted to be part of a mass communal successful thing.
They wanted to feel big, and they wanted to feel successful.
'Champagne Supernova'.
From the start, Knebworth was all about setting records.
The group's management boasted that the PA system and video screens used
were the largest ever constructed.
I had a set of amplifiers that when we played the gig
it was officially louder than a rocket.
A rocket when it takes off it's 104dB.
I had a fucking amp rig that was 108.
This is only three years after fucking being in the Boardwalk.
Three years!!
That's how fucking mad it got.
# How many special people change?
# How many lives are living strange?
# Where were you while we were getting high?
# Slowly walking down the hall
# Faster than a cannonball
# Where were you while we were getting high?
# Someday you will find me
# Caught beneath the landslide
# In a champagne supernova in the sky
Even the best technology available
struggled to cope with the sheer scale of the event.
The place was so big that when you heard some music
it was after they'd sung it on the screen.
That's how big it was.
It was a fairly unsatisfactory experience for most people, I think.
You couldn't get hardly anywhere near the stage.
I remember being half a mile away or something like that,
it was as close as we could get.
And when Oasis were playing 'Wonderwall',
there was a load of people standing around us that were singing along
on their shoulders and people **
# Today is gonna be the day
# That they're gonna throw it back to you
# By now you should've somehow
# Realized what you're not to do
And all I could hear around was a load of cockneys going,
"And after all, you're my wonderwall."
And I was standing there like, "Look, I prefer Liam's version actually."
# And after all
It wasn't what we were about. We were like the band of the people.
People could relate to us.
That's exactly what I couldn't relate to.
If I was a kid out there standing at the back just squinting
by the delay towers, I'd just... I think, well,
it's not the same band we saw at our city a couple of years ago.
Brilliant. I'm sure it was all spine-tingling.
It was for me up there but...
I don't think we should've done it.
They're supposed to be working class lads.
Why don't they ***
Lower the prices a bit.
Once the fans had left and the clear up of the site began,
it became clear that Oasis had taken indie music
as far as it was possible to go.
I suppose Oasis at Knebworth is like, if we're going to say,
this is as big as it got. It sort was of like... I don't know,
the last days of the Roman Empire, isn't it.
It's how far has indie come, you know what I mean,
they could play that gig, which I believe is something like
the biggest single, concert audience that's ever been on British soil.
Something like that.
And for an indie band... and at that point you'd just start to think,
these terms now are meaningless.
By definition an indie band cannot play to 200,000 people.
I think there was a general feeling the next week that, "Well. That's it.
"What next?"
Playing a riff at Buckingham Palace?
The Britpop years saw indie music move out of specialists record shops
and onto the shelves of supermarkets.
From now on, it would be a 'catch-all' term,
for the sound of mainstream British rock.
There was a sense of market chasing after a while.
That if setting on an accoustic guitar,
playing a redemptive ballad like 'Wonderwall',
seemed to be the surest route to making
125,000 people stick their cigarette lighters in the air,
and 2 million buying your album,
then everybody started to do it.
And you got this very, very insipid records.
They're quite nice but,
' Why Does It Always Rain On Me?' by Travis,
or those early Embrace singles.
I mean, Coldplay, a little bit further down the line,
I would associate with all this.
# Look how they shine for you
# And everything you do
# Yeah they were all yellow
Like anything that's exciting, it gets commercialised.
It happened to every single movement, from hippy to punk,
to acid house and to indie.
All of a sudden people in boardrooms
see that kids are buying records
and will move in on that territory and sanitise it and commertialise it,
and take its soul away.
Jamie Oliver's Cookin', music to cook by.
It's a sweet album of 18 modern anthems including
The Manic Street Preachers, The Charlatans and La's.
It's music to cook by, music to eat by,
and music to have a laugh by.
# So have a nice day
# Have a nice day
# So have a nice day
# Have a nice day
The millenium came and went,
and the party in Campden was well and truly over.
For a genuinely maverick band,
it was harder than ever to get a record deal.
We used to get to Blur's record label,
every day with a new demo tape.
I think we were the laughingstock of the office really.
"I'll see what I can do. Yeah, leave it with me.
"I'll get back to you. Don't push it. I'll get back to you."
That kind of reaction. So we did that for a long time, really.
And it was almost enough to lose faith.
Then the old band fell apart and me and Pete put a new band together.
And we just decided that it was death or glory.
The Libertines, a gang of renegades
led by Pete Doherty and Carl Barât
would be the first British group to bring indie music back down to earth.
# It's all so rudimentary
# but tell me baby how does it feel
# I know you like the roll of the limousine wheel
# And they all get them out for (they all get them out)
# The boys in the band (only for the boys in the band)
# They twist and they shout for (twist and scream and shout)
# For the boys in the band (only for the boys in the band)
There's great bands and then there's fucking great bands
that change the way people wear clothes and talk and speak and affect things.
That's why The Libertines connected with people.
Because there was a void after Oasis.
The Oasis generation kind of moved on.
And the new one pops up,
and they were even more fucking mental than we were.
Our kind of going out, cigaretes and alcohol, a bit of coke,
a bit... some pills and fucking having it till 7 AM,
turned into heroin and crack, and... self harm.
# And they all get them out for (they all get them out)
# For The boys in the band (only for the boys in the band)
They say Oasis is the sound of a council estate singing its heart out,
then The Libertines was the sound someone who is like...
a bit just been put in the bin chute down the back of the estate,
just trying to work out what day it was.
# Everybody goes...
And they were great to watch.
They used to throw out little fist fights onstage,
bang into each other.
They could barely hold the music together but it was great by the same token,
because it was kind of unhinged.
Everyone in the band were just singing and playing
like it's the last time of their lives.
And that's how it felt to me to be in the band, doing that.
And I think that definitely rubbed off,
and it was felt by the fans and that's what made so many of these gigs special.
# Everybody goes...
# The boy looked at Johnny
# Said "Don't you know who I think I am"
Like The Smiths before them,
Libertines' concerts were based around a sweaty and direct interaction
between band and audience.
They completely broke down the barriers between a band and fans.
The thing with The Libertines is from day 1 it was a communal thing.
And they had this thing, you know, anybody could be a Libertine,
it doesn't matter whether you're in the band or not,
if you want to be a Libertine, all you have to do is declare it,
and you can be part of this thing that's going on.
The intimacy that the band offered did have a cost.
The Libertines had a unique method of testing the loyalty of fans.
We used to line them up and have a word around
and take them down a tattoo parlour and brand them.
Just in case they were fickle.
So there's a few of them knocking about.
And there's a few of them knocking about.
The band's connection with their growing fan base
didn't just take place at their concerts,
it also happened online.
After a while it turned out that we could just
go on the Internet at midnight and there were people talking.
Essentially they talked about us.
So in my point of view
that was something which we loved the money to milk.*
And we sort of got on and, "Eh, it's me."
The Libertines pioneered new ways for bands to use the Internet.
Not least when they posted invites
the last minutes singalongs on their website.
# For to spend our money along with Sally Brown
# Shipped on board off a Liverpool liner
Such gigs would take place in pub backrooms,
or at the houses of fans, or even more extraordinary locations.
They played a gig in their own house.
They advertised it on the Internet and said,
"Come tomorrow. We're playing a gig at our house."
This was actually after they'd played this tour, ** 2,000 people of this tour.
They came and advertise it.
Nobody believed it. Why would anyone play a gig in their own house?
It's insane!
Yeah, sure. A few quid, you just get the audience in a caf*,
whack it up, teners on the door tonight, and so last minute gigging,
work our half an hour set,* clear the flat and then
you can pay your rent and your grocery bills.
I'd have paid a tenner to go on Noel Gallagher's house
and see him play but apparently he's a bit moody.
Not everyone thought that 'Guerrilla' gigs were a good idea.
I'm one of your neighbours, and I'm sick of your bloody noise,
just like all the other neighbours around here.
Of course, a couple ** in and broke ** at the end
But even that would turn into a magnificent gesture,
because as the police are running up the stairs,
Pete and Carl look at each other and they start singing
'Guns of Brixton' by The Clash.
# When they kick out your front door
# How you gonna come?
# With your hands on your head
Whose place is this?
This was it. It was not about marketing
nor about the Britpop style of, you know, you pose, you get up onstage,
you sneer a bit and then you're done.
This was genuine.
Same time next week.
The group were happy to play up to their lawless image,
but when Doherty's rock 'n roll lifestyle started to spin out of control,
it led to tensions within the band.
The band became difficult.
Pete was into drugs, what he was into, that's common knowledge.
His emotions were always up and down
and I was genuinely worried for his health as well. If not anything else.
And then he started telling me that he was doing crazier and crazier things.
Which were dangerous, dangerous things.
It's not like I don't know how to enjoy myself,
but that's just the way I am and I've become immune to
everything else. I can't afford to...
I can't afford to worry about what other people think too much.
The Libertines' second album would be their last.
The opening song
was an explicit portrait of a band in the process of splitting up,
and possibly their finest moment.
# An ending fitting for the start
# You twist ...
I fucking can't remember it.
Sorry about that.
# An ending fitting for the start
# You twist and tore our love apart
# Your light fingers threw the dart
# Shattered the lamp into darkness it cast us...
# No, you've got it the wrong way round
# You cut me out and tried to blame it on the brown
# Cornered the boy kicked out at the world,
# The world kicked back a lot fuckin' harder...
# If you wanna try, If you wanna try
# There's no worse you could do (oh oh oh)
It's a bit like a Becket-like piece of dialogue.
This grand dramatic statement of intent on both Carl and mines's part,
but really it was just like a little play for today.
# You can't stand me now (Oh, you can't stand me now)
# You can't stand me now (No, you can't stand me now)
I remember exactly where I was in the NME office when we got the CD in,
and we listened to it and, me and everyone else who was listening
couldn't believe that they'd laid there this tension
that everybody knew was going on.
# You tried to pull the wool, I wasn't feeling too clever
# And you take all that they're lending
# Until you needed mending...
*** in the Internet.
It didn't feel like there was anybody who didn't know how exactly
how things were all along.
It also felt like it was everyone else's business as well,
since everyone was talking about it anyways.
So, if you're not gonna put truth in song,
then what else to put anyway, what are you gonna put in there?
# I'll take you anywhere you wanna go!
# Oh, you can't stand me now (No, you can't stand me now)
# You can't stand me now (Oh, you can't stand me now)
# You can't stand me now (No, you can't stand me now)
Sometimes you just realise you're singing is
some of the saddest things that you'll be ever be able to sing.
It was *** so hard.
** a lyric like a knife. It's already come out of your heart*
and now you stick it in ***, and pull it all out.
It's bound to **
Yeah, it was a very awkward song to sing.
I remember once Pete thought I looked at him funny during that song,
and he put down his guitar... no, he threw down his guitar, ***
and then run out down the high street...
out the back door.
So it did kind of get to be a fever pitch.
The Libertines finally imploded in 2004,
but not before they paved the way
for a new generation of young British rock bands
starting to break through.
Like most influential bands,
The Libertines started off as a solitary voice.
So yes, quite rightly everybody said "Let's all run that way."
And they did.
We're Arctic Monkeys and this is 'I bet you look good on the dance floor'.
Don't believe the hype.
You can clearly draw a line from Libertines to The Arctic Monkeys,
they sound quite alike.
The Arctic Monkeys sing in a colloquial voice from the North of England,
but to some extent it's the same kind of idea.
# Stop making the eyes at me,
# I'll stop making the eyes at you
# And what it is that surprises me
# is that I don't really want you to
# And your shoulders are frozen (cold as the night)
# Oh, but you're an explosion (you're dynamite)
# Your name isn't Rio, but I don't care for sand
# And lighting the fuse might result in a bang, b-b-bang, go!
# I bet that you look good on the dancefloor
# I don't know if you're looking for romance or
# I don't know what you're looking for
Now we seem a long, long way away from britpop
and bands that are coming through now are looking back at a time when
indie music and rock music didn't expect to sell out stadia.
Just expected to make a statement and reflect life
and be oppositional.
# I wish you'd stop ignoring me,
# because it's sending me to despair
# Without a sound, yeah, you're calling me,
# and I don't think it's very fair
# That your shoulders are frozen (cold as the night)
# Oh, but you're an explosion (you're dynamite)
Groups like The Arctic Monkeys, that's what they're about,
they're about starting all over again.
# I bet that you look good on the dancefloor
# I don't know if you're looking for romance or
# I don't know what you're looking for
By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century
a new age of rock was getting under way.
Guitar sales and concert attendance were up,
and key bands such as Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand
could be found on the same independent record label.
Independent labels give the bands
space to be as weird and freakish as they naturally would be.
And that's the case with us, you know,
we're a bunch of feaks and that's why we sound they way we do.
And really glad to be, as well.
I hate to be bland.
# When I woke up tonight
# I said I'm gonna make somebody love me
# I’m Gonna make somebody love me
# And now I know, now I know,
# Now I know that it's you
# You’re Lucky, lucky, you're so lucky
This was a diverse scene,
one that happily drew from the best of art rock, punk and indie.
# Well do ya, do ya, do ya wanna
# Wanna go...
For those in the thick of it
British rock could still be sharp and dynamic.
It's hard to really say when you're involved in it.
It is in a great state but it just comes natural to us.
I think if we were 17, we'd think it was the best time of our lives
because of loads of great bands.
But also the best thing is that they're not just doing the same formula.
No, nothing sounds the same.
Like what happened when at the *** and the britpop
when everything was the same.
# She does not listen
# She’s too wrapped up with all of her things
# This does not get to me
# Cause shes not the kind of girl that I like
The radio is full of great songs
and there's more attendance at concerts than ever before.
This is probably the greatest, most healthy time for British music.
Probably since punk. Probably since 1976-77.
Today's bands are playing a music
that comes with nearly half a century of history behind it.
Rock is now like other art forms
where innovation happens under the influence of what has gone before.
For most of its history the best of this music
was incontestably new.
It was innovative unquestionably.
When the Beatles recorded 'Tomorrow never knows'
using all those tape loops
nobody had heard anything like that before.
When the Velvet Underground recorded 'Venus in Furs' with a droning viola
nobody had ever heard a rock record like that before.
It's difficult, clearly, after all that history,
with all those CDs in the re-issue racks in the shop,
to make music which is unquestionably original.
Actually, in the minds of the people making it, this is not a problem.
If you're creating something, whether it's music or art or writing,
whatever you're doing, you are going to be affected by what's gone before you.
And to try and pretend that that's not the case is...
insincere and artifitial.
# So if you're lonely
# You know I'm here waiting for you
# I'm just a crosshair
I think, for me it's much healthier
to be able to acknowledge what's come before
and then try to do something different with it.
So you can listen to something and go,
"Wow! That makes me feel was so excited."
Or... I know that when we do our music together
there are reference points
and you do sort of talk about things. But we never really talk about...
sounds or tunes, it's more like the way that record makes you feel.
# I know I won't be leaving here with you
Now, over 40 years on,
rock hasn't lost the power to excite and challenge.
It has provided the youth of every generation since 1960s
with its own heroes and soundtrack.
Once the domain only of the young,
it now belongs to us all.
I think now it's part of our DNA, it's kind of encoded in us.
So when I see a great new band that I like
I remember how great it was when I first heard The Smiths.
It's been knocking around ** to be like film,
a kind of theater of dreams.
An escapist thing that can go through your life.
And you can get older now and not put it down.
It may not be necessarily a good thing, but we're all in it together.
So you get 15 year-olds and their dads
talking about the Franz Ferdinand records.
And there will be some purists who'll just say,
"That's not how it should be, man." But that's how it is.
# If I move this could die
# Come on...
# take me out!
Transcription and synchronisation by Fry.