Until very recently, to the average Oasis fan, the words “Liam Gallagher” and “MTV Unplugged” brought to mind one of the more infamous — and bleakly hilarious — episodes in the band’s storied existence.
For most of 1996, the reigning kings of Britpop were taking a long, debauched victory lap after the release of their mega-catchy 1995 blockbuster “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” Oasis’s endless summer culminated in August at Knebworth House, an enormous open-air venue where it played two back-to-back shows for 125,000 people a night. (A record-breaking 2.5 million people requested tickets.) A few weeks later, the band was booked to play a considerably more intimate gig: the 2,700-seat Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, for an episode of MTV’s stripped-down performance series.
Rehearsals were rocky, with the lead singer Liam showing up only sporadically — unshaven, wearing the same clothes for several days, and pointing at his throat before walking off the set and leaving his songwriting brother Noel to finish singing his songs. On the night of the taping, about an hour before the band took the stage, Liam officially backed out, citing laryngitis. Still, the show went on: “Liam ain’t going to be with us tonight,” Noel told the crowd, “so you’re stuck with the ugly four.”
Noel’s voice doesn’t quite have the range of his younger brother’s — it’s more plaintive, sincere and occasionally wobbly — but he was more than up to the task of fronting Oasis for the night. There was something poignant about it, listening to Noel brush up against his limitations as a vocalist but also connecting with these great songs in the manner he must have wrote them, sitting there unassumingly with his acoustic guitar.
Oasis’s “MTV Unplugged” remains a classic of the series, not just because of Noel’s last-minute feat, but because Liam’s throat had apparently healed enough for him to catch the show from the balcony, where he chain-smoked, chugged beer and heckled his own brother. It was sublime television: The entire Shakespearean rivalry of the Gallaghers, condensed into a single performance.
That rivalry continues to rage. Since Noel quit Oasis in 2009, he and his brother have developed dueling solo careers. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have taken the more avant-garde path, with their most recent album “Who Built the Moon?” experimenting with arty psychedelia.
First with his group Beady Eye and, since 2017, more effectively as a solo artist, Liam has been teaming up with other songwriters to make music that conjures the full-throated spirit of ’90s Britpop. “I still don’t trust meself as a songwriter,” Liam told Rolling Stone earlier this year, with an admirable acceptance of his own limitations. “So I like handing them over to people who know what they’re doing. I could write an album, but I don’t think it would get on the radio, you know what I mean? I want people to hear it.”
He certainly had a captive audience at Hull City Hall last summer, when Gallagher, at last, recorded his very own episode of “MTV Unplugged.” Hilariously, the description on his own website reads, “Liam Gallagher joined the list of all-time greats (Paul McCartney, Page and Plant, Nirvana and many more) who have filmed a prestigious MTV Unplugged session,” never missing a subtle opportunity to shade his own brother. Between nearly every song, the crowd breaks into a rowdy chat of, “Liam! Liam!” as though it were a championship soccer match.
Liam’s two solo albums, “As You Were” from 2017 and “Why Me? Why Not.” two years later, feature serviceable songs penned largely by the in-demand pop songwriters Greg Kurstin and Andrew Wyatt (Adele, Lady Gaga), though they’re often coated in studio flourishes that sand down the jagged edges of Gallagher’s distinctive voice. The arrangements on “MTV Unplugged” are occasionally overstuffed with stately “Eleanor Rigby” strings, but I prefer them to much of the studio material, since they’re airy enough to allow the unvarnished snarl of Gallagher’s voice to come through loud and clear.
When Oasis first arrived on the scene in 1994 with “Definitely Maybe,” British rock music hadn’t heard a more consequential sonic sneer since Johnny Rotten, and the brothers’ back story only confirmed a tension already evident in their music: Liam’s can’t-be-bothered vocal tone made him sound at war with the very words and melodies he was singing. Still, something about his voice also conveyed just the right tinge of stubbornly sincere hope: “You and I are gonna live forever.”
Gallagher’s most potent solo songs, though, grapple with the fact that he will not. An “Unplugged” highlight is the Wyatt-penned “Once,” a weary ballad about life catching up with you. “When the dawn came up, you felt so inspired to do it again,” Liam sings of his youthful, carefree days. “But it turns out, you only get to do it once.”
Still — do I even need to say it? — the crowd, and the record, comes alive most when Gallagher indulges in some old Oasis classics. Because “Unplugged” is generally considered a serious affair, the set list leans heavily on the down-tempo, like the “Morning Glory” cut “Cast No Shadow” and the “Definitely Maybe” B-side “Sad Song,” one of the few early Oasis songs on which Noel sang lead. (Liam brings out former Oasis rhythm guitarist Bonehead for a guest appearance on these tracks, before making the night’s sole reference to the Great Heckling of ’96, dedicating “Once” to “Bonehead, who gets to do ‘MTV Unplugged’ … twice.”)
Best of all are a piano-driven rendition of “Some Might Say” and a closing singalong of “Champagne Supernova,” its run time cut down by a few minutes without its soaring solo (both Noel and Paul Weller played guitar on the track).
Liam might not be able to write a timeless tune, but the man can certainly tweet. In recent months, the missives from his timeline have evolved from a yearslong joke about his brother being a potato to some cryptic if earnest-seeming requests to get the old band back together. And while no one would force Noel to once again be in a band with someone he’s called “a man with a fork in a world of soup,” in these long summer months without live music, one can, and will, dream impossible dreams.
Might Liam and Noel ever share the stage again? How many special people change?
Source: Music - nytimes.com
