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With a 25th anniversary reissue coming later this month, Live4ever looks back on ‘Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants’ and the second coming of Oasis.
To get personal for a moment, Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants will always hold a special place in this writer’s heart.
It was the first studio album released by Oasis since an obsession had grown out of nowhere as those teenage years began and all those things that come to define adolescence – not least your new favourite band – had suddenly started to feel extremely important.
And isn’t that the point anyway with reissues such as this one, set to come exactly twenty-five years to the day since its original release?
Albums and bands are packed with memories of your own experiences, of signposts in life that mean nothing to anyone else but yourself and the select few who might have shared them with you.
It’s the train of thought which can make art criticism of any kind seem like a needless endeavour; if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what’s the point of paying any attention to what a stranger is looking at?
That does however ignore the objectivity that exists just as potently in those worlds; if you prefer Dude Where’s My Car? to Chinatown that’s your bag, but don’t be surprised if people are leaving the table and looking for someone else to talk to.
The chasm between those who ‘got’ it and those who didn’t was always wider when it came to Oasis than most other bands, and as a new millennium dawned and we were relieved to find all the computers still dialling up the same as they had at one minute to midnight, the message board chatter was already ablaze with those welcoming back the biggest British band of the 90s, and those wondering what the point of Oasis 2.0 actually was.
It was a discussion which would continue for the next nine years, the band emerging here with new guitarists Gem Archer and Andy Bell after the departures of founding members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan, the former during dry sessions in the south of France, the latter soon after.
In that studio with new producer Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, the aim was to grow up a bit, for a more mature sound to emerge following the overblown racket of Be Here Now two years or so earlier, like the morning after a particularly heavy night before when you vow to never do it again.
Noel Gallagher, who in the intervening years had kicked an increasingly damaging cocaine habit on bed rest and Billy Connolly videos, was keen on reinvention.
Out with the booze and drugs more symbolically went the Oasis decca logo, and rumours were abound of songwriting inspired by collaborations with The Chemical Brothers and Goldie being the driving force behind this their fourth album.
First emerging from the chateau was Go Let It Out, in the end without a boot in either camp; not the ‘classic’ Oasis sound of old nor the reinvention the NME letters pages had spent months gossiping about.
It was though a very strong return, undoubtedly contemporary with its Beta Band influence and another irresistible lead single from a band who never released a bad one.
Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants followed a few weeks later into a music world unrecognisable from the one which its predecessor had gripped for a few summer weeks in 1997.
The digital streaming age we now live in, with music a disposable commodity the masses value less than a grande Caffe Mocha, had been heralded by illegal downloading and P2P services, Lars Ulrich attempting to hold back the tsunami by taking some 1s and 0s to court throughout the 2000 summer.
The UK’s rock scene too was in a barren desert of skater-clad nu-metallers from the other side of the Atlantic crunching hollow guitars and belching lyrics which meant nothing to anyone who hadn’t felt asphalt melting under their feet during a Los Angeles heatwave.
Its own bands meanwhile were stuck in a middle-of-the-road coma singing about rain, lamp posts and wireless radios; everything serene, mid-paced, arms-round-a-stranger-at-Glastonbury after the Britpop hedonism of the mid-90s.
Indeed, Britpop was somebody else’s scene – an older sibling’s, those a few years up in school – us younger ones getting our teenage kicks instead from big beat, dance and Eminem.
It’s no wonder we had to look back, why Oasis so enraptured the first removed generation. By the end of 2000, The Strokes were here to save us, they were ours, but in February all we still had was Oasis.
If the Gallagher brothers – both new fathers by the time Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants’ post-release tour kicked off at the Yokohama Arena – were still keen on some serenity of their own when they hit the road, it didn’t last long.
Enjoying some unexpected dressing room downtime in Barcelona, another of the countless insignificant squabbles turned toxic, Noel Gallagher yet again walking off tour and the official line stating he would no longer be playing overseas with the band.
That did mean he was back for the UK stadiums, the concerts in Bolton, London and Edinburgh beginning a trend which would come to define Oasis 2.0, Liam’s drunken performance live to the nation on the second night at Wembley proof that any intentions of serenity had long been left behind.
Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants would define Oasis 2.0 in the studio too. Along with Go Let It Out was another undoubted career highlight in Gas Panic!, moody, atmospheric and along with Where Did It All Go Wrong? or Roll It Over lyrically hinting at a hangover-induced comedown of a record which could have given it and the band at this time a true purpose if only the concept had been fully seized.
Instead, it’s a familiar story of inconsistency, missed opportunity and half-realised ideas.
It remains the best produced record in Oasis’ back catalogue, ‘Spike’ Stent getting to grips with the band musically in the studio in a way in which no-one else managed, yet unable to lift the fluctuating fortunes of a record which plummets maddeningly from those career highs to some undoubted lows, perfectly mirroring the Manhattan skyline which adorns its artwork.
And while the hubris of youth and churning out classics with every strum of the guitar might forgive the B-side status of The Masterplan, or Acquiesce, or Talk Tonight, to do the same here in particularly with Let’s All Make Believe in the face of Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is, Little James or I Can See A Liar is a decision which leaves fans scratching their heads and debating alternate tracklistings to this day.
This would be Oasis 2.0 then. Bigger live than ever, breaking records on tour, never recapturing their magic in the studio, that chasm between those who got it and those who didn’t getting ever wider with each passing year.
The Strokes would bring with them some of the last mainstream howls for guitar music; The Libertines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Coral, Kings Of Leon, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys and countless others all sighting Oasis as a chief inspiration, but equally highlighting the fact that in rock and roll, youth and young manhood is all too quickly someone else’s turn.
Reflecting a period in Noel Gallagher’s career which he’s since described as lacking any discernible direction or motivation, we’re presented now on this reissue with merely the original tracklist, spruced up only with some token gesture coloured vinyl.
Yet perhaps that’s the perfect legacy for Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants and Oasis in the 2000s: there’s little left it has to say, it’s for us and our lives to fill in the blanks.