FEATURE:
Groovelines
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
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NOT that one needs much of a reason…
to discuss Oasis’ Champagne Supernova…though there is one. Released as a single in the U.S. on 13th May, 1996, it is twenty-five year since the anthemic song was released in a country the band were trying to crack - though it never truly happened for them there. The final track (and single) from the Manchester band’s second studio album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, it is one of those songs that everybody can sing along to and bond with – despite the fact that the lyrics don’t make too much sense! In the way that they mean nothing; they mean everything! It would be good to think that the divided band could get back together one day and we could hear Liam Gallagher belting the song out to the festival masses. Written by Noel Gallagher and produced by Owen Morris and Noel Gallagher, Champagne Supernova, to me, is one of the best album closing-tracks ever. At just show of seven-and-a-half minutes, it truly is an epic! Normally, for this feature, I dissect a song that is treasured and has a very interesting story and background. One of the most interesting things about a song as good as Champagne Supernova is that its origins are not that clear. Certainly, the meaning behind the lyrics is not obvious to Noel Gallagher. Looking at this Wikipedia article, there does seem to be a little bit of mental mistiness:
“Noel Gallagher claimed in 2005 that he had still not made up his mind as to what the song actually is about, having previously told an NME interviewer in 1995:
It means different things when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood, being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process.
Bands like the Clash just petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but what did it do? Fuck all. The Manchester thing was going to be the greatest movement on earth but it was fuck all. When we started, we decided we weren't going to do anything for anybody, we just thought we'd leave a bunch of great songs. But some of the words are about nothing. One is about Bracket the Butler, who used to be on Camberwick Green or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "hall" apart from "cannonball" so I wrote, "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball." And people were like, "Wow, man." There's also the line, "Where were you while we were getting high?" because that's what we always say to each other. But the number of people who've started clubs called Champagne Supernova is fucking unbelievable. And the album isn't even released yet.
In a 2009 interview, Gallagher told the following anecdote:
This writer, he was going on about the lyrics to "Champagne Supernova", and he actually said to me, "You know, the one thing that's stopping it being a classic is the ridiculous lyrics." And I went, "What do you mean by that?" And he said, "Well, Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball — what's that mean?" And I went, "I don't know. But are you telling me, when you've got 60,000 people singing it, they don't know what it means? It means something different to every one of them".
Even though, to be fair, Champagne Supernova, is a little nonsensical and head-scratching, it is a song where one does not need to have any precise meaning and clarity. Its chorus is one of the most compelling and crowd-unifying of the 1990s. Maybe due to its length, the band did not put the song out here. There are many who say that Champagne Supernova should have been released as a single in the U.K. It may have needed an edit to get on the radio though, considering it went to the top of the Modern Rock chart, it looked like Oasis was going to break through in the U.S. Although, I think, Radio X get the release date wrong by a day in this feature, there are some good insights and recollections. I like how the song makes Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs (rhythm guitar, melodica) cry:
“Champagne Supernova is one of the many, many Oasis tracks that "should have been a single". It was released as one in the United States on 14 May 1996, but for Britain it remained as one of the highlights of the mammoth (What's The Story) Morning Glory? album.
The song was part of the embarrassment of riches that was Noel Gallagher's songwriting catalogue in the mid-90s. He could afford to stick tracks like Half The World Away and Acquiesce on the b-sides as he was writing instant classic after instant classic.
Noel unveiled the song when the band were touring Europe in November 1994. He explained in 2006: "Just before we went in to record Morning Glory, we were sat on the tour bus in Germany. We'd got to the hotel early, so we sat in the car park.
"Somebody says, have you got any tunes for the new album. So I said, I'll play them for you if you want. I played Cast No Shadow and all that. I played Champagne Supernova in its entirety on acoustic guitar. At the end, I looked up and Bonehead was crying. He said, 'You've not just written that have you?' I was looking at him thinking, you f**king soft lad. Either that or its sh*t."
Ever since the release of the song in 1995, fans have wondered about the lyrics. What exactly is a Champagne Supernova? What does it all mean?
"Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it," he told the NME in September 1995. "That's probably as psychedelic as I'll ever get. It means different things when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated."
But other inspirations came from Noel's childhood. The memorable couplet "Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball" was a memory from kids' TV.
"[It's] about Brackett the butler who used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chigley or Trumpton or something," Noel revealed. "He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'hall' apart from 'cannonball'.
"So I wrote 'Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball' and people were like, 'Wow, f**k, man'.
As for Bonehead, Champagne Supernova still makes him cry. When the guitarist join The Charlatans' Tim Burgess for one of his Twitter listening parties for (What's The Story) Morning Glory, he re-told the tour bus anecdote and revealed: "I'm crying now. Pure stress," before adding: "I can cry to order you know”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Oasis playing at Knebworth in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Press Association
I shall leave things there. Oasis played their legendary two nights at Knebworth on 10th and 11th August in 1996. These are some of the best gigs ever; ones where the band maybe should have quit whilst they were on top in terms of quality and popularity. It would not be inconceivable for something to be done around that anniversary in terms of a reunion – even if it were for a single gig. Noel Gallagher has confirmed a documentary is being released to mark twenty-five years of the iconic gigs. I think that there are other Oasis songs fans hold up as being superior to Champagne Supernova. I don’t think there are many as timeless and crowd-pleasing as the closer of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. It is a track that, as I said, means so much without revealing anything clear or personal. Just hearing the song played now elicits fond memories and shivers. One of those tracks that we will never hear the likes of again, it seemed to capture a moment in time. With Britpop still bubbling in the U.K. and Oasis being on top of the world, many people can relate to a sense of joy and confidence - I guess one had to be around in the 1990s to get the full hit and flood of memories. At twenty-five, the song has lost none of its charm and brilliance. It leaves me to end things by wishing Champagne Supernova…
A very happy twenty-fifth anniversary.