FEATURE:
Supergrass’ I Should Coco at Thirty
Inside the Anthemic Alright
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IN this second…
anniversary for Supergrass’ I Should Coco, I wanted to look at is best-known song. Alright was released as the fifth and final single on 3rd July, 1995. The album it is from turns thirty on 15th May. I did not want to wait a few months to mark the brilliance of Alright! As a lot of attention will be on I Should Coco soon, I feel obligated to write something. I was twelve when the album came out and it was such an exciting time for music. Alright not the only gem on Supergrass’ debut studio album – not by a long way! Lenny, Mansize Rooster, Caught By the Fuzz and Lose It among the many great songs on the album. Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn created a wonderful album. As I have said before, it was s bit of a risky releasing a song as epic and iconic as Alright being the final single. Even though it was released less than two months after I Should Coco, there had already been four singles. Plenty of momentum before 15th May. A lot of people might not have heard Alright until the album came out. Such a brilliant surprise for those listening. The fourth song on the album, its placing was also quite bold. Maybe the opening track or second. Maybe track four is the best position in terms of the dynamics and impact it has. Following Mansize Rooster and coming before Lose It. Alright was released with Time as a double A-side. The final push of this album, I Should Coco’s popularity grew after the release of Alright. The single got to number two in the U.K. However, it made the band instant successes. Seen as this incredible youth anthem that was a rebellion or festival smash, Supergrass didn’t set out to do that. Gaz Coombes was only nineteen when Alright was released. Not this big rallying call, it is about discovering girls and having fun. Just a lark really! However, many people have taken it to heart and adopted it as this thing that means so much. That has given them so much strength and optimism!
I want to bring in a couple of features about Alright before wrapping things up. I am excited about the approaching thirtieth anniversary if I Should Coco. People discovering the genius Alright on the album and making a smash before it came out as single on 3rd July, 1995. I want to introduce a couple of features that talk about the making of the song. The background to Alright. A bit about its success and how it had a life beyond I Should Coco and the radio – and the U.K. for that matter. Last year, American Songwriter wrote about a summer anthem that has very little to do with summer:
“It Started on a “Knackered” Piano
“It started at Danny’s house, where his parents had this knackered piano,” Gaz Coombes told Q magazine in 2011. “One of us started bashing out those chords. We went to the pub and knocked out the lyrics in 10 minutes. The song became our calling card, but I don’t think it was calculated. We were a gang of teenagers, and this was us remembering the innocence of being 13 before we’d delved into the rock ‘n’ roll world. We didn’t know it would be a hit, but we got back from our first tour of the States, and suddenly, old ladies were recognizing us on the street.”
Are we like you?
I can’t be sure
Of the scene, as she turns
We are strange in our worlds
A Bulletproof Backing Track
“I knew the backing track for ‘Alright’ was bulletproof,” bassist Quinn told Q. “I’ve got a distinct memory of staring at the two-inch turning around while that backing track was playing and thinking, ‘that’s a bulletproof backing track. That’s gonna be enormous. That’s gonna light people up.’ Even when we had it as a demo, there was something about it. It was so simplistic and stuck in your head.”
But we are young. We get by
Can’t go mad, ain’t got time
Sleep around if we like
But we’re alright
The Guitar Solo
“I think Danny and Gaz cooked up the verse and the chorus. They’ll always argue about who came up with that piano,” Quinn told Uncut magazine. “Then, I came along and said, ‘Well, you need a middle eight.’ And I took it to G, and Gaz did that very rock and roll solo over the top, and then I came up with the idea of doing that Peter Green bending solo and Gaz came up with a harmony for that. We always wrote a lot of lyrics in the pub as we were recording.”
Got some cash
Bought some wheels
Took it out
‘Cross the fields
Lost control, hit a wall
But we’re alright
“It wasn’t written as an anthem. It isn’t supposed to be a rally cry for our generation,” Gaz Coombes said. “The stuff about We are young / We run green …’ isn’t about being 19, but really 13 or 14, and just discovering girls and drinking. It’s meant to be lighthearted and a bit of a laugh, not at all a rebellious call to arms.” And as Goffey remembers, “It certainly wasn’t written in a very summery vibe. It was written in a cottage where the heating had packed up, and we were trying to build fires to keep warm.”
Are we like you?
I can’t be sure
Of the scene, as she turns
We are strange in our worlds
A Featured Song
The song has been featured in movies, television shows, and countless commercials. In 2010, rapper Travie McCoy updated the song with the help of Bruno Mars, Jonathan Yip, Jeremy Reeves, Philip Lawrence, and Ray Romulus as “We’ll Be Alright.” In 2023, Rakuten used the song in a Super Bowl spot featuring Alicia Silverstone, reprising her role as Cher from the movie Clueless.
But we are young
We run green
Keep our teeth nice and clean
See our friends, see the sights
Feel alright
Hey, Hey, We’re Supergrass
The music video for “Alright” caught the eye of producer/director Steven Spielberg. Rumors began sprouting up that a Monkees-styled project was in the works for the band. Supergrass later denied it. However, they did confirm that there was a meeting with Spielberg. The band was focused on making their next album and couldn’t commit to the time required to do such a project.
Are we like you?
I can’t be sure.
Of the scene, as she turns
We are strange in our world
But we are young
We run green
Keep our teeth nice and clean
See our friends, see the sights
Feel alright”.
I am going to finish off soon. However, I want to source from a brilliant and detailed feature from Sound on Sound that was published in 2020. They spoke with producer Sam Williams about working with Supergrass, memories of I Should Coco and what it was like putting together Alright. I would advise people to read the whole feature. I have selected particular parts of the feature and did not want to dump everything in. However, go and read the brilliant 2020 article:
“But it's for their UK number two single of 1995, the irrepressibly bouncy 'Alright', that Supergrass are best remembered. In the song's video, their image was frozen forever as a Monkees-styled trio capering around on bikes and in a bed on wheels rolling along a beach, as Coombes sang a cheeky lyric about peak teenage delinquency: smoking fags, sleeping around, crashing a car in a field.
However, at the time, the success of 'Alright' was both a blessing and a curse for the band — Gaz Coombes (vocals/guitar), Mick Quinn (bass/vocals) and Danny Goffey (drums). It made their singer in particular a reluctant household face in that summer of 1995. "When 'Alright' went mental, we were in America," Coombes remembered in an interview with this writer four years later. "We got back and suddenly every fucker was recognising you. I never wanted to be a rock star. I just wanted to be in a band."
Almost 10 years after they split — and in the wake of Gaz Coombes enjoying a successful and critically-acclaimed solo career — Supergrass have re–formed. 2020 will see them back on tour, in support of a new career retrospective box set, The Strange Ones. Producer Sam Williams, who discovered the band and oversaw the making of their debut album I Should Coco, clearly remembers the day that he first encountered the trio in the street in Oxford in 1993.
"I was in a music shop and I came out and saw the boys standing on the pavement," he says. "It was one of those classic, surreal moments. I'd grown up with strong references to early Beatles and the Monkees and the cartoon kind of culture of larger-than-life '60s-looking bands. They didn't look like anything that you'd seen in real life for a long, long time. Danny was wearing a blue velvet suit with red Bowie hair and Gaz had the kind of Neil Young sideburns.
"The feeling was that it was just an immediate, magnetic attraction. Something in me just went, 'I don't know who that is. But I know that's a band and I know I'm going to produce them.'"
In this second half of the album's sessions, Williams and the band stretched out more in terms of playing and production. "I'd be starting to sit in on keyboards," says Williams. "On the second sessions we had a Vox Continental, so I would be in the room playing on 'I'd Like To Know'. We started using Wulitzer [electric piano] or other keyboards."
Another key track, the mid-paced, early Pink Floyd-y 'Sofa (Of My Lethargy)', featured much instrument-swapping between Williams and the group, the producer moving onto bass to connect with Goffey as a rhythm section, as Quinn changed over to guitar and Coombes to piano. "I was a kind of floating auxiliary player," says Williams. "So, it was a flexible musical thing that could move around very easily like that."
Gaz Coombes and Sam Williams, mid-'90s.Varispeeding tape was a trick that Williams and the band began to use more during the second set of sessions. The two–inch master of propulsive rocker 'Lenny', for instance, was sped up to achieve the right feel for the track. "That track was 6 to 10 bpm slower," says Williams, "We'd got an accurate cut of 'Lenny' that was too slow, too rock, and we sped it up considerably. We erased the bass and the guitar, and Gaz and Mickey re-recorded them over a sped-up drum track which then had the exact tempo. Whatever it took, we would do it. There wasn't any kind of purist idea of how you do it."
On 'We're Not Supposed To', meanwhile, Williams took a four-track home demo the band had made, experimenting with tape-speed chipmunk-y voices, and embellished it at Sawmills. "That is so Danny and his sense of humour," he laughs. "I took all the crazy things that he'd done from the four-track cassette, spun it onto two-inch and then rebuilt the guitar, the bass, everything around it.
"Congas were overdubbed with that kind of early T Rex/Bolan thing as an influence. Two acoustic guitars, the left/right [panned] stereo thing, and an elastic band kind of bass sound. So, it's actually quite a polished production around a complete bit of lo-fi. It was all very arranged chaos and probably one of the most complex productions, actually, although some people would mistake it for a comedy track."
Elsewhere, two tracks from the original sessions, 'Mansize Rooster' and 'Sitting Up Straight', were re-recorded during this final stretch of making the album. "Because the songs were requesting an alternative approach to the production that wasn't benefitted by speed," says Williams. "You can hear that we've spent more than an hour [laughs] getting a drum sound. Not that it was bad in the first place, 'cause it suited it perfectly
"So, in other words, if you had the options open, cut everything at no-brainer speed to start with. Anything that doesn't make it with that methodology, then apply the remit of more expansive, more detailed production to it. But not the other way around. And that way you're never gonna miss energy, you're never gonna miss capture. You're only gonna expand naturally into things that require it."
Williams thinks that overall the rooms at Sawmills contributed hugely to the tight, fuzzy and energetic sound of I Should Coco: not just the live room playing space, but also the control room during the mixing. "I later noticed that people like Flood would mix in rooms that often didn't have a huge space," he says, "that were very flat and contained and based on that principle. I think, considering its limitations, it was one of the best-sounding, punchy, tight, controlled rooms to mix in."
For Sam Williams, his main memories of working with Supergrass on their landmark debut album are of himself and the band laughing. "I've never laughed so much making a record," he says. "To the point where you actually had to stop recording. I'm very grateful and honoured that I've been lucky enough to connect with them."
The subsequent chart success of 'Alright', however, he only remembers as a blur. "It rushed by us like a high-speed train," he says. The producer however is in no doubt as to why the song was set to become regarded as a classic track. "It's incredibly positive," he reasons, "and, actually, it's got two sides to its coin. It's got a very British pub knees-up kind of energy. It's everything that teenage life is about — sex, drugs, rock & roll. It's saying something that you can only really know in that window of time when you're kind of leaving school and before the engagement of other issues becomes unavoidable as an adult.
"But, also, it's looking at identity. It's got a duality which is beautiful: 'Are we like you?/I can't be sure.' Because they were at that age, it was authentic. It was the real thing."
Ultimately, Williams is as thrilled as Supergrass' legions of fans are that the band have decided to reunite. "Yeah, I'm delighted," he states, "because they're a great live band. When I speak to people about Supergrass, I often get the same thing: 'God, weren't they great?'”.
The final feature I want to source from came from Radio X last September. Supergrass were promoting the thirtieth anniversary tour of I Should Coco. They are embarking on that very soon. The first date is on 8th May at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom. They revealed that they were surprised by the success of Alright:
“Supergrass were shocked by the success of their single Alright.
The Oxford rockers have recently shared their plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album I Should Coco with a tour next year and Gaz Coombes has talked about the impact of its biggest track, which peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart - giving the band their biggest single to-date.
"It's a single that hit so hard in the summer of '95, the 48-year-old rocker recalled to NME. "We had no idea that was going to happen. We'd made a punk album, we were 19, and then we had a massive hit. We couldn't complain."
He went on: "We loved Alright and thought it was quite a kooky and weird little track, so we were quite taken aback by how massive it became."
The 2025 tour, which was first announced by the band on The Chris Moyles Show, will kick off at Glasgow's Barrowlands on Thursday 8th May and will also include shows in Cardiff, Manchester, Nottingham and Leeds as well as two dates London's Roundhouse.
Supergrass will play the classic album in full for the first time live as well as a selection of greatest hits for the dates, which they've promised will be "wild".
On 15th May, it will be thirty years since I Should Coco was released. It is hard to believe! I am glad the band are still together and they get the chance to take the album on the road. Playing the iconic Alright thirty years after its release. Well, 3rd July technically. Their first date after that anniversary is 10th July at Bedford Park. This amazing band have been with me since childhood, so I wanted to spend some time recognising that and highlighting the brilliance of Alright. Three decades after it release and there is nothing that holds…
QUITE the same magic.