Two very good articles on Definitely Maybe, Oasis's debut album. One with lots of detailed info from the producer

[highplainsdem]

I'd run across the first one, a 2024 article on the Grammy website, yesterday

10 Ways Oasis' 'Definitely Maybe' Shaped The Sound Of '90s Rock
https://www.grammy.com/news/how-oasis-definitely-maybe-shaped-90s-rock-30th-anniversary-reissue-reunion

while trying to find anything legendary producer Tony Visconti had said about the band, especially Cigarettes & Alcohol, the song on the first Oasis album that owes so much to Bang A Gong, the T.Rex hit that's one of the most famous rock classics Tony produced (probably the most famous, except for Bowie's Heroes).

I still haven't found anything on that, or anything Tony said about Oasis. Google did show me that Tony had done an analysis of the biggest single from their second album nearly 20 years ago

Wonderwall - Classic Singles - Episode 1 of 4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009nlzq

but it's no longer available at that page and I couldn't find it elsewhere. And that wasn't what I was most curious about.

I did find out much more about how Tony'd influenced Definitely Maybe, though.

Found that via a link in this section of the Grammy article, about one of the "10 Ways Oasis' 'Definitely Maybe' Shaped The Sound Of '90s Rock" -

It Turned Everything Up To 11

It took three attempts to nail Definitely Maybe's towering Wall of Sound. The band first entered Wales' Monnow Valley Studios with the Kinks producer Dave Batchelor. But he struggled to replicate the energy of their live shows and apart from "Slide Away," all of his contributions were scrapped.

Noel then took on producing duties alongside Mark Coyle, but their overdubbed attempt proved to be unsatisfactory, too. In the end, it was left to engineer Owen Morris to salvage from the sonic wreckage in a studio owned by Johnny Marr. Drawing upon techniques he'd learned from Phil Spector, Tony Visconti, and Bernard Summer, his final mix was so "in your face" that it apparently left the Smiths guitarist appalled.

That was a lone voice of dissent, however, for a dynamic record which on the likes of "Bring It On Down," "Up In The Sky," and "Columbia," proved that sometimes, you just need to turn everything up to 11.

Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr didn't stay appalled, of course. He loves Oasis, has been friends with them since the early '90s, and especially loves The Hindu Times, their #1 single from 2002 (which IMO should always be turned up to 11). But that sentence at Grammy.com had made me so curious I clicked on the link provided, and found the best article I've seen so far about the final sound of that album.

The article, an interview with Owen Morris, was first published in Q magazine in 2010. There's no longer a site for the magazine, but the Grammy article linked to a copy of the interview here

https://web.archive.org/web/20161112003701/http://owenmorris.net/oasis/

and googling turned up another copy here:

https://recordingyourmusic.blogspot.com/2016/07/owen-morris-on-mixing-definitely-maybe.html

Morris had borrowed some great techniques.

-snip-

And then I got to master the album by myself, without some bored, by the book mastering engineer who didn’t get it. I mastered the album at Johnny Marr’s studio. And I remember that Johnny was appalled by how “in your face” the whole thing was. He thought I was an idiot for what he perceived were mistakes…like the noise at the front of Cigs and Alcohol: The Smiths would never have been so crude.

Here’s the nerdy detail about the mixing techniques I used for all of my mixes on Definitely Maybe. A week or two before the weekend mixing Rock ‘n’ Roll Star and Columbia I’d been reading an article on Phil Spector’s production of Instant Karma. One of the things that interested me was his use of an intime tape delay on the drums. Also I’d been reading about Toni Visconti’s discovery of the Eventide Harmoniser on the David Bowie Berlin sessions: Low etc., and specifically how Visconti would use a regenerating pitch change on the drums to cause a falling/deepening effect.

Now, given that I knew instantly that Tony [McCarroll, the drummer] was extremely basic in what he did after listening to his drumming on Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, but that his timing and tempo were almost autistically perfect, I set up a big regenerating tape delay doing eight time notes on Tony’s drums, which subliminally added groove and offbeats. Then I also added the Visconti Harmoniser trick to the snare to add subliminal depth and rhythm.

After these two very basic tricks, which I subsequently used as something to tell people that I was ripping off Spector and Visconti, I just did what I wanted. I heavily compressed the overall drum sound. Squeezing it so every hit was the same. I’d also program a tambourine to play along with the snare drum when I felt it helped. Anything to make the rhythm track exciting and grooving. The most obvious use of the tape delay trick can be heard on Columbia, where the actual recording of the drums and bass is just doing four beats in a bar, I doubled up the bass drum, snare and bass guitar to create the eight beats in a bar, faster, pumping rhythm.

Much more in that article about how the album was finished, including some entertaining details about working with Noel and Liam.

I think those of us who are Rick Beato fans had been hoping for details like these from the interview Rick did with Noel Gallagher before the second Oasis concert in New Jersey. But I haven't seen anything about it since Rick posted and then quickly deleted social media messages about it that night.

And I'd really like to hear what Tony Visconti has to say about Definitely Maybe, and especially Cigarettes & Alcohol.

Articles on Oasis are getting lots of attention now. Someone, some rock journalist, really should ask TV about that first Oasis album. Ideally someone with a popular podcast so people could hear what would certainly be a very entertaining interview (all of Tony's interviews are) and read a transcript as well.