After seventeen spectacular but tumultuous years, the tensions between Liam and Noel Gallagher that had both defined and frequently threatened to capsize Oasis finally came to an almighty head with a backstage bust-up at Paris’s Rock en Seine festival on August 28, 2009 — calling time on the band who had defined the Britpop era for a further decade and a half.
Long before then, however, the clues that all was not well in the Oasis camp were buried on the B-side of their 2000 single Go Let It Out. As part of our celebration of the 50 greatest Oasis songs in the latest issue of MOJO – on sale now – Andrew Male examines a deep cut that foretold the trouble on the horizon…
“We should have never made [fourth album] Standing On The Shoulder of Giants,” Noel Gallagher told American journalist Chuck Klosterman in 2011. “I’d come to the end. I had no drive… no inspiration.” He was also effectively working in the studio by himself, following the loss of founding members Bonehead and Guigsy midway through the recording of the album.
For the majority of …Giants, that literal and emotional loss and exhaustion is disguised by effects pedals and multi-tracked guitars, but on Let's All Make Believe - an album session track only included on the Japanese version of the LP and released as the B-side to Go Let It Out - Gallagher Snr is barely hiding at all.
The initial mood, established by the Vic Flick-style espionage guitar effect over a D-minor acoustic strum, is one of sinister melancholy, with Noel’s questioning lyrics (“Is anyone here prepared to say/ Just what they mean or is it too late?”) invested with an additional sadness by Liam’s exquisitely careworn vocals.
Of course, this is almost certainly a lyric about the possible end of a band, written by one brother for another to sing. But it’s also about emotional inarticulacy and the need to believe in the lie of brotherhood in order to carry on (“Let’s all make believe/That we’re still friends and we like each other”) for the sake of media image, financial necessity and the concept of ‘Oasis’ itself.
Yet, as well as including a bitter lyrical reference to Acquiesce, that other great Oasis song about the necessity of sibling unity (“In the end we’re gonna need each other”), Let’s All Make Believe references (religious) faith and desperation (“Strangle my hope and make me pray/To a God I’ve never seen, but who I betray”) and, like so many of the best Oasis songs, asks the listener an important question: how much does the singer believe the songwriter, and what does he hear in his words? Heard through the exhausted hope of Liam’s delivery, the phrase “let’s all make believe” becomes a brother of that loaded word “imagine”, a positive vision of a better world.
That reading of the song is borne out by the introduction of the swirling Sgt.Pepper-esque strings after the two-minute mark, investing Noel’s bitter, weary sentiments with a spiralling optimism, leaving you caught between two worlds, and asking whether the song’s penultimate line – “Let’s all make believe/That all mankind’s gonna feed our brother” – is about compassion for the hungry or a needy singer’s hungry desire for adoration, and, similarly, if the final line – “Let’s all make believe/That in the end we won’t grow up” – is about a longing for maturity or its denial. Ultimately, you realise, Let’s All Make Believe is a song about faith, written by someone who has lost it, and re-authored by another who, for the moment, is still ’avin’ it.
“You had to be there…”
As Oasis's summer shows approach, you can also be here now, too - get the latest issue of MOJO for the full Oasis reunion special featuring their 50 greatest songs, Noel on songwriting, Alan McGee on the rise of the band that defined the '90s and the inside take on this summer’s reunion shows. More info and to order a copy HERE.
Main photo: Peter Pakvis/Redferns