All language subtitles for Ep. 7 - What the World Is Waiting For

It's early 1996,
and Britain's top rock star

is searching the English countryside

for a location to stage one of
the biggest gigs in British history.

I got the call... Knebworth,
bla, bla, bla.

And I was going, "How many people?"
"125,000." And I thought, "Fucking hell!"

# I'm feeling supersonic

# Give me gin and tonic

# You can have it all
but how much do you want it?

Knebworth, in rural Hertfordshire,

is now the only place big enough
to accomodate Oasis

and their army of supporters.

1 in 20 of the population applied
to go to see Knebworth

which meant that when you walked
down Oxford St. in London,

every 3 seconds you were
passing someone

who was a really big Oasis fan.

Crazily big!

Knebworth House is Batman's house
in the film, you know that?

When you see the Batman films
and they drive through the big gates,

that's Knebworth House.

So you're going
in the Batman's fucking gaff

in a Rolls Royce.
Off your head!*

Knebworth is a long way from where Oasis
started out, the city of Manchester,

whose council estates
and independent music scene

had produced
clutch of maverick bands

like the Smiths, who had a far more
modest definition of success.

Where we came from,
making a record yourself

was incredibly ambitious.

To be in a band that
you were really into

and that you had another guy
who had the same dreams as you,

that was like nearlly
the whole feel for me.

For years, the indie scene was British
music's best kept secret,

home to a generation of rock misfits.

'Indie', independente music,
represented

almost like a membership card of
the ousider gang for a lot of people too.

You know, taking on the pricks.
Kicking against the pricks.

Kicking against that blandness.

But as indie morphed into brit-pop,
Oasis and archrivals Blur

stormed the barricades of daytime radio
and the British tabloids.

So complete was their triumph

that for a moment Noel Gallagher
owned British rock.

I remember driving in this big field,
sitting on the Rolls Royce

thinking I was Jimi Hendrix
at Woodstock, having a cigarette.

And nearly had a panic attack
'cause I'd been up all night drinking.

And then just going,
"Yeah. I'll take it."

"Where do I sign?"

This is the story of the overgrounding
of British indie music,

a journey from Manchester nightclubs
to mansions in the home counties.

A story of success, so overwhelming,

that the next generation were
forced to reinvent the music

to bring it into the 21st century.

# now you concerned
about the way I feel

# Tonight I'm a rock 'n roll star

Early evening,
November the 24th, 1983.

In the 'green room' of BBC TV Center,

the band that would define
indie music in the 1980s

are waiting to make their debut
appearance on 'Top of the Pops',

the TV showcase for everything
bright and shiny in British music.

The whole day for us was really
an extreme day in the life.

We went down there and
felt like well and truly aliens,

which was right.

We weren't unhappy about that.

It's seven long years since punk

was supposed to have put the edge
back into music.

But this particular Thursday,

the lineup promises to be
worryingly safe.

Tina Turner, Simple Minds!

The Thomson Twins,
Shakin' Stevens...

Packed with stars, it's entirely live
and our first act's Paul Young

and 'The Love of the Common People'.

# You can live in a love
of the common people

# smile from the heart
of a family man.

# Daddy's gonna buy
you a dream to cling to,

# Mama's gonna love you just as
much as she can and she can.

The bill, like the whole
of pop music at the time,

is dominated by established acts
and major label stars.

It was all about people
in headbands

with a bright red jacket
and three backing singers

and a keyboard player
and a... that kind of thing.

Tina Turner or Paul Young or whoever
it was that was out at that time.

Showtime is approaching

and backstage The Smiths are
feeling more and more out of place.

A couple of girls came up to me
and they said,

"Are you in a band?"
"Yeah, I am."

And they said, "What band?"
And I said, "The Smiths."

And she said, "Oh, are you playing
on tonight?" I said, "That's right. Yeah."

And she said, "Well, when are you
getting changed to go on?"

Well, I kinda looked down
at my clothes,

and I said, "This is it.
This is what I'm wearing."

And she said, "But you're
going on TV!"

To make matters worse,
singer Morrissey has made it clear

that he will take the stage
with a bouquet of gladioli

in place of a microphone.

The producers of the show
were pulling their hair off

because Morrissey was like,

"I'm not gonna pretend
that I'm singing this.

"I'll just might as well
make it obvious that I'm miming.

"I'm not even gonna
use a microphone."

And they didn't like that at all.

At Number 30 this week,
these are The Smiths.

The Smiths are there to perform
their single 'This Charming Man'.

# A punctured bicycle

# On a hillside desolate

# Will nature make a man of me yet?

# When in this charming car

# This charming man

It was like someone had gone
into an office party

and thrown buckets
of cold water over everyone.

That non-stop-party-feel-good vibe
which Top of the Pops had always had

it was suddenly invaded
by these four people

who claimed to be from Manchester

but in the context of Top of the Pops
could've been from a different universe.

# This man said "It's gruesome
that someone so handsome should care"

# A jumped up pantry boy

# Who never knew his place

# He said "return the ring"

# He knows so much about these things

# He knows so much about these things

The performance is remembered
for more than Morrissey's flamboyance,

for a generation of musicians
it was an introduction to Johnny Marr.

The young guitarist whose
intricate playing

underpinned The Smith's sound.

I remember seeing The Smiths
on Top of the Pops.

I don't mean this in a kind of...
sick or funny way

but I just wanted to be
Johnny Marr.

He had the Brian Jones hairdo
and the turtleneck,

and the big, red semi-accoustic guitar.
It was like cool as fuck!

As the nation watched,

a cab was waiting at the stage door
to ferry The Smiths to Euston Station.

That same night, they had
a gig booked 200 miles away

at the Hacienda Nightclub
in their hometown of Manchester.

That journey must have taken...
it was like...

7 minutes in our mind because
we were just like...

We were all super hyped up.

# This charming man

Part homecoming,
part coronation

the Hacienda crowd were treated to
their own version of 'This Charming Man'

by Britain's most
unlikely new rock stars.

# I would go out tonight

# But I haven't got a stitch to wear

# This man said "It's gruesome that
someone so handsome should care"

People still talk of it
in hushed tones in Manchester

and it was an incredible moment.

It was like a festival,
it was like...

we have breached the barricades
of the Thatcherite citadel

and now our boys have
become pop stars,

and they're coming back
to celebrate with their own people.

# He knows so much about these things

# He knows so much about these things

Goodbye!

Manchester loomed large
in The Smiths' music,

with Morrissey's lyrics transforming
the crumbling city

into a place of epic romance.

Those who didn't get it,
wrote them off as miserable northerners.

We did a song called
'Heaven knows I'm miserable now'

so what do we expect?

# I was happy in the
haze of a drunken hour

# But heaven knows I'm miserable now

# I was looking for a job,
and then I found a job

# And heaven knows I'm miserable now

There's ** even there.

We had the understanding of what
it felt like to be surrounded

by this Victorian
atmosphere in Manchester.

For me, some of the actual sound
of the music

comes out of my early impressions
of my environment.

The people around me
weren't well off, you know.

The women had beehives
and wore coats that were on HP.*

# Two lovers entwined pass me by

# And heaven knows I'm miserable now

It was a hard life really,
but you have to find beauty.

I think it's an innate human necessity,
so if you're in a grim place

you would just find the beauty.

# In my life

# Oh, why do I give valuable time

# To people who don't
care if I live or die?

These records were so vivid
and romantic and joyous.

They were the revenge of
the deserted northern places.

There's lots of snogging
under bridges

and feeling people up on leather*

and 'There's ice in the sink
where we bathe'.

What kind of line is that?
Where do you get that from?

Together, Morressey and Marr

were the most significant
song-writing partnership of the 80s.

On top of their four studio albums

they crafted a string
of stand-alone singles,

including 'William it Was Really Nothing'

'Shoplifters of the
World, Unite' and 'Panic'.

They all skip along those tunes.
They're all ***

I think that's the great thing
about that band,

they had these really up* tunes
that Morrissey would then

kind of put a slant on in there.
Morryssey's lyrics were very sarcastic.

It's about being on the ***,
being kind of an outsider.

That kind of collision
of those two things

is what made The Smiths
***

The hands-off approach
of Rough Trade,

the band's independent
record label,

allowed Morrissey and Marr
complete control

over The Smith's music and image.

Everything about them was
"We do it our way."

You know, Morrissey did the sleeves,
Johnny was left to his own devices

and not told by an A&R man,

"That will be the next single
you're gonna record."

It'd be up to Morrissey
and Marr to decide

what song they wanted
to record as the next single.

That's the kind of band we were.

We didn't have an A&R man,

we didn't have people interfering
in the music.

So we were very in that
self-sufficient thing.

I mean, we were really independent.

In the mid-1980s,

The Smiths were at the head
of an entire sub-culture.

Indie music took in groups as diverse
as The Jesus and Mary Chain,

The Fall, The Cocteau Twins
and The Wedding Present.

The music itself was self-consciously
anti-commercial

and difficult to seek out.

It was really exciting.
To sample it

I used to go at Piccadilly Records
in Manchester on a Saturday morning,

with these slightly arrogant guys,
like in 'High Fidelity' behind the counter

who would snigger
if you bought the wrong thing.

But the idea that you were buying
into this world,

it really felt like
you were on to something

that 99% of people didn't know about.

# Grass grows greener

# On the other side

Being involved in indie music meant
that you were kind of making a statement.

Which is about how honest you are

and where you feel like
you fit in the world.

And being odd, and being weird
and being different,

is good.
Let's celebrate that.

# God spits on my soul

# there's something dead

# inside my hole

Indie, independent music,
represented

almost like a membership card of
the outsider gang for a lot of people too.

By listening to that music
you were saying,

"No, I'm one of these guys,
not one of those guys."

Of all British indie bands in the 80s,

it was The Smiths who inspired
the most devotion.

Their army of fans, referred to
by Morrissey as his disciples,

were the biggest outsider
gang of all.

We're celibate, girls!
We're celibate!

As The Smiths' popularity grew,

the band were careful to stick
to modest sized venues.

Their gigs always had a sense
of occasion,

with the group marching onstage
to the strains of Prokofiev,

as they greeted their audience
eyeball to eyeball.

There was never a barrier of,
"We're up here, and you're down there."

"We're great. Listen to this.
You belong down there."

Quite often there was physically no gap
between the audience and the stage.

Because every night
they ended up on it.

We *** sometimes

because we'd be trying
to give people what they wanted.

They'd be coming back with...
screaming and crying, going crazy.

And that spurred us on
to give it even more.

I'm getting goose bumps
now talking about it.

# Hand in glove

# The sun shines out of our behinds

# No, it's not like any other love

# This one is different
- because it's us

Rather than doing like
a massive stadium gig

where you're 25 ft up and
you can't even see

the heads of
the people in front of you,

we use to prefer
the little sweaty ones,

where you can see the whites
of the eyes of the audience.

# Hand in glove

# The Good People laugh

# Yes, we may be hidden by rags

# But we've something they'll never have

By 1986, The Smiths had become
one of Britain's most established bands.

A deal with major label EMI
had been agreed,

and the band were playing
larger and larger venues in the US.

But such success brought
its own pressures and doubts.

The labels were always keen to say,

"One more tour
and you're gonna be the next U2."

Well, not everybody wants to be U2.

# Oh Mother, I can feel
the soil falling over my head

I remember when we were in America,
me and Morrissey having a conversation

about how we did three nights
at Universal Amphitheater,

and we were both talking about how
Roxy Music and T-Rex

had never got to do that.

And we were a bit scared then, really.

It wasn't like, "Right. We're so big
we've gotta split up."

'Cause we weren't that big.

But we were bigger than our heros.

In the summer of 1987,

Johnny Marr shocked both
his band mates and the indie world

when he walked out of The Smiths.

I remember buying the NME
that Wednesday morning

that said that The Smiths
had split up, and felt... orphaned.

Like a lot of people did,
"That sounds ridiculous!"

And it sounds like a very Smiths
fan thing to say.

***

But they had been our lifeline.

They had been the thing
that we loved through

an incredibly, uniquely miserable
period in British history.

And they were our band.

# Sad veiled bride please be happy

The whole era of Manchester music
was coming to an end,

and a new one just beginning.

The Smiths demise conincided
with the coming of 'house' music.

A sound fuelled by the new
drug of the moment, ecstasy.

In the '80s we all hunched our shoulders
and thought everything was terrible.

And then people started coming back
from The Hacienda

having taken this drug
that everyone was talking about.

And they seemed sort of
euphorically well adjusted.

A real C change, actually.
The whole thing was turned on its head.

It really felt like that.

Logically we'd gone from one thing
to its opposite.

It was kind of a psychedelic time,
it was the second summer of love.

You couldn't really listen to acid house
relentlessly all the time.

People going to raves
had a great time to acid house

but still wanted guitar music
and songs

they could sing along to
when they were home

or they were coming back
from the raves.

A new wave of Manchester groups

would give indie music
a psychedelic twist.

The Stone Roses led the way.

# Chimes sing Sunday morn

# Today's the day she's sworn

# To steal what she never could own

# And race from this hole
she calls home

The Stone Roses' early songs...
there was a sense of The Birds.

There was a sense of that
kind of west coast psychedelia.

#So good to have equalised

# To lift up the lids of your eyes

And then the other thing which
The Stone Roses did

was that they had rhythms
at the forefront of the music,

which again, indie bands
tended not to.

It's all about the rhythms

just propelling you forward,
and the momentum.

Frontman, Ian Brown,
walked with a Mancunian swagger,

and surrounded himself with
band mates who were equally cocky.

We always had amazing pants
and great haircuts.

A bunch of absolute
cheeky monkeys.

100% arrogant, self-confident,

great musicians,
born to do it.

So that's what we did, man.

The Roses never apologized
for their arrogance.

They declared themselves
the best band in the world

and had little time for the indie music
that had come before them.

Independence is a joke, innit?

No good music came out of it really.

Hardly any.

Not in England, anyway.

In 1989, The Stone Roses
gave indie music

a completely fresh start.

That summer they began limiting
their British performances

to one-off spectaculars.

The first of these was a legendary
concert at the Empress Ballroom,

in Blackpool's Winter Gardens.

The idea of the Stone Roses playing
in Blackpool was great anyway

because if you're gonna be big in a band
you have to make it in London.

And The Stone Roses had always been
such a Manchester band

that going to Blackpool for your day out
it's such a Manchester thing, you know.

That's what you did.

Going to this big
breakthrough gig in Blackpool

dragged the whole London up to it.

It's perfect.

Blackpool was a gamble.

Outside of Manchester the band
had struggled to fill venues

holding just a couple
of hundred people.

The Empress Ballroom
held a crowd of over 3,000.

We always considered that doing
gigs is a bit like

walking a tight rope.

You could fall off
any moment in time.

But we just enjoyed the danger
of trying to overreach ourselves

and just see exactly how far
we could stretch things.

Booked places that we knew
we couldn't possibly fill,

just to see if we could.

Probably about 8 or 9 coaches
went down from Manchester

and I was on one of them.

And it was just a really funny
experience on the way down

and then a fantastic gig.

# I don't have to sell
my soul he's already in me

# I don't need to sell my
soul he's already in me

The thing about Empress Ballroom was
suddenly all of those kids turned up,

and they all got it, you know.

You stood there right
on the cusp of a wave

of a whole new pop movement.

# I wanna be adored

The band knew they had the moment.

It wasn't just another gig.

The moment was there
and the band grasped it.

# I don't have to sell
my soul he's already in me

# I don't need to sell my
soul he's already in me

# I wanna be adored

We set out to be the biggest
band on the planet,

or in Great Britain at least.

And it was a springboard to know
if we were gonna achieve

what we set out to do.

We kind of moved up a gear from
playing at the smaller club things.

It was just amazing.
I remember Ian had this t-shirt on

with a lot of burnt
5 pound notes on his neck.

He just commanded
the stage really well.

Just the atmosphere was amazing.

I thing it's got a sprung
dance floor as well there.

So everyone was bouncing
up and down.

The finale of the sellout show
was 'I Am the Resurrection',

the band's showstopping anthem
where Ian Brown

procclaims his own divinity.

# I am the resurrection
and I am the light

# I couldn't ever bring myself
to hate you as I'd like

The song's instrumental climax
turned the gig into an enormous rave.

That crossover with
the world of dance music

was one of the great things
about The Stone Roses too.

The fact that you could dance
to these records in clubs as well.

That was so revolutionary.

And if you listen to the long section
at the end of 'I Am the Resurrection',

it is built... and it builds up
and then drops,

and it builds up and it drops
like a good dance floor track does.

And it's those techniques

that are often forgotten by rock 'n roll
bands and the indie bands,

the fact that you've got
to give it space.

The Stone Roses seemed to be
the first band to kind of

take that energy and...

get you dancing.

We were always a pretty
funky band anyway.

We were the blackest
white guys on the planet.

And I think we had more
people dancing there

than the fucking Labour Party
Conference ever did.

You know what I mean?
That was our *** manifesto:

Get people out,
get 'em off their tits

and give them a good night out.

Blackpool transformed
The Sone Roses

into the hottest indie
band in Britain.

And the big time beckoned.

What the Roses did was,

they made it look like
the best thing in the world

to be a successful band.

They made it look like
better than being a footballer,

better than playing for England.

Once Blackpool had happened
the world was ready for them.

'What the World is Waiting for',
that was The Stone Roses.

Now the media spotlight
fell on Manchester

helping the careers of the Roses'
contemporaries

in particular, the Happy Mondays,

and their unique brand
of Northern funk.

# Don't you know he can make
you forget you're the man

# You're a man

# You speak so hip, man
You're twistin' my melon

For a few years,
what became known as Madchester,

was the pop culture capital
of Britain.

The whole of the Manchester scene
in the late 80s,

that came about because of
the attitude of independence.

And some of the bands that are maybe
a little more forgotten from that time,

like the Inspiral Carpets for example,
they were at the heart of that.

And I always loved their push,
like doing it themselves,

like sticking out
their own records.

It seemed to be kind of at odds
with the rest of the world.

# You should learn to walk,
should learn to walk before you crawl

# You should learn to walk,
should learn to walk before you crawl

# (HERE SHE COMES)
SHE COMES IN THE FALL

# (AND YOU SHOULD LEARN)
TO WALK BEFORE YOU CRAWL

# (HERE SHE COMES NOW)
ARMS DANCE TOGETHER IN THE FALL

# YOU DON'T WALK, YOU CRAWL

I was working for the Inspiral Carpets
in their office,

and I used to go on the road with them
when I was part of their roadcrew.

And it was just...
the thing about that scene,

that became known as
the Manchester scene,

is nobody knew what the fuck
they were doing.

Everybody was just having
a great fucking time.

It was like punk, really, you know.

You were kind of part of it
and things were happening

that have never happened since.
It was kind of wild.

It was fucking brilliant!

The Madchester sound
was soon everywhere,

and everyone wanted
a piece of the action.

Young pretenders Blur

were on a record label backed
by the major EMI,

who ensured that the new group
had the sound of the moment.

# There's no other way

# There's no other way

# All that you can do
is watch them play

Blur were first around

when the Madchester so-called
'baggy' thing was still going on.

And fairly cynically, I think,

'There's no Other Way' had been
made with that in mind.

I know that their record label
were quite keen that they cashed in.

So it had this big
thumping breakbeat on it.

The classic baggy...
kind of rhythm.

We hated The Stone Roses at the time,

but the record company, who
payed for the record and the video,

wanted to get their money back.

So they were like, "You can't have
backwards drums, that's stupid.

"Get these drums like
The Stone Roses

"to sell loads of records."

# There's no other way

# There's no other way

# All that you can do
is watch them play

'There's no Other Way'
was a top ten hit,

but lead singer Damon Albarn,

was still a long way
from finding his own voice.

The only way I could kind
of explain, I suppose,

is that I wasn't ready really
to be making music.

I don't think really I classed
ourselves as songwriters then.

There was like one or two little...
There was one or two good songs

but I just wasn't confident
enough to really write.

As Blur's career
was just starting

the fortunes of The Stone Roses
had taken a downward turn,

caught in a web of contractual
wrangling and litigation,

the band was running out of steam.

It was just horrible to be...

to have created all that momentum
and get to the top of your game,

and then have the rug swept out
from under your feet.

'Cause basically we were in injuncted
for two and a half years,

so we couldn't do gigs, record...

We should've got a paper round,
or a job at a sweetshop, might as well,

we just ended up sitting about
our rears and stuff and...

There was no outlet for it
so basically your momentum's lost.

Although the Roses would never
recapture their early magic,

the group's legacy
is still considerable.

We just wanted
to be able to show people

that kids from council
estates or what have you,

they can pick up guitars,
they can learn, they can go on and...

grab the stars if they want.

# Your knuckles whiten on the wheel

# The last thing that
your hands will feel

When the Roses came along,

the goalpost kind of shifted
towards us.

Because when you see people
like that onstage,

it was really fucking inspiring.

And if it wasn't for that
there wouldn't have been Oasis.

Oasis were five lads
from Manchester with big dreams.

In the early 90s,
they could always be found rehearsing

down in the basement
of the city center concert venue,

the Boardwalk.

Having the rehearsal room there
and all the gear set up all the time,

was a massive thing for us
and we were kind of there

five nights a week.

And even if we weren't...
didn't have a gig coming up,

we'd be just writing new songs,
and more importantly, just hanging out.

You know, being a band.

It was a proper, little... it was
our little HQ, you know what I mean?

It was just us as a unit
just gelled together.

I think the time we put in...

we developped our sound
downstairs there in the Boardwalk.

And it was a real basic sound.

There was nothing contrived,
so it wasn't really planned like,

"Ok, I really need my guitar to...

I wanna go for this
sound, I'm gonna do that."

It was "in", turn it up,
go for it.

We rehearsed next door.
You'd hear them in there

doing one riff from 'I Am the Walrus'
over and over, an hour, to get it right.

Noel worked that band to the ground.
You'd go away for two hours,

come back and they'd still
be in there... doing this riff.

He basically whipped them
into shape.

# I am he as you are he as
you are me and we are all together.

# See how they run like pigs
from a gun, see how they fly.

# I'm crying.

'I Am the Walrus' came about
'cause we didn't have so many songs

when we were doing these gigs
and we had to play for...

to earn the fucking 25 quid
that you were gonna get.

To put in the van,
to get on.

You had to play for half an hour.

We didn't have half an hour's
worth of material.

And we figured that we'd do a cover
and just make it really fucking long.

# ... I am the walrus,

# goo goo gajoob.

# Mister City P'liceman sitting

And then we just
used to stretch it up.

Until someone would go...

That's it.
You can finish now.

And people would say to us,
"What's that last tune?"

And I replied, "I just written
that yesterday."

"Fucking hell!
That should be a single."

"Shut up, you tit!"

# Sitting in an English garden...

But Oasis were more
than a Beatles covers band,

group leader Noel Gallagher
had always written songs,

and with the band in place
he was able to perfect his craft.

I think the turning point
it was 'Live Forever'.

And I wrote 'Live Forever'
one afternoon back in Manchester,

took it down to the rehearsal
room that night...

He said, "Paul, I've got this song.
Really simple chords, G, D, Em, C."

It was 'Live Forever' and
he just sat and he played it.

"What do you think?" and I was like...

"Yeah. That's all right.
Should we have a go at that one?"

# Maybe I don't really wanna know

# How your garden grows
cos I just wanna fly

And Bonehead's still convinced to this
day that I've not written that song.

We played it and he was going,
"You've not... That's not yours."

And he was convinced he was gonna
find it on some obscure

fucking Byrds' B side
or something.

The ex roadie from Burnage
had written his first classic.

# ...I dont wanna die

# Maybe I just want to breathe

# Maybe I just don't believe

# Maybe you're the same as me

# We see things they'll never see

# You and I are gonna live forever

'Live Forever' has the feeling
of an anthem to it

but it's subtle and small scale,
and has that feeling of...

it's got that feeling of
'Born to Run'.

It's that feeling of, "It's me
and you, kid, against the world."

And through this music that we love,
through what we believe in,

we're going to live forever.

In a way it's saying,

"We can do something.
We can mean something."

And when they say "we", they're
talking about five lads off the estate.

They're not talking about anyone
with special powers,

they're not talking anyone
with privileged upbringing,

they're just talking about "we", "us".

# You and I are gonna live forever

With songs like 'Live Forever'
up their sleeve,

the band sensed they could
go all the way.

Everybody knew what
'Live Forever' meant.

When it's like, "you and me",
see things that nobody else sees.

And we're gonna fucking
live forever, man.

You know... people get that.

In the summer of 1993,
Noel and brother Liam

found themselver talking
contracts in London

at the offices of legendary
indie label, Creation Records.

I remember walking into
Creation Records and scrawled

just on the woodchip wall paper,

not even sprayed,
just in felt pen,

in huge letters was,
"Northern Ignorants".

And that was in the reception.

I remember looking at that going,
"Just fucking give me the contract, man."

"I've found my home."

The top brass at Creation were just
as impressed with their new charges

and their Mancunian work ethic.

They were just good people,
funny people.

And wanted to graft, you know.

I don't think... no band ever walked
through that office with a plan of work.

It was, "Right. Give us some dough.
We wanna goout and play live."

From the moment they signed
their record deal

Oasis hit the road.

Their relentless gigging built them
a following across the country

with fans soon fighting each other
to be allowed in.

Basically it was just like,
"Right. We're gonna get down

"and we're gonna slug it,
you know, do it."

You're gonna tour from London,
up to the midlands,

you're gonna do North of England,
you're gonna do Scotland,

and then you're gonna go
right back off without a day off.

Get back down there in the van.

Of course, 150 people two weeks ago

came out,
they'd seen us, they'd heard it,

they'd told their mates, "Should've
checked this band last night, Oasis."

And of course, two weeks later
we'd be back.

This minibus would rolling
into town with us in it.

The poster would be on the wall,
Oasis were back on again.

With their fan base
building and building

Noel took a decision that The Stone Roses
had backed away from,

they upped stakes
and moved to London.

I was living with a girl at the time,

and I said, "Well, I'm going to London.
Are you coming?"

And she said, "I've got a job."

And I said, "Well, I'm out of here."

And I went initially for the weekend
and never went back.

I didn't even take any of my stuff.

I think I brought my guitar and
maybe an old ** full of clothes,

and that was it.
I left everything.

And it just turned out that
I've never been back since.

Fucking brilliant!

Gallagher's timing was perfect.

Indie music's center of gravity

had also migrated from
Manchester to London,

largely down to the impact
of one band.

# Well she's show showing it off then

# The glitter in her lovely eyes

# Show show showing it off then

# And all the people
shake their money in time

It was one of the most
exciting things I'd ever heard.

It was like the cavalry
coming over the hill, Suede.

"Ah! That again!"
What British groups are good at.

But more importantly, it was just
stuff you could just get lost in.

# ...driving me mad, come see

# Show show showing it off then

I felt independent music
just showed no ambition.

I just thought, if you were Phil Collins
at the time, you'd be thinking,

"Well, that's not gonna
bother me, is it?"

And that's all we wanted to do,
was to have...

one of our great songs replacing
the rubbish that we heard on the radio.

# She sells lips

# Oh dad, she's driving me mad,
come see

Suede's frontman,
Brett Anderson,

was a provocative figure
who traded in dark glamour,

and sexualy ambiguous lyrics.

I'd always seen sex as something

that wasn't healthy and
joyous and celebratory.

I'd always seen it as something
that was sinister.

So I was trying to reflect that.

I know I was quite obsessed
with this idea of having

a song that was quite sexually
subversive in the top ten.

It was almost like a little
challenge I had with myself.

In 1993, Suede got a chance
to launch an assault on mainstream music.

The NME campaigned for the band
to be allowed to play at the Brit Awards,

traditionally a showcase
for British music's old guard.

Everybody who was nominated
hadn't put a record out for 10 years.

It was Annie Lennox,
eternally Annie Lennox,

eternally Rod Stewart,
eternally Phil Collins,

and NME just launched
this little campaign where we said,

"This is rubbish.
We shouldn't be doing this.

"We should be representing
all this new exciting music."

And effectively we made the Brits
put Suede on.

They basically ambushed Suede
and begged them to be on their show.

Please welcome, the already
legendary, Suede.

The band performed their new single,
the thrillingly sinister, 'Animal Nitrate'.

We crashed the party,
that was the thing.

I don't think I've ever felt
more out of place

than that time that
we performed in the Brits.

It was so ridiculously corporate.

# Like his dad you know that he's had

# Animal nitrate in mind

It was kind of like,
these snotty little kids

getting up there
and ripping it up,

and singing a song about sex
in council houses and stuff like that.

# Oh it turns you on,
on, on, now he has gone

# Oh what turns you on, on, on,
now your animal's gone?

I was staying at my girlfriend's house
at the time, in Devon,

and the family was sitting round
for dinner, and I said,

"Drop your knives and forks.

"Come through and see this.
This is amazing."

And we were just gawping
at the TV.

I think the audience didn't
really know what to make of us.

I remember finishing the song

and just looking at this sea
of tuxedoed people kind of... like this.

Which was great.
It was always the point of that.

It was never our intention to play
some nice, little, happy-clappy song

and make everyone smile.

Quite the opposite.

When 'Animal Nitrate' was released
the following week,

it charted at #7.

Suede had got their
top-ten hit.

The following month,
Select magazine declared Suede

the outriders of a new wave
of British indie rock.

With a cover featuring
its first figurehead

superimposed on a Union Jack.

I hated it.

Absolutely hated it.

I was really angry about it.

I thought it was a really...
No, it wasn't cool.

I've never wanted to be
photographed in front of a flag,

and I'm always finding myself
superimposed on top of fucking flags.

I just hated it.

I was offered this, the little
England role, d'you know what I mean.

"You want this? Here it is.
It's yours if you want it."

And I'd... You must be joking.

Suede's debut album
unwittingly marked the start

of what would come to be known
as Britpop.

But it was another
group's sound and attitude

that would define this
as a new movement.

# He's a twentieth century boy

# With his hands on the rails

# Trying not to be sick again

# And holding on for tomorrow

Blur's second album,
'Modern Life is Rubbish'

was the sound of a band reborn.

'Modern Life is Rubbish',
I suppose, to try to sum it up,

was me attempting to write
in a classic English vein

using imagery and words
that were much more modern.

So it was a weird combination,

a quiet sort of nostalgic
sounding melodies

and chord progressions
by these weird caustic lyrics about

England as it was at that moment.

The way that it was getting
this sort of mass americanized refit.

# She's a twentieth century girl

# With her hands on the wheel

# Trying not to make him sick again

And then suddenly you realise
that within Damon's writing

here was someone who had the lyrical
sharpness of Ray Davies of The Kinks,

and also the kind of psychedelic
outlook of Syd Barrett and so on.

So it was like,
"This is something really special."

# And we can wait until tomorrow

Damon Albarn had found
a lyrical focus, Britishness,

and how it was under attack
from American consumer culture.

*** was actually about
these areas of England, like Essex,

where he was from, sort of caught
in this cultural twilight zone,

that all this American stuff
was flooding over.

So everyone was building shopping malls,
like Blue Water and all these places,

and obviously McDonalds,
KFC and all that.

British people sort of didn't really
know where they were any more,

and were living in this sanitised,
corporatised environment.

Here you have your sugars

and here, you have your culture.

I just felt that the country
I lived in was very confused

and I was just another person
who lived there

and I just happened
to be able to express it

in a probably more blatant
way than most people.

And then 'Parklife' came
and then obviously

everyone felt the same
way as I did.

'Parklife' was the group's third album,

with lead off single, the irrepressible
'Girls & Boys'.

As soon as the guy started
to play around with it,

and playing it in the studio,

Alex put on that ridiculously funky
back baseline.

# Street's like a jungle

# So call the police

It was one of those things you just
felt straightaway is right.

This is definitely something
we should go on with.

# Down to Greece

# On holiday -

Disco drums, Duran Duran base,
nasty guitars and

singing about shagging plus
it sounded great when you were drunk.

# Take your chances looking for

# Girls who are boys

# Who like boys to be girls

The chorus was just so hooky,
'Girls who like boys, who like boys...'

as soon as I heard that I just though,
"This is gonna be...

"Everyone's gonna relate to this
straightaway."

# Avoiding all work

# Because there's none available

# Like battery thinkers

# Count your thoughts
on 1 2 3 4 5 fingers

# Nothing is wasted

'Girls & Boys' was written
after Damon Albarn

witnessed the hedonism of British
18 to 30 holiday makers

while he was out in Mallorca.

# But we haven't been introduced

# Girls who are boys

# Who like boys to be girls

# Who do boys like they're girls

That was written 'cos I had spent
a night in Magalluf in Mallorca,

and the next night in Deià,
which is a totally different atmosphere.

But I just sort of, for fun,

I find it easy to go between the two.

# Always should be someone
you really love

He's watched these crowds
of young holiday makers

getting drunk and having sex
with each other,

and he's drawn to it

but he's also absolutely
appalled by it at the same time.

It's a kind of desire
and also disgust.

Half of me would really would like
to get in there right in the middle of it.

# Always should be someone
you really love

The poppinness of 'Girls & Boys'
broadened Blur's appeal

and helped 'Parklife' make its way
to the top of the album charts.

Overnight 'Parklife' revolutionises

not just their fortunes, but started
to revolutionise British indie music.

We're talking now No. 1 albums,
No. 1 records,

your face all over the TV,
all over the newspapers,

it crosses over in such a massive way.

Times were changing,

and when it was Parklife's
turn at the Brits,

Blur weren't just invited to play

but also walked off
with four awards.

Blur and 'Parklife'!

The winner of Best British Single
goes to Blur, 'Parklife'.

Blur, Parklife!

And ladies and gentlemen,
the winner are...

Blur!

In their moment of triumph,
there was one other band

that Damon Albarn felt
he ought to recognise.

Very good!

This should have been...

I think this should have been
shared with Oasis.

Much love and respect to them.

'Definitely Maybe', the debut
album from Oasis,

had followed four months
after 'Parklife'.

A perfect distillation
of their casual genius,

it connected with an audience
that lay far outside the indie getho.

There was no one else
doing it at the time.

No one was out there with guitars
as a band... as a gang, really,

and sort of talking and playing
from the heart.

And singing about things
that people were feeling.

All songs on that Album
are Noel's best, really.

# I'd like to be somebody else
and not know where I've been

# I'd like to build myself
a house out of plasticine

# Shake along with me

With songs like 'Live Forever'
and 'Cigarettes and Alcohol'

Oasis had crafted an album
that captured the spirit of the 1990s,

yet worshipped
at the altar of rock history.

The key to Oasis is they are

the sound of every great moment
of British pop rolled into one.

'Cigarettes and Alcohol'.

They're Slade and The Kinks...
you can find even a bit of Bowie,

The Who pulls in there a few times.

It's kind of got the melody to
The Beatles and the power of the Pistols,

and it's got Liam to sing
that sneer of John Lydon,

the coolness of The Stone Roses.

# Is it worth the aggravation

# To find yourself a job when
there's nothing worth working for?

It had that sort of "devil-may-care"
irresponsibility about it.

'Is it worth the aggravation

to find yourself a job when
there's nothing worth working for?'

It's just brilliant.

That's the stuff that will make
100,000 jump up and down.

'Cause he's singing about you.

It's not ***,
it's not Leonard Cohen,

it's Oasis, it's a gig.
All it's fun, it's like

punch the air, get whacked,
life's great.

Sore head the next day.

# You might as well do the white line

# Cos when it comes on top...

# You gotta make it happen!

Songs like 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'
will last forever.

You could recite those words
and it's not fucking poetry but

it applies to every 16 year-old
in every generation.

'Cos really all you need
is a bit of action.

And some fucking fags and booze,
and that's it. You're having it.

# I wanna do great things

# I don't wanna compromise

By now, Campden Town,
home of britpop

was host to one enormous party.

For the first time probably since '76,

when The Clash and The Pistols
and people were hanging out,

you could walk down virtually
any street in London

and bump into a pop star.

And by a pop star I mean somebody
who'd been on 'Top of the Pops' that week.

You could go in any pub in Campden
and know that you could buy a drink

for somebody who'd been on
Top of the Pops

and whose records you had bought.
It was amazing.

Good evening. We're Pulp.

Hello. We're Elastica.

# Than you can count
the bullets in a war

# Oh what do I know

# There's gotta be
so much I don't know

It was just a celebration of being
young and it was an unwritten thing,

you feel it,
you can't put your finger on it,

but you know it's fucking great.

It was just people out
on the streets.

Saturday nights in Campden
were amazing.

And the summer was great.

The summer of 94 and 95
were amazing.

I don't think it rained once.

I sorted that out.

# I wanna know what love is,

# Is it something I do to myself,

# Something I do to myself.

***
Rock 'n roll of the fucking 90s

Forget the 60s, forget the past.

Indie music was no longer about
being outside the mainstream,

it was the mainstream.

They were appealing
right across the board.

To all the students, to all the guys
that were working on building sites

and in vans around the country.

And their records were going
multi-platinum.

No one had heard of this before.
That was the domain of Celine Dion,

and Tina Turner and Phil Collins.
It was unheard of.

And suddenly ***
"I should know"

this kind of alternative music, the stuff
that we'd always been working on,

and always thought was a kind of
secondary, if not third, market

has now become the premier market.

It's what people want
to listen and buy.

If there was any doubt about
how far indie music had come,

it was all made clear in the week
of August the 14th, 1995.

Another battle. Two of Britain's
most popular pop groups

have begun the biggest
chart war in 30 years.

The Manchester band Oasis,
and their archrivals Blur

released new singles today,

each hoping to reach
the #1 spot next week.

The music history
hasn't seen anything like it

since The Beatles fought it out
with the Rolling Stones in the '60s.

We bumped into Oasis in London
at some launch party,

and at the time the relationship
between the bands wasn't that bad.

So Blur went along.

I remember Liam coming up
to Damon and right in his face,

"Fucking #1", and Damon
was like, "Wow!".

And the guy was being
quite aggressive.

And I think Damon felt,
"Well... Let's see."

# City dweller

# Successful fella

# Thought to himself:

# "Oops, I've got a lot of money

Damon... Bless him!
He don't like not being

fated as the greatest living
songwriter in England.

He can't stand that.

And, of course, he wasn't
at the time and I was.

And he wanted a bit of the action.

And, to be honest,
he's a very clever dude

because we're still sat here,
how many years now,

and still talking about
the Blur-and-Oasis thing.

And, you know what annoys
me the most about it all?

It's Blur and Oasis,
why did they got to be put first?

It's fucking Oasis and Blur.

For fuck's sake!

But, you know,
hats off to him for that.

The battle lines were drawn over the
songs 'Country House' and 'Roll with it'.

Indie music, which had one set
its face against commercialism,

was using sales figures
to decide who was top dog.

The point is, the Blur-Oasis war
signified where this music had gone.

If you'd imagine that happening
seven years before, it never would.

No one would have gone in and said,

"Let's do The Smiths V The Wedding Present
for the king of the indie crown."

It just wouldn't have happened.

It would've been seen as being
crass and kind of hucksterish,

and all a bit of a swindle.

# But you know I think
I recognize your face

# But I've never seen you before

# You gotta roll with it

# You gotta take your time

# You gotta say what you say

# Don't let anybody get in your way

# 'Cause it's all too much
for me to take

I suppose it was just a way
of upping the ante.

With 'Parklife' we'd swept
the board at the Brits,

and you need
this ongoing momentum.

That's important, you know,
success is a function of success

and it needs to be seen getting
bigger and bigger. That's important.

Hello, we're Blur.
We're #1

and we're gonna be camping out
later on Top of the Pops.

It was all good fun, weren't it?

# I'm a professional cynic

# But my heart's not in it

# I'm paying the price of
living life at the limit

# Caught up in the century's anxiety"

# Yes, it preys on him

# He's getting thin
(Try the simple life)

# He lives in a house

# A very big house

# In the country

It was Blur who won
the race to #1

but the Oasis camp
weren't at all shaken.

The band's second album
had been completed

and those that heard it
knew that the game wasn't over.

I was quite proud of it, though,
in one way, I suppose, as well.

Even though we came second.

'Cause I knew we were just
gonna do 'em on the album.

Just beat 'em to bits on the album.

So it was like, "***
we're gonna sell more."

The songs on 'What's the Story,
Morning Glory'

saw the group move away
from the raw sound of their debut.

What happened with
the second Oasis album

was that Noel began to take seriously
being the voice of a generation,

or the lyricist of a generation.

And started to self-consciously
write anthems.

He wanted the music to be bigger.

Of all the anthems on the album,

one song would come to define
the new Oasis.

My earliest memory of
'Wonderwall' was...

There was these drums accoustic **,
a guide base that Noel had put down.

And to hear it stripped down like that
it really sounded as a reggae song.

It's got a real reggae feel to it.

I remember Liam coming in like,
"What's?! I'm not singing on that.

"It's like a reggae song." And Noel
was like, "Well, it's not a reggae song.

"When I've finished it, it's drums,
base and guitar. Chill out."

So this big argument.
Liam storming out.

That's my earliest memory,
really, of the song.

Liam running and saying
he's not playing reggae songs.

# Today is gonna be the day

# That they're gonna
throw it back to you

# By now you should've somehow

# Realized what you gotta do

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do about you now

# Backbeat, the word is on the street

# That the fire in your heart is out

# I'm sure you've heard it all before

# But you never really had a doubt

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do about you now

I don't know why that song...

kind of took on a life of its own.

You have to ask
somebody that likes it.

I think it's a really good song.
I wish I'd written it.

Great song. Great vocals on it.
It's a good voice, Liam.

I think that's their finest moment.

# Because maybe

# You're gonna be
the one that saves me

# And after all

# You're my wonderwall

It wasn't called Wonderwall
for a fucking long, long time.

It was called something appalling like
"Wishing Stone", or something stupid.

There it was,
the George Harrison film.

Brilliant.

What's a "wonderwall"?
Who cares?

It sounds great.

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do about you now

'Wonderwall' brought Oasis
an entirely new fan base,

most of whom had never bought
an indie record before in their life.

The squares got involved.

And when the squares get
involved with your music,

you fucking become massive.

Seriously.

'Wonderwall' is not
an edgy tune, is it?

I can't believe how
many records it sold.

It was incredible.

I became a millionaire four times
in one week.

One week.

# And after all

# You're my wonderwall

And Damon Albarn told stories

that he would go out to the pub,
or into a shop, or whatever.

And as soon as people saw him
they'd either start singing Oasis songs,

or they put one on the stereo.

It just became inescapable.

# And after all

# You're my wonderwall

And then six months later,
Damon and all that lot were saying,

"This is fucking hard. I've got people
shouting at me in the streets.

"And everywhere I go into a pub
someone puts an Oasis..."

Well... That's what it fucking is, man.

That's how fucking hot
it is in the kitchen.

Those nancy boy all got a bit
fucking freaked out by fame.

Went to a priory, and rehab,
and all got psychiatrists and all that.

I kept going straight back to the bar.

We were just fucking having it.

'What's the Story' propelled Oasis

into the orbit of stadium rock acts
such as U2.

Having sold out indoor arenas
and then football stadiums,

they were soon running out of
venues that could contain them.

And so in early 1996,

Noel Gallagher found himself traveling
up the drive to Knebworth.

A concert venue synonymous
with the biggest names in rock.

Noel came back and said,
"You wanna see the size of this site.

"It's huge, but we're gonna do it."

We were confident we could do it.

I didn't know what to expect of it.

It was like, "Ok, we're gonna do this
huge, big gig in a great, big field."

"How many does that hold?"
"It's like 125,000 people."

"And we're gonna do two nights?
That's a quarter of a million people."

And it was just like, "My God!"

It was decided that
we were gonna do it,

and I was like, "Right. If we're gonna
do it, we're gonna do it properly.

"It's gonna be all day.
It's gonna be a festival.

"It's gonna be a fair ground

"and we're gonna get the best bands
that there is around at the minute."

Do it fucking properly.

Not just print a load of tickets
and hope everybody turns up.

Just to make it an event.
And make a statement.

It was just beyond...

I think there was actually ticket
applications for the concert,

there was about 2.7 million
ticket applications.

We could have sold night after night
after night after night.

They had the anthems for it.
They had the Wanderwalls and stuff.

And it felt like a huge mass
coming together for the nation.

So you had grown men with their
arms around each other,

crying and hugging each other
singing along to songs

in a mass communal field.

People wanted to be part of a mass
communal successful thing.

They wanted to feel big,
and they wanted to feel successful.

'Champagne Supernova'.

From the start, Knebworth
was all about setting records.

The group's management boasted
that the PA system and video screens used

were the largest
ever constructed.

I had a set of amplifiers
that when we played the gig

it was officially louder
than a rocket.

A rocket when it takes off
it's 104dB.

I had a fucking amp rig
that was 108.

This is only three years after
fucking being in the Boardwalk.

Three years!!

That's how fucking mad it got.

# How many special people change?

# How many lives are living strange?

# Where were you while
we were getting high?

# Slowly walking down the hall

# Faster than a cannonball

# Where were you while
we were getting high?

# Someday you will find me

# Caught beneath the landslide

# In a champagne supernova in the sky

Even the best technology available

struggled to cope
with the sheer scale of the event.

The place was so big that
when you heard some music

it was after they'd sung it
on the screen.

That's how big it was.

It was a fairly unsatisfactory
experience for most people, I think.

You couldn't get hardly anywhere
near the stage.

I remember being half a mile away
or something like that,

it was as close as we could get.

And when Oasis
were playing 'Wonderwall',

there was a load of people standing
around us that were singing along

on their shoulders and people
**

# Today is gonna be the day

# That they're gonna
throw it back to you

# By now you should've somehow

# Realized what you're not to do

And all I could hear around
was a load of cockneys going,

"And after all, you're my wonderwall."

And I was standing there like,
"Look, I prefer Liam's version actually."

# And after all

It wasn't what we were about.
We were like the band of the people.

People could relate to us.

That's exactly what
I couldn't relate to.

If I was a kid out there standing
at the back just squinting

by the delay towers,
I'd just... I think, well,

it's not the same band we saw
at our city a couple of years ago.

Brilliant. I'm sure it was
all spine-tingling.

It was for me up there but...

I don't think we should've done it.

They're supposed to be
working class lads.

Why don't they ***

Lower the prices a bit.

Once the fans had left
and the clear up of the site began,

it became clear that Oasis
had taken indie music

as far as it was possible to go.

I suppose Oasis at Knebworth
is like, if we're going to say,

this is as big as it got.
It sort was of like... I don't know,

the last days
of the Roman Empire, isn't it.

It's how far has indie come,
you know what I mean,

they could play that gig, which
I believe is something like

the biggest single, concert audience
that's ever been on British soil.

Something like that.

And for an indie band... and at that
point you'd just start to think,

these terms now are meaningless.

By definition an indie band cannot play
to 200,000 people.

I think there was a general feeling
the next week that, "Well. That's it.

"What next?"

Playing a riff at Buckingham Palace?

The Britpop years saw indie music
move out of specialists record shops

and onto the shelves
of supermarkets.

From now on, it would
be a 'catch-all' term,

for the sound of mainstream
British rock.

There was a sense of market
chasing after a while.

That if setting on an accoustic guitar,

playing a redemptive
ballad like 'Wonderwall',

seemed to be the surest
route to making

125,000 people stick their
cigarette lighters in the air,

and 2 million buying your album,

then everybody started to do it.

And you got this very, very
insipid records.

They're quite nice but,

' Why Does It Always Rain On Me?'
by Travis,

or those early Embrace singles.

I mean, Coldplay, a little bit
further down the line,

I would associate with all this.

# Look how they shine for you

# And everything you do

# Yeah they were all yellow

Like anything that's exciting,
it gets commercialised.

It happened to every single movement,
from hippy to punk,

to acid house and to indie.

All of a sudden people in boardrooms

see that kids are buying records

and will move in on that territory
and sanitise it and commertialise it,

and take its soul away.

Jamie Oliver's Cookin',
music to cook by.

It's a sweet album of 18 modern
anthems including

The Manic Street Preachers,
The Charlatans and La's.

It's music to cook by,
music to eat by,

and music to have a laugh by.

# So have a nice day

# Have a nice day

# So have a nice day

# Have a nice day

The millenium came and went,

and the party in Campden
was well and truly over.

For a genuinely maverick band,

it was harder than ever
to get a record deal.

We used to get to
Blur's record label,

every day with a new demo tape.

I think we were the laughingstock
of the office really.

"I'll see what I can do.
Yeah, leave it with me.

"I'll get back to you. Don't push it.
I'll get back to you."

That kind of reaction.
So we did that for a long time, really.

And it was almost
enough to lose faith.

Then the old band fell apart
and me and Pete put a new band together.

And we just decided that
it was death or glory.

The Libertines,
a gang of renegades

led by Pete Doherty
and Carl Barât

would be the first British group
to bring indie music back down to earth.

# It's all so rudimentary

# but tell me baby how does it feel

# I know you like the roll
of the limousine wheel

# And they all get them out for
(they all get them out)

# The boys in the band
(only for the boys in the band)

# They twist and they shout for
(twist and scream and shout)

# For the boys in the band
(only for the boys in the band)

There's great bands and then
there's fucking great bands

that change the way people wear clothes
and talk and speak and affect things.

That's why The Libertines
connected with people.

Because there was a void
after Oasis.

The Oasis generation kind of moved on.

And the new one pops up,

and they were even more
fucking mental than we were.

Our kind of going out,
cigaretes and alcohol, a bit of coke,

a bit... some pills and fucking
having it till 7 AM,

turned into heroin and crack,
and... self harm.

# And they all get them out for
(they all get them out)

# For The boys in the band
(only for the boys in the band)

They say Oasis is the sound of
a council estate singing its heart out,

then The Libertines was the sound
someone who is like...

a bit just been put in the bin chute
down the back of the estate,

just trying to work out
what day it was.

# Everybody goes...

And they were great to watch.

They used to throw out
little fist fights onstage,

bang into each other.

They could barely hold the music together
but it was great by the same token,

because it was kind of unhinged.

Everyone in the band were
just singing and playing

like it's the last time of their lives.

And that's how it felt to me
to be in the band, doing that.

And I think that definitely
rubbed off,

and it was felt by the fans and that's
what made so many of these gigs special.

# Everybody goes...

# The boy looked at Johnny

# Said "Don't you know
who I think I am"

Like The Smiths before them,

Libertines' concerts were based
around a sweaty and direct interaction

between band and audience.

They completely broke down
the barriers between a band and fans.

The thing with The Libertines is
from day 1 it was a communal thing.

And they had this thing, you know,
anybody could be a Libertine,

it doesn't matter whether
you're in the band or not,

if you want to be a Libertine,
all you have to do is declare it,

and you can be part of
this thing that's going on.

The intimacy that the band offered
did have a cost.

The Libertines had a unique method
of testing the loyalty of fans.

We used to line them up
and have a word around

and take them down a tattoo
parlour and brand them.

Just in case they were fickle.

So there's a few of them
knocking about.

And there's a few of them
knocking about.

The band's connection
with their growing fan base

didn't just take place
at their concerts,

it also happened online.

After a while it turned out
that we could just

go on the Internet at midnight
and there were people talking.

Essentially they talked about us.

So in my point of view

that was something which
we loved the money to milk.*

And we sort of got on and,
"Eh, it's me."

The Libertines pioneered new ways
for bands to use the Internet.

Not least when they posted invites

the last minutes
singalongs on their website.

# For to spend our
money along with Sally Brown

# Shipped on board
off a Liverpool liner

Such gigs would take place
in pub backrooms,

or at the houses of fans,
or even more extraordinary locations.

They played a gig in their own house.

They advertised it
on the Internet and said,

"Come tomorrow. We're playing
a gig at our house."

This was actually after they'd played
this tour, ** 2,000 people of this tour.

They came and advertise it.

Nobody believed it. Why would anyone
play a gig in their own house?

It's insane!

Yeah, sure. A few quid,
you just get the audience in a caf*,

whack it up, teners on the door tonight,
and so last minute gigging,

work our half an hour set,*
clear the flat and then

you can pay your rent
and your grocery bills.

I'd have paid a tenner to go
on Noel Gallagher's house

and see him play but
apparently he's a bit moody.

Not everyone thought that
'Guerrilla' gigs were a good idea.

I'm one of your neighbours,
and I'm sick of your bloody noise,

just like all the other neighbours
around here.

Of course, a couple ** in
and broke ** at the end

But even that would turn into
a magnificent gesture,

because as the police
are running up the stairs,

Pete and Carl look at each other
and they start singing

'Guns of Brixton' by The Clash.

# When they kick out your front door

# How you gonna come?

# With your hands on your head

Whose place is this?

This was it. It was not
about marketing

nor about the Britpop style of, you know,
you pose, you get up onstage,

you sneer a bit
and then you're done.

This was genuine.

Same time next week.

The group were happy to play
up to their lawless image,

but when Doherty's rock 'n roll
lifestyle started to spin out of control,

it led to tensions within the band.

The band became difficult.

Pete was into drugs, what he was into,
that's common knowledge.

His emotions were always up and down

and I was genuinely worried for
his health as well. If not anything else.

And then he started telling me that
he was doing crazier and crazier things.

Which were dangerous, dangerous things.

It's not like I don't know how
to enjoy myself,

but that's just the way I am
and I've become immune to

everything else.
I can't afford to...

I can't afford to worry about what
other people think too much.

The Libertines' second album
would be their last.

The opening song

was an explicit portrait of
a band in the process of splitting up,

and possibly their finest moment.

# An ending fitting for the start

# You twist ...

I fucking can't remember it.

Sorry about that.

# An ending fitting for the start

# You twist and tore our love apart

# Your light fingers threw the dart

# Shattered the lamp into
darkness it cast us...

# No, you've got it the wrong way round

# You cut me out and
tried to blame it on the brown

# Cornered the boy
kicked out at the world,

# The world kicked back
a lot fuckin' harder...

# If you wanna try, If you wanna try

# There's no worse
you could do (oh oh oh)

It's a bit like a
Becket-like piece of dialogue.

This grand dramatic statement of
intent on both Carl and mines's part,

but really it was just like a little
play for today.

# You can't stand me now
(Oh, you can't stand me now)

# You can't stand me now
(No, you can't stand me now)

# You can't stand me now
(No, you can't stand me now)

# You can't stand me now
(No, you can't stand me now)

I remember exactly where I was
in the NME office when we got the CD in,

and we listened to it and,
me and everyone else who was listening

couldn't believe that they'd
laid there this tension

that everybody knew was going on.

# You tried to pull the wool,
I wasn't feeling too clever

# And you take all that they're lending

# Until you needed mending...

*** in the Internet.

It didn't feel like there was anybody
who didn't know how exactly

how things were all along.

It also felt like it was everyone
else's business as well,

since everyone was talking
about it anyways.

So, if you're not gonna
put truth in song,

then what else to put anyway,
what are you gonna put in there?

# I'll take you anywhere you wanna go!

# Oh, you can't stand me now
(No, you can't stand me now)

# You can't stand me now
(Oh, you can't stand me now)

# You can't stand me now
(No, you can't stand me now)

Sometimes you just realise
you're singing is

some of the saddest things that
you'll be ever be able to sing.

It was ***
so hard.

** a lyric like a knife.
It's already come out of your heart*

and now you stick it in ***,
and pull it all out.

It's bound to **

Yeah, it was a very awkward
song to sing.

I remember once Pete thought
I looked at him funny during that song,

and he put down his guitar...
no, he threw down his guitar, ***

and then run out down
the high street...

out the back door.

So it did kind of get to be
a fever pitch.

The Libertines finally
imploded in 2004,

but not before they paved the way

for a new generation of
young British rock bands

starting to break through.

Like most influential bands,

The Libertines started
off as a solitary voice.

So yes, quite rightly everybody said
"Let's all run that way."

And they did.

We're Arctic Monkeys and this is
'I bet you look good on the dance floor'.

Don't believe the hype.

You can clearly draw a line from
Libertines to The Arctic Monkeys,

they sound quite alike.

The Arctic Monkeys sing in a colloquial
voice from the North of England,

but to some extent
it's the same kind of idea.

# Stop making the eyes at me,

# I'll stop making the eyes at you

# And what it is that surprises me

# is that I don't really want you to

# And your shoulders are frozen
(cold as the night)

# Oh, but you're an explosion
(you're dynamite)

# Your name isn't Rio,
but I don't care for sand

# And lighting the fuse might
result in a bang, b-b-bang, go!

# I bet that you look
good on the dancefloor

# I don't know if you're
looking for romance or

# I don't know what you're looking for

Now we seem a long, long
way away from britpop

and bands that are coming through now
are looking back at a time when

indie music and rock music
didn't expect to sell out stadia.

Just expected to make a statement
and reflect life

and be oppositional.

# I wish you'd stop ignoring me,

# because it's sending me to despair

# Without a sound,
yeah, you're calling me,

# and I don't think it's very fair

# That your shoulders are frozen
(cold as the night)

# Oh, but you're an explosion
(you're dynamite)

Groups like The Arctic Monkeys,
that's what they're about,

they're about starting all over again.

# I bet that you look good
on the dancefloor

# I don't know if you're
looking for romance or

# I don't know what you're looking for

By the middle of the first decade
of the 21st century

a new age of rock was
getting under way.

Guitar sales and concert
attendance were up,

and key bands such as Arctic Monkeys
and Franz Ferdinand

could be found on the same
independent record label.

Independent labels give the bands

space to be as weird and freakish
as they naturally would be.

And that's the case with us, you know,

we're a bunch of feaks and
that's why we sound they way we do.

And really glad to be, as well.

I hate to be bland.

# When I woke up tonight

# I said I'm gonna make
somebody love me

# I’m Gonna make somebody love me

# And now I know, now I know,

# Now I know that it's you

# You’re Lucky, lucky, you're so lucky

This was a diverse scene,

one that happily drew from
the best of art rock, punk and indie.

# Well do ya, do ya, do ya wanna

# Well do ya, do ya, do ya wanna

# Wanna go...

For those in the thick of it

British rock could still
be sharp and dynamic.

It's hard to really say when
you're involved in it.

It is in a great state but
it just comes natural to us.

I think if we were 17, we'd think
it was the best time of our lives

because of loads of great bands.

But also the best thing is that
they're not just doing the same formula.

No, nothing sounds the same.

Like what happened when
at the *** and the britpop

when everything was the same.

# She does not listen

# She’s too wrapped up
with all of her things

# This does not get to me

# Cause shes not
the kind of girl that I like

The radio is full of great songs

and there's more attendance
at concerts than ever before.

This is probably the greatest,
most healthy time for British music.

Probably since punk.
Probably since 1976-77.

Today's bands are playing a music

that comes with nearly
half a century of history behind it.

Rock is now like other art forms

where innovation happens under
the influence of what has gone before.

For most of its history
the best of this music

was incontestably new.

It was innovative
unquestionably.

When the Beatles recorded
'Tomorrow never knows'

using all those tape loops

nobody had heard
anything like that before.

When the Velvet Underground recorded
'Venus in Furs' with a droning viola

nobody had ever heard a rock
record like that before.

It's difficult, clearly,
after all that history,

with all those CDs
in the re-issue racks in the shop,

to make music which
is unquestionably original.

Actually, in the minds of the people
making it, this is not a problem.

If you're creating something,
whether it's music or art or writing,

whatever you're doing, you are going
to be affected by what's gone before you.

And to try and pretend that
that's not the case is...

insincere and artifitial.

# So if you're lonely

# You know I'm here waiting for you

# I'm just a crosshair

I think, for me it's much healthier

to be able to acknowledge
what's come before

and then try to do something
different with it.

So you can listen to something and go,

"Wow! That makes me
feel was so excited."

Or... I know that when
we do our music together

there are reference points

and you do sort of talk about things.
But we never really talk about...

sounds or tunes, it's more like the way
that record makes you feel.

# I know I won't be leaving
here with you

Now, over 40 years on,

rock hasn't lost the power
to excite and challenge.

It has provided the youth of
every generation since 1960s

with its own heroes
and soundtrack.

Once the domain only
of the young,

it now belongs to us all.

I think now it's part of our DNA,
it's kind of encoded in us.

So when I see a great new
band that I like

I remember how great it was
when I first heard The Smiths.

It's been knocking around
** to be like film,

a kind of theater of dreams.

An escapist thing that can
go through your life.

And you can get older now
and not put it down.

It may not be necessarily a good
thing, but we're all in it together.

So you get 15 year-olds
and their dads

talking about
the Franz Ferdinand records.

And there will be some purists
who'll just say,

"That's not how it should be, man."
But that's how it is.

# If I move this could die

# If I move this could die

# Come on...

# take me out!

Transcription and
synchronisation by Fry.