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Alan McGee Talks Oasis













Upside Down: The Creation Records Story, is the new documentary charting the mighty rise, spectacular cultural impact and peculiar fall of Alan McGee's notorious record label. The company, with McGee at its helm, released some of the most influential albums of the early 90s, famously becoming home to Oasis during their Britpop heyday, thus placing themselves firmly alongside Factory Records as one of the most notorious labels to ever grace the British music scene.

For McGee, year after year of non-stop partying and excessive drug-taking culminated with him being rushed to an LA hospital by paramedics in 1994, three years after his label hit its creative zenith with the releases of Screamadelica, Loveless and Bandwagonesque. Sailing through the golden years of Britpop, Creation fell on tougher times later in the decade, released Kevin Rowland's monstrous failure My Beauty in 1999, and folded not long after that.

Q caught up with the now 'retired' McGee over a crackling phone line to get his version of the story. Cue much insanity, a fair share of drugs and a lot of swearing. Oh, and he's not a big fan of that newlywed couple, either.

Taken from an interview with Alan, read the full article here.

Do you think Oasis will reform?

Yeah, I think so eventually, when the dust settles. Creatively, I think it's a good thing for them both that they split. Liam's record is good, a very happy record. Noel's demos are fucking stunning, the songs I've heard are amazing. The only problem could be getting the recording right, but if he does it will be an amazing record. But I think they're up against a lot of stuff because they're not called Oasis. But there will be peace eventually. Something will land on the desk, and it will be a few hundred million for some dates, and they'll go 'yeah'.

Noel Gallagher says in Upside Down that the Knebworth gigs were the death of indie...

I personally don't agree with that at all. Domino's been the natural successor to Creation, an utterly vigilant label. But I don't think Creation could be Creation in this current climate. Creation was about having an attitude, and it epitomised the 90s.

There's some talk in the movie about how Creation went global when Oasis came along.

You know, for me it's very hard to tell because I was always in the middle of it. Even I don't understand the full extent of what we did, but I think Danny captured the right points in the film, at the right time too. It would've been wrong to do [the film] back then I think, but now we've had some time to think on it.

How do feel about Be Here Now looking back on it?

I don't think the production is good, but I think the songs are good. And it sold like a million copies. James Allan from Glasvegas loves it! He wants to do a side project where he does Be Here Now acoustic with a choir. Fucking mad!

..but there's a good album in there underneath all the layers of guitars..

I totally agree! I think it was just too many drugs involved. And the weird thing for me is that I went through it all sober!

Have you read Tony Blair's biography?

[laughs] I never read it, no.

It's striking that your name, Noel, Liam, Damon Albarn, Britpop and Cool Britannia is not mentioned once, seeing how he based a lot of his campaign on that 'movement'.

[laughs more] He has erased it from history! But honestly, I don't for a moment regret going to 10 Downing Street. Don't think I'll be invited back, though.

Source: qthemusic.com

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