Understanding my musical epiphany!

This is quite simply the tale of how an uninspired 18 year old saw the light and everything changed.

I don’t recall what kind of music I particularly liked or listened to before I was 18. Mostly, I listened to my parent’s music because I had too; it was what was on the radio. This was in no way a bad thing I must say. Most of my parent’s music still influences my listening to this day, in some cases obsessively. That's what makes music magical, how it can transcend the generations.

Talk to me of Oasis when I was aged sixteen or younger and I would probably have said ‘don’t really care, not interested, don’t know any of their stuff’.

In fact, it took a prolonged period of pain and anguish to open my eyes to the music that I could profoundly call the music that’s made me. In a way, it was the resemblance of my own personal situation to the situation that Noel Gallagher found himself in, a quarter of a century earlier. I was unemployed, unenthused and on auto-pilot, not helped by medical infliction, recent poor academic results and general uncertainty about my future. I was just waiting for something to come along and kick some energy into me.

I don’t know what it was that made me explore beyond their two most seminal pieces of work but I rejoice to this day that I did, because it would change my life. There is no greater feeling than falling in love, that’s a given. Although, at that time I’d never truly felt that emotion in its most obvious context, however, I did experience falling in love with music. Those two years were a voyage of discovery, all conducted from the safety and security of my bed. Almost every night, I would lie awake, restless from my incapacity and there, on the screen, would be a new song from one of the eight albums that I’d not heard before and would proceed to play it repeatedly until my eyes had no strength to stay open anymore. The journey allowed me for the first time to explore my musical tastes, cultural perspective and awareness.

In those early days, ‘Definitely Maybe’ was the main focus of the journey, much as it must have been to all those impressionable young people who heard it way back in ’94. I had never heard anything like it before. The album as a whole sounded fresh, energetic and full of life, everything I wasn’t at the time.

I thought of Gallagher and his companions sat in a bedsit, with little going for them, stumbling through their everyday lives, much like me, searching for the beacon to beckon them to a better place, metaphorically, spiritually and literally.  It felt to me that Gallagher was writing and the band were playing to spread the message of hope, that we should be happy to be alive and kicking, to not worry about life getting us down and to surge with wonder into each and every waking hour. Liam Gallagher mastered the best quote I have ever heard of the album “12 songs about being sad but knowing it can get better” and I feel that every time I hear the album.

Oasis are more than just those two ballads from their second album, hence why I won’t mention them by name. Scroll through their entire back catalogue and there are numerous gems to behold, many which have never seen the light of a radio play. ‘Carry Us All’ although from a later album strikes a similar chord to songs from ‘Definitely Maybe’, such as ‘Sad Song’. They are deeply melancholic and moody and you can really feel, especially in the later, the plea for help from the songwriter to rid him of his current circumstances. Yet both songs, and the entire album in truth, left me immediately lifted, spirits raised, a smile across my face and with the knowledge that everything would be ok with my world.

The best illustration of how I felt having listened to a new track or album during those restless years  comes from reviewer Danny Eccleston, stating “there is nothing more exhilarating than knowing something great is about to happen” and to a lad going through a tough time, there aren’t many greater summations than that.

Had it not been for Oasis, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to College, moved to Sheffield, firstly for university but then for good. I wouldn’t have grown in confidence and maturity. I wouldn’t have discovered ‘The La’s’ or ‘Dire Straits’ or many of the musicians and bands that mean something to me now.

The crux comes to this. Although I don’t listen to Oasis as quite vehemently as I did back in my final years as a teenager, I will always have a place in my heart for the Gallagher’s and their motley crew. They opened my eyes to the hardships of the real world but also to the aspirations and dreams that adults hold that aren’t just consigned to childhood. They made me happy in a time of unhappiness; they lifted me from the gloom and brought that beacon a little closer to clutching distance.

And for that I shall be eternally grateful.