May 31st 1993, Alan McGee attends a gig in Glasgow and signs the band who would go on to have the biggest selling album of the decade.
No one at the time could predict just how successful Oasis would be and what a huge cultural impact they would have from the school playground to politics helping Labour get into power.
In 1994 as part of Creation’s 10th Anniversary celebrations McGee was already excited about the band and talking about them as one of the greats, and this is before their debut single.
“So the promoter lets them play. Now, I wouldn’t have got to see them normally, because when a band of mine’s playing I usually get in five minutes before they come on stage. However, because I’d gone with my sister Susan, who doesn’t happen to own a watch, I got there two hours early. I witnessed all the shenanigans, so I wanted to see what they were like.
“The first song was really good. Then the second was incredible. By the time they did this fantastic version of I Am the Walrus, I’d decided I’ve got to sign this group, now. I said: ‘Do you have a record deal? Do you want one? I wanna do it.’ Eventually they had 20 record companies offering them deals and at the last minute Mother Records, owned by U2, phoned and said: ‘We’ll offer double what McGee is offering.’
“The music is a cross between the Kinks, Stone Roses and the Who, and the cover of this tape, which is incredibly rare, only 10 ever made, is important because it’s a Union Jack going down the toilet. That sums up our country at the moment. I don’t want to herald them too much, but they’re already one of my favourite groups. Seeing them is what seeing the Stones must have been like in the early days. Brutal, exciting, arrogant.”
Oasis would go on to sell 70 million albums, have 22 top 10 singles and 7 number 1 albums before splitting in 2009.