Noel's personal Walkman tapes from the 90's... (Read 503 times)

[zeberdee]

I'm sure we've all heard Noel claim interviews that most of the songs he's written, he just "remembers" them. I think he's said something like "if they are any good, you'll remember them the next morning."(EDIT: it may have been Mccartney that actually said this quote) This is something I've never really quite believed from him. When you are constantly writing albums year after year like Noel was in the 90's there's no way you're just remembering every chord sequence, chord change, every vocal melody line just off the top of your head. 

For example take a look at the list The Crimson Rambler composed of the songs and ideas from Noels Notebook:

forum.live4ever.uk.com/post/1342507

Yes some may be lyrics, or instrumentals. But there's no way all this information, aside from a title, is just stored in Noels head. The melodies, the chords etc. This leads me to believe that Noel had to be doing something which many songwriters to to this day, (except with a phone instead of a Walkman) and thats recording your ideas down during the songwriting process in order to complete and remember the arrangement and melody of a song. This is where i stumbled on a few quotes from Noel himself about using a Walkman to record to when writing his songs:

In a Feb 96 interview with Q, on the topic of Noel adding his acoustic bit into the sets, he had this to say:

They think you're "wallowing in the limelight" too?

They probably do. The way I see it is this: I believe the fans of the band should get a chance to see how these songs are born. They all start with one man sitting in a chair with an acoustic guitar singing into a Walkman. I'll never let it go now.

Further proof of Noel using a walkman to record his ideas can also be seen in this Sept 97 interview with Q on the topic of him creating the "scream" part of Fade In/Out:

"The scream near the end was the last bit we did. Me and Meg went back to Mustique over Christmas and I took the rough mix with me. It needed something and it was bugging me. Meg woke up one morning and there I was in bed with the Walkman on, screaming. She thought I'd gone into my drug psychotic phase - 'Oh, sorry, I'm just filling in a bit of the record...'

We also have an interview with GP shortly after the release of SOTSOG, in which Noel claimed:

This time, however, I had basically done the album twice before it even got to the band.

I had written and recorded the songs on a little Walkman, and then I demoed the tracks on ADATs in my bedroom.

We also have this quote from a 2005 Interview with MOJO from Bonehead:

Bonehead: I'd heard Don't Look Back in Anger, I think. But Noel didn't share these songs with us. Normally you'd get a CD two weeks before you were due to record. "Here, learn these." He wrote very privately. I sometimes think it would have been nice to have had more rehearsal on the songs, maybe played stuff a bit differently, but that's the way we worked and it worked.

Add all these quotes together and I think it gives us a pretty clear indication that Noel was pretty much recording all his songs and ideas firstly to a Walkman throughout the majority of the 1990's. My questions are:

Do these tapes still exist?

If so, who has them?

How many possible tapes could there be of this nature that DO exist? (It's possible Noel just recorded over tapes that already had songs on after the songs had been released, instead of using new ones)

What exactly is on these tapes? I'd bet good money plenty of those "Noels Notebook" songs we never heard could have existed in one form or another on these tapes. I'd honestly prefer a CD full of prime Noel ideas from stuff like this as opposed to a new album.


TLDR:

Ignition/Noel, we know there are tapes from the 90s containing Noel songs and ideas that may exist in their original form, so release them!

[tomlivesforever]

They're saving them for the 100th anniversaries.

[mossy]

The problem is, Oasis and their management weren’t a particularly professional unit, carefully storing and cataloguing these tapes for posterity.

They were all coke fiends bouncing from session to tour to after party and back again. Who knows what gold has been lost in attics and behind sofas following post-divorce house moves…

[Supersonic]

Nov 18, 2024 17:48:18 GMT -5 mossy said:

The problem is, Oasis and their management weren’t a particularly professional unit, carefully storing and cataloguing these tapes for posterity.

They were all coke fiends bouncing from session to tour to after party and back again. Who knows what gold has been lost in attics and behind sofas following post-divorce house moves…

Don’t forget to check that sock drawer. 🧦🗃️

[imstandinghere]

Nov 18, 2024 17:48:18 GMT -5 mossy said:

The problem is, Oasis and their management weren’t a particularly professional unit, carefully storing and cataloguing these tapes for posterity.

They were all coke fiends bouncing from session to tour to after party and back again. Who knows what gold has been lost in attics and behind sofas following post-divorce house moves…

Or they’re tactically missing to make for a good story 

[mossy]

Nov 18, 2024 18:09:27 GMT -5 imstandinghere said:

Nov 18, 2024 17:48:18 GMT -5 mossy said:

The problem is, Oasis and their management weren’t a particularly professional unit, carefully storing and cataloguing these tapes for posterity.

They were all coke fiends bouncing from session to tour to after party and back again. Who knows what gold has been lost in attics and behind sofas following post-divorce house moves…

Or they’re tactically missing to make for a good story 

Both of these things can be true 🙂

[The Crimson Rambler]

Nov 18, 2024 15:35:13 GMT -5 zeberdee said:

I'm sure we've all heard Noel claim interviews that most of the songs he's written, he just "remembers" them. I think he's said something like "if they are any good, you'll remember them the next morning."(EDIT: it may have been Mccartney that actually said this quote) This is something I've never really quite believed from him. When you are constantly writing albums year after year like Noel was in the 90's there's no way you're just remembering every chord sequence, chord change, every vocal melody line just off the top of your head. 

For example take a look at the list The Crimson Rambler composed of the songs and ideas from Noels Notebook:

forum.live4ever.uk.com/post/1342507

Yes some may be lyrics, or instrumentals. But there's no way all this information, aside from a title, is just stored in Noels head. The melodies, the chords etc. 

Hey. Thanks for the shoutout. Noel definitely did say that about remembering the good stuff. I think the quote is on some old video interview on YouTube but I can't remember where exactly.

I'm not really a musician myself but as a big fan of music it's quite evident to me that many good musicians can remember huge numbers of chord progressions, melody lines, lyrics etc. off the top of their head. Although I think you're underestimating this point Noel, like probably all musicians, did do stuff to help him remember. The notebooks I have written about before are good examples of this.

This leads me to believe that Noel had to be doing something which many songwriters to to this day, (except with a phone instead of a Walkman) and thats recording your ideas down during the songwriting process in order to complete and remember the arrangement and melody of a song. This is where i stumbled on a few quotes from Noel himself about using a Walkman to record to when writing his songs:

In a Feb 96 interview with Q, on the topic of Noel adding his acoustic bit into the sets, he had this to say:
They think you're "wallowing in the limelight" too?

They probably do. The way I see it is this: I believe the fans of the band should get a chance to see how these songs are born. They all start with one man sitting in a chair with an acoustic guitar singing into a Walkman. I'll never let it go now.
Further proof of Noel using a walkman to record his ideas can also be seen in this Sept 97 interview with Q on the topic of him creating the "scream" part of Fade In/Out:
"The scream near the end was the last bit we did. Me and Meg went back to Mustique over Christmas and I took the rough mix with me. It needed something and it was bugging me. Meg woke up one morning and there I was in bed with the Walkman on, screaming. She thought I'd gone into my drug psychotic phase - 'Oh, sorry, I'm just filling in a bit of the record...'
We also have an interview with GP shortly after the release of SOTSOG, in which Noel claimed:

This time, however, I had basically done the album twice before it even got to the band.

I had written and recorded the songs on a little Walkman, and then I demoed the tracks on ADATs in my bedroom.
We also have this quote from a 2005 Interview with MOJO from Bonehead:
Bonehead: I'd heard Don't Look Back in Anger, I think. But Noel didn't share these songs with us. Normally you'd get a CD two weeks before you were due to record. "Here, learn these." He wrote very privately. I sometimes think it would have been nice to have had more rehearsal on the songs, maybe played stuff a bit differently, but that's the way we worked and it worked.
Add all these quotes together and I think it gives us a pretty clear indication that Noel was pretty much recording all his songs and ideas firstly to a Walkman throughout the majority of the 1990's.

These are all nice quotes and I think it's a subject worth exploring. I've wondered on this subject too and I think there might be more quotes out there that reference these sort of recordings.

At the moment though, based on this evidence, I would say we can only say Noel was recording in this kind of manner from 1996 at the earliest. Find some more quotes though and we might be able to push this back further.

My questions are:

Do these tapes still exist?

If so, who has them?

How many possible tapes could there be of this nature that DO exist? (It's possible Noel just recorded over tapes that already had songs on after the songs had been released, instead of using new ones)

What exactly is on these tapes? I'd bet good money plenty of those "Noels Notebook" songs we never heard could have existed in one form or another on these tapes. I'd honestly prefer a CD full of prime Noel ideas from stuff like this as opposed to a new album.

TLDR:

Ignition/Noel, we know there are tapes from the 90s containing Noel songs and ideas that may exist in their original form, so release them!

I personally believe that there probably are some recordings of unreleased songs from the time of Noel's 1993 and 1994 notebooks but whether they're solo recordings or not I'm not so sure. We know Noel was recording songs Mark Coyle's house from at least Nov 1992-Sep 1993. Was this because Noel didn't have the means to record stuff himself? Did Mark just have better gear? Did Noel need Mark's input? There's very little information about these recordings apart from a location and 2 dates.

It would be nice if some self recorded stuff from the 90s still does exists but who knows. The only lofi recording I can think of from the 90s I think could potentially fit this subject is the instrumental Oasis management tried to play off as the Mustique demo to 'Be Here Now' (if you don't know already the actual demo couldn't be included because it contains an uncleared sample so as a quick last second 'fix' they replaced it with some unknown lofi instrumental we know basically nothing about)...