Ruling Asses

To the members of Oasis, everything comes down to class. Not social graces and manners, mind you, but class. As in working, middle and upper class. They are from Manchester, and they are working class. Period. It's as much a part of their identities as their surnames. "I ain't got no chip on my shoulder because I'm working class, I just know who I am," says Liam. "I don't look down on no one. If I was middle class and my ma gave me everything, I'd admit it. I've got money now, so if I have kids, I'm gonna give my kids everything."

As children, Liam and Noel shared a bedroom. It is a grievance Noel still brings up because their brother, Paul, eighteen months Noel's senior, had his own room. For the most part, their daily life was fairly routine. The brothers played soccer, fought, listened to music and skipped school in order to fight, listen to music and play more soccer.

"It's funny, because I don't really remember much about that time," says Noel. "I wouldn't say it was a happy upbringing, but it was normal. The only thing that separates us from people in Manchester now is that I'm sitting here, and all those people are still doing heroin and still on the dole. But we were no different. We've got no qualifications between the five of us. We're not academically qualified to do anything."

Schoolwork was particularly tough on Noel because he suffers from dyslexia. "I didn't know what it was at the time," he says. "When I write, I'll give it to someone else to read, and they'll say, 'This doesn't make any sense.' And then I'll read it back to them, and they'll say, 'Half the words are missing.' But to me they're there."

At thirteen, just as Noel was beginning to develop an interest in playing guitar, he was thrown out of his music class at school. To make matters worse, the following year the Gallaghers' father — a construction worker by day and occasional country-music DJ by night — abandoned the family.

"I haven't seen him since I was eighteen; I'm twenty-eight now," says Noel. "I only started to be in a group when I was twenty-four, so from eighteen to twenty-four, I had no inclination to talk to him. I don't see why that should change just because I've made a lot of money. He's still a twat and always will be a twat. I don't care if he's living on his own or on the dole. He was always a cunt. He was never there. He was always at the pub. When he finally left, we were glad to be rid of him."

Liam is even more succinct: "If I saw the cunt, I'd kick his ass."

In retrospect, Noel realizes that life for his mother could not have been easy — "Me mum's stronger than all of us," he says — but he still views the entire situation as "inevitable." "It happens," he says. "Families break up, fathers flee, and sometimes mothers are left alone to raise their kids." In the Gallaghers' case, it was nine-year-old Liam and two teenagers, Noel and Paul, who never adopted a paternal role toward their youngest sibling.

"This might seem very cold and hard, but when you come from Manchester, I wouldn't say it's a brutal upbringing, but it's a very down-to-earth, working-class upbringing," says Noel. "You've got more things to think about than your little brother's emotional stability. You've got to make a fucking living to make ends meet."

Toward that end, Noel tried his hand at crime. At eighteen, he got caught burgling a house. Soon after, he escaped Manchester as a roadie for the band Inspiral Carpets.

That left Liam back at home, age fifteen, about to be kicked out of school for a fight that ended with his getting cracked in the skull with a hammer. Not that Liam was upset — he quickly landed a job building fences.

"Everyone else was in school, and I was making seventy pounds [$108] a week," says Liam. "I was fucking rich. So fuck them. I told the teacher he could stick it up his ass."

It was Paul Arthurs — dubbed Bonehead at age nine because his father made him wear a crew cut — who first recruited Liam, McGuigan (also kicked out of school for fighting) and drummer McCarroll into Oasis. Even then the outlook for success looked bleak until Noel reappeared in Manchester in 1992. Returning to his hometown after four years spent huddling around other people's guitars, Noel launched a successful coup, seizing control of Oasis by insisting that he play lead guitar and write all the songs. There was little resistance.

"I knew something was around the corner, but I didn't know what," says Liam of the band's early days. "I just knew I didn't want to work."

But what if your brother didn't write songs?

"That's like, 'What if the fucking world was square?'" says Liam. He pauses as if to find the most perfectly offensive example, then continues: "Or what if the queen had fucking ten tits?"