© © Michael Spencer Jones
An oral history of the most iconic Oasis photos as told by the band's photographer
By Thomas Barrie 23 November 2019
Michael Spencer Jones, who toured with Oasis through the Nineties and shot many of the band's album covers, tells the stories behind four famous Oasis photos
"The last gasp of air in the analogue age." That's how Michael Spencer Jones describes his photos of Oasis and the wider British music scene in the early Nineties. And he should know. Spencer Jones moved to Manchester just as Madchester was beginning to coalesce and his first major commission was to shoot The Stone Roses at Spike Island. After his work for The Verve caught Noel Gallagher's eye, he carried out most of the band's major photography including the covers for "Wonderwall", Definitely Maybe and Be Here Now. Now, 25 years after the release of the band's debut, Spencer Jones's work for Oasis – including previously unseen shots – is on display at the h Club Gallery in Covent Garden, London, accompanied by his recollections of some of the more famous shoots he took part in.
"They're beginning to have some sort of historical resonance," Spencer Jones says of his photographs. "The exhibition, as much as it's about Oasis, is about the photography and about how photography connects with people. About how these covers really resonated with fans – not just the music. They mean a lot to a lot of people. What is it about these photographs that connected so deeply?"
What indeed? Spencer Jones spoke to GQ to recount the origin stories behind four iconic Oasis shots and to explain just why they're still so compelling, and evocative, today.
Liam during the Be Here Now cover shoot
Liam Gallagher at Stocks House, Hertfordshire, 1997
That's a kind of outtake. It was just prior to me doing the actual cover shot. I don't think the number plate's on the Rolls-Royce at that point; I don't think we'd decided what the number plate was going to be. It was a pretty relaxed day in April. It was going to be a night shot, but in the end we went with a shot from the day.
It was a crazy shoot, really. This was at Stocks House, where Victor Lownes used to live. I was holed up there for about three days. I got there a couple of days early and was looking at angles and the pool... there was a wooden fence around the pool that I removed. Then the pool was drained and we had to get it repainted and put the car into the pool.
A lot of people think it's Photoshopped, but the car's actually in the pool. It was on scaffolding and the scaffolding was covered in blue tarpaulin. They painted the pool, I put blue tarpaulin round the scaffolding, but it was a different blue to the one they painted it, so I had to get them to repaint it again.
I got there at midday on the day before the shoot. I'd never filled a swimming pool before. I thought, you just get a hosepipe, turn the tap on and then it'll be like running a bath. So I turned the tap on and thought, "Right, it will fill overnight." I woke up in the morning and there were about two inches, two centimetres of water in the bottom of it. I pulled the curtains open in the morning expecting to see a full pool, and... it's empty. The band were arriving in two hours, so I freaked out. I had to get the fire brigade out and they got a hose, attached it to a fire hydrant and diverted all the water supply from the hotel. It was a five-star hotel, everyone was getting up in the morning and there's nothing coming out of the taps, they can't flush the toilet. It was pandemonium in the hotel because there was no water at all.
The Be Here Now night shot
Oasis at Stocks House, Hertfordshire, 1997
The original idea was that there were going to be four shots on the cover. Each band member was going to be photographed in a location of their own choosing – their own environment. I think Noel wanted to be photographed in a tree or something, playing his guitar. Guigsy [Paul McGuigan], the bassist's favourite place is St Lucia, so he wanted to be photographed in St Lucia. Alan White, the drummer, wanted to be photographed in this East End pub in London and Bonehead [Paul Arthurs] wanted to be photographed by this swimming pool with a Rolls-Royce in it, at night. A decadent night scene. Liam was going to have a cameo appearance in every single shot.
That was going to be the cover, but there were obviously huge time constraints on them at that point. So we thought, well, logistically, they're not going to have the time. And is it going to work: four separate shots on one album cover? So in the end, we scotched the idea and thought, "Let's go for the best idea out of the four." That was the Rolls-Royce in the swimming pool, so we just focused in on that.
We went to try and find the location. Cliveden was considered. That was where the Profumo affair took place, in the Sixties. That's what I had in mind: a decadent, Profumo [feeling], at night, like no one's quite noticed that someone's driven a Rolls-Royce into the pool.
We considered Cliveden but then Stocks came up and the pool was right in front of the house. The owner of Stocks House was Victor Lownes, who ran the Playboy empire, so he had all these crazy parties, loads of orgies at the house, so there was a very rock'n'roll history to it.
Someone brought a tray of cocktails, or gin and tonics, out at ten-minute intervals throughout the whole day. By the pool there was a little park bench with a picnic table where people were chilling out and this waitress just brought out a tray of drinks every ten minutes. She'd notice: "Oh, you've drunk them? Oh, right, OK. I'll go and get some more then." She'd come back: "Oh, you've drunk those as well. I'll get you some more." It was like: if you're bringing them, they'll get drunk. Stop bringing them! It was this constant stream and gradually everyone – with the exclusion of me – just got completely smashed. By six or seven o'clock, I was like, "Right, let's do this shoot now." Everyone was totally, totally smashed. And then a generator blew up and the lighting people were completely stoned and just couldn't... the headlights on the Rolls-Royce were meant to be on. That was another thing I'd envisaged: the headlights flaring into the camera. That never happened.
That gramophone record, on the cover of Be Here Now... That's Liam's gramophone and he'd brought in a record and we'd been playing that all day. Proper [Enrico] Caruso, an Italian opera singer. So if you imagine this scratchy Italian opera from the turn of the century, that was the soundtrack to that shoot. We only had the one record, so we kept flipping it over and putting it on again. After about 30 times we got bored with it. At the end of the shoot, we were in the bar and we'd grown to hate this record. Liam was at the bar and he got the record – we should have kept it, because it was a great piece of memorabilia – but he just got it in his hands and he was like, "Shall we keep it or shall we let it go?" We were like: "It's got to go." So he smashed it on the bar. We just thought it wasn't right that anyone else be subjected to the musical tones of that record.
Liam's would-be cover for 'Wonderwall'
Liam Gallagher at Primrose Hill, London, 1995
This one's in Primrose Hill. I'd always wanted to have Liam on a single cover. For some reason I just thought it would look great. When "Wonderwall" came around, I thought, "Yeah, this is the cover that he could appear on his own on." Not least because the vocals are wonderful. I thought he really came into his own as a singer at that point.
There's an element of solitude about "Wonderwall". Originally, Noel had wanted a picture of a girl in a picture frame. Sometimes, if Noel or someone came up with an idea, you'd develop it, you'd change it. I was staying with Liam in Regent's Road, just round the corner. We discussed it and he was up for it, so we walked down to Primrose Hill and I did a shoot with him when he was in a gilt frame.
We're doing this shoot and suddenly I hear all this yelling. There had been earlier interruptions – if you're doing a shoot in a park and there's Liam Gallagher, you know – but there was one interruption where all I could hear was this guy shouting. He was shouting out of this cab window. And then the cab screeched to a halt and the guy got out. I thought, "Just ignore it, ignore it. Just carry on." He ran up to us still shouting and I thought, "Oh, God, who is this guy?" I turned round and it's Noel Gallagher. He's literally stumbled across us on his way to Creation Records.
He's like: "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"'Well, we're shooting the cover to 'Wonderwall'."
"What, with our fucking kid on the cover? I don't think so. It's a fucking love song. There's no way our kid's going on the fucking cover. You're all wasting your time." And then he got back in the cab!
I could see that; it is a love song. We went back the following day and I shot it with a Creation Records employee. I was concerned... getting a female in a picture frame, I wasn't totally happy about the ground I was on. I felt, "I'm not sure about that." So when I shot it the following day, to overcome that problem of taking the emphasis and just looking at a woman in a picture frame, I shot it in infrared on black and white. So you create another layer. Suddenly, she becomes a part of the environment. It goes to a situation where you're not looking at her, as the viewer – she's looking at you, which is the way I wanted it to be. It worked. The cover to "Wonderwall" is one of my favourites.
Noel and Liam at the Columbia Hotel
Liam and Noel Gallagher at the Columbia Hotel, London, 1994
Oasis didn't care about anything. They were totally relaxed. They're not second-guessing what anyone thinks. There's no social constraints at all; they weren't shackled to anything.
That was the day after they got barred from the Columbia Hotel, which is not an easy place to get barred from – it's a rock'n'roll hotel. That was a day after being thrown out and I think I might even have been going to take some photos in the Columbia Hotel. So that was done in the street, a beautiful day in London, one of those really great sunny days. There was this piece of construction board painted white and I thought, "That'll do." That's your background, the sun's out, you've got your light source, "Let's do it here."
The main thing I got from hanging out with Oasis was the sense of freedom that I had being with them. You need that freedom, if you're an artist. I love that shot because it captures the synergy of the brothers. The closeness – and they were close, there's no question about it – and that laissez-faire spirit. Noel's quite nonchalantly leaning his head back; Liam's laughing. It just gets that moment.
If I can give you an example, if you take The Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter" – that's not a song you can write if you've got a nine-to-five office job selling insurance. You can't go out and write that. It's not part of your world. Similarly, "Strawberry Fields Forever" – you can't write a song like that without being in that space. And in order to get into that space, you have to be living an artistic, bohemian – whatever – life.
With the digital age, I don't think we can live that life. We can't live outside the digital matrix any longer. These guys, Oasis, The Stones, The Doors... they were all living outside of the matrix. There were successful people, but they were living outside of mainstream society.
Masterplan 25 is at h Club Gallery, 24 Endell Street, London, WC2, until 12 January 2020.
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