Noel and Liam Gallagher feature in new book by their friend and photographer Jill Furmanovsky
Never seen before images of Manchester supergroup Oasis capture the supersonic rise, fall and reunion of one of the UK’s greatest ever bands.
Taken by their trusted photographer Jill Furmanovsky, they give a tantalising flavour of life with the infamous Gallagher brothers.
They are just a few of the 500 photos to feature in a new book, which has been 30 years in the making and follows them from their working class beginnings in Manchester to their chart topping days in the dizzying nineties Britpop era.
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And, as the band prepare to bring the curtain down on the British leg of their world reunion tour – with two gigs at Wembley Stadium next weekend – Noel Gallagher has himself endorsed the book, Oasis: Trying to Find A Way Out of Nowhere.
For Noel believes nobody has captured life with Oasis the way Furmanovsky has – likening the 72-year-old British photographer to his own beloved mum Peggy.
He says: “We loved Jill from the moment she rolled up at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge in 1994. I met her on a stairwell backstage. She kind of reminded me of a dinner lady – and that’s not an insult. It’s a compliment because my mother was a dinner lady. Then, during the gig, I’m kinda rocking out and there in the pit is the dinner lady with a professional camera.
“At the time she was working on a book of her photography called The Moment and I saw an early draft of it. The first photo in it was a picture of Paul McCartney outside his house taken by Jill as a schoolgirl. She was looking to end the book with a contemporary band that was on its way up. We were just blowing up at that point, so we were perfect.
“After that initial shoot she appeared at everything we did. To us, and again this is not an insult at all, she looked like all our mums. She’s kind of the same size as my mum.”
Furmanovsky’s book charts the early Definitely Maybe years of the band, their first European tours and the Gallaghers in the studio – as well as their record breaking gigs at Knebworth Park back in August 1996, when they played to 250,000 people over two nights.
At the time, the historic gigs were seen as the biggest concerts of their day and were considered a defining moment for Britpop.
Noel says it was fundamentally important to have a mother figure on the road when Oasis exploded, explaining: “With our band we always had women working round us. One of the really clever things that our management did was understand that if a bunch of guys worked with us it would all be over. We were very respectful towards Jill.
“She’s one of those rare people involved in the arts who’s got virtually no ego. We were young lads in a band, full of drugs, in the nineties. Some crazy sh*t went on. But I never saw her get offended by any of it.”
Praising her fly on the wall style, he adds: “Jill’s a quiet person, working in a very loud world. She disappears into the crowd or stands in the shadows at the side of the stage, or follows you around the dressing room, and you forget she’s there.
“I’m really comfortable around her and I just completely trust her. She’s the best, do you know what I mean? When I look at Jill’s photographs, I always think, ‘I wonder where that jacket is? Where is that jacket?’
“Because she always got me in really striking clothes and then I’d spend a year looking for them. Over time the friendship becomes more important than the work and then the work gets better. Now it’s like she’s part of the family.”
Furmanovsky, who was born in Southern Rhodesia, has spent her career photographing rock icons such as Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
Noel feels deep admiration for her craft, saying: “I admire her work ethic. I’ve never, ever, ever seen her without a camera. Ever. Maybe she takes it to bed with her.
“She’s photographed everyone, and in every possible scenario – Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Blondie, Amy Winehouse and many more. Her portrait of Charlie Watts, which won an award in 1992, is incredible. It is one of my favourite photographs of all time. I’d seen it in a magazine before we met but didn’t realise it was by her until years later.
“Jill’s work is so varied: there’s stuff that has made it onto album covers, live shots, candid shots, polaroids – everything. I don’t think you could pigeonhole her as a photographer.
“That candid shot of us at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam is one of my favourites. We’re absolutely rat-arsed and Bonehead puts himself on the baggage conveyor belt. Her photo captures the spontaneity and sheer joy of the moment perfectly. Her photo of our first ever stadium gig at Maine Road, Manchester, in 1996 is a great picture.
“It’s significant to me because I stood on those terraces as a child, and I still support the club. But it also sums up that period. And it tells the story of the connection between the band and the audience. That picture says to me that everybody in that stadium is with us heart and soul.
“There’s something else. It’s instinct and a kind of magic – that’s what it is, it’s magic. When you get into music you’re generally too young to attend concerts but you’re not too young to look at photographs, so your first point of contact with rock stars is the picture, or the artwork, which generally is a picture.
“Whenever I bought a new album, I would stare at the record sleeve for hours waiting for it to speak to me in some way, waiting to find some meaning in it. Jill’s photographs have that quality.”
Noel swears Furmanovsky has never taken a bad picture of him.
He says: “I hate photoshoots. I can’t stand them. I much prefer a photographer to follow me around for 18 hours, snapping away. I’d rather do that than stand for eight minutes posing.
“I don’t know whether Jill edits her photographs of me sympathetically before showing them to me, but I haven’t ever seen a bad one. I see something in those photographs that is real to me.
“Most of the time Jill worked with us it’s been kind of snapping away in dressing rooms and stuff. And that, to me, is real. She is a very, very dear friend of mine and it’s been an honour to have been associated with her for 30 years.”
(Must keep) * Oasis: Trying to Find a Way Out of Nowhere by Jill Furmanovsky and Noel Gallagher is published by Thames & Hudson on September 23, priced £50.