Definitely Maybe is the debut studio album by the English rock band Oasis, released on 29 August 1994 by Creation Records. The album features Noel Gallagher on lead guitar, backing vocals and as chief songwriter, Liam Gallagher on lead vocals, Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs on rhythm guitar, Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan on bass guitar and Tony McCarroll on drums.
The band booked Monnow Valley Studio near Rockfield in January 1994 to record the album; they worked with producer Dave Batchelor, whom Noel knew from his time working as a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets. However, sessions were unsatisfactory, and Batchelor was subsequently fired. In February 1994, the group began re-recording the album at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall, where Noel produced sessions alongside Mark Coyle. The results were still deemed unsatisfactory; in desperation, manager Marcus Russell contacted engineer and producer Owen Morris, who eventually worked on mixing the album at Loco Studios in Wales, and later The Matrix in London, where Liam re-recorded some of his lead vocals. The album was then mastered at Johnny Marr's studio in Manchester.
Definitely Maybe was an immediate commercial success in the United Kingdom, having followed on the heels of the singles "Supersonic", "Shakermaker", and the UK top-ten hit "Live Forever", which was also a success on US modern rock radio. It went straight to number one in the UK Albums Chart and became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history at the time; it went on to be certified 10× platinum by the BPI for sales of over 3 million units. It was also successful in the United States, being certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album went on to sell over 15 million copies worldwide. It is the only Oasis album to feature all five original members completely; drummer Tony McCarroll was ejected from the band in April 1995.
Upon release, Definitely Maybe received widespread critical acclaim and helped to spur a revitalisation in British pop/rock music in the 1990s. It was embraced by critics for its optimistic themes and rejection of the negative outlook of much of the grunge music of the time and is regarded as a cornerstone of the Britpop genre, having since appeared in many publications' lists of the greatest albums of all time. In 2006, the NME conducted a readers' poll in which Definitely Maybe was voted the greatest album ever. In 2015, Spin included the album in their list of "The 300 Best Albums of 1985–2014". Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 217 on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Background and recording Formerly called the Rain, Oasis was formed in 1991 by Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs, Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan, Tony McCarroll and Liam Gallagher. Liam soon asked his older brother, Noel Gallagher, to join. Despite reports that Noel insisted on total creative control and leadership, he said in 2016: "There is the myth that I kicked open the fucking rehearsal room door to the theme tune to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and said 'Everybody stop what they're doing. I am here to make us all millionaires', you know? It wasn't that at all". Although Noel wrote all the album's songs, Bonehead said, "I came up with the riff for 'Up in the Sky' and he built the song around that one but generally Noel would arrive with the finished song".
After recording "Supersonic" at the Pink Museum Studios in Liverpool in December 1993, Oasis booked Monnow Valley Studio near Rockfield to record the album in early January 1994. The producer was Dave Batchelor, whom Noel knew from working as a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets. The sessions were unsatisfactory, and Bonehead recalled, "It wasn't happening. [Batchelor] was the wrong person for the job... we'd play in this great big room, buzzing to be in this studio, playing like we always played. He'd say, 'Come in and have a listen.' And we'd be like, 'That doesn't sound like it sounded in that room. What's that?' It was thin. Weak. Too clean."
Additionally, engineer Dave Scott commented, "I couldn't connect with him [Batchelor] artistically or technically, neither could I get any idea from him what his vision for the album was. This made life very difficult for me. I had rarely worked under other producers and when I had, there had always been a collaboration. I think that the lack of direction and different expectations led to an uncoordinated session with too many compromises." Scott described various technical issues that befell the sessions, including defective equipment, poor quality headphones, and excessive sound variation between mixing channels. Batchelor fired him after two clashes while recording "Slide Away", and later informed him that "Slide Away" was the only track kept from the sessions.
The sessions at Monnow Valley were costing £800 a day. As the sessions proved increasingly fruitless, the group began to panic. Bonehead said, "Noel was frantically on the phone to the management, going, 'This ain't working.' For it not to be happening was a bit frightening." Batchelor was fired, and Noel tried to make use of the music already recorded by taking the tapes to a number of London studios. Tim Abbot of Creation Records said while visiting the band in Chiswick, "McGee, Noel, me, and various people had a great sesh [session], and we listened to it over and over again. And all I could think was, 'It ain't got the attack.' There was no immediacy." Liam Gallagher would say years later that the recordings at Monnow Valley were also characterised by the presence of a "ghost".
In February 1994, the group returned from an ill-fated trip to Amsterdam and set about re-recording the album at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall. This time, Noel produced the sessions alongside Mark Coyle. The group decided to replicate their live sound in the studio by recording together without soundproofing between individual instruments, with Noel overdubbing numerous guitars afterward. Bonehead said, "That was Noel's favourite trick: get the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar down, and then he'd cane it. 'Less is more' didn't really work then." The results were still deemed unsatisfactory, and there was little chance of another attempt at recording the album, so the recordings already made had to be used.
In desperation, the band's manager Marcus Russell contacted engineer and producer Owen Morris, who had mixed the album's songs. Morris recalled after hearing the Sawmills recordings, "I just thought, 'They've messed up here.' I guessed at that stage Noel was completely fucked off. Marcus was like, 'You can do what you like – literally, whatever you want. Morris first worked on mixing the album at Loco Studios in Wales in late April, and then The Matrix in London at the start of May. Among Morris's first tasks was to strip away the layers of guitar overdubs Noel had added, although he noted that the overdubs allowed him to construct the musical dynamics of songs such as "Columbia" and "Rock 'n' Roll Star".
After finishing mixing, Morris worked on mastering the album at Johnny Marr's studio in Manchester. He recalled that Marr was "appalled by how 'in your face' the whole thing was" and would question Morris's mixing choices, such as leaving the background noise at the beginning of "Cigarettes & Alcohol". Inspired by Phil Spector's use of tape delay on the drums of John Lennon's song "Instant Karma!" and Tony Visconti's use of the Eventide Harmonizer on the drums of David Bowie's album Low, Morris added eighth-note tape delays on the drums, which lent additional groove to McCarroll's basic beats. Tape delay was employed to double the drums of "Columbia", giving the song a faster rhythm, and tambourines were programmed on several songs to follow McCarroll's snare hits.
Morris also used a technique he had learned from Bernard Sumner while recording the self-titled album by Sumner's group Electronic, routing the bass guitar through a Minimoog and using the filters to remove the high end, which he used to hide imprecise playing, and heavily compressed the final mix to an extent he admitted was "more than would normally be considered 'professional.
Morris completed his final mix of the record on the vintage Neve console during the bank holiday weekend in May in Studio 5 at Matrix Recording Studios in London's Fulham district. Music journalist John Harris noted, "The miracle was that music that had passed through so many hands sounded so dynamic: the guitar-heavy stew that Morris had inherited had been remoulded into something positively pile-driving."
However, engineer Anjali Dutt criticised the abrasive mix: "Though I don't think that the original mixes were amazing, I did prefer them to the final album, as the relentlessness of the compressed chainsaw guitars just wears you out even if the initial feeling of excitement is invigorating. ... I think his mixes did the job and gave it that much needed excitement and attitude. But it wasn't my kind of sound and found it far too abrasive so I can only recall ever playing a few tracks at a time."
Cover art The photograph on the front cover of the album was taken by rock photographer Michael Spencer Jones in guitarist Bonehead's house in Didsbury, Manchester. The image was inspired by the back cover of the Beatles' 1966 compilation LP A Collection of Beatles Oldies, and, in the positioning of Liam on the floor, by a visit Spencer Jones had made to the Egyptology section at the Science and Industry Museum. In a 2019 interview, Spencer Jones said that the idea to photograph the band at Bonehead's house came from Noel, who originally wanted the band to be seated around Bonehead's dining table; Spencer Jones instead suggested shooting in the lounge, facing a bay window. He also said that he asked Liam to lie on the floor to draw attention away from the room's wood flooring, which he felt would make the picture look like an advert for varnish. The wine glass to Liam's right was filled with diluted Ribena; although an urban legend suggests that this was used because the band could not afford wine, Spencer Jones explained that it was actually because red wine often turns out black instead of red on pictures.
Spencer Jones asked the band to bring objects of personal value to them to the shoot. Cannon drew inspiration from Jan van Eyck's Flemish Renaissance painting Arnolfini Portrait (1434) for the way it is "littered with visual metaphors", and applied the same significance for the objects on the Definitely Maybe sleeve. According to Spencer Jones, this was Noel's favourite film. A picture of footballer Rodney Marsh playing for Manchester City (the football team of the Gallaghers and McGuigan) is propped against the fireplace. A photograph of footballer George Best can be seen in the window at the behest of Bonehead, a Manchester United fan. A poster (actually the inside of a gatefold sleeve) of Burt Bacharach, one of Noel's idols, is also shown leaning against the side of the sofa on the lower left-hand side of the cover. Bonehead's Epiphone Riviera, which he used on every Oasis recording and gig during his tenure in the band, is propped against the wall. Some writers believe that Oasis were trying to pay homage to the album cover of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma (1969) by placing Bacharach's picture in the same prominent position used for the soundtrack of Vincente Minnelli's film Gigi on Ummagumma.
Release and promotion