Oasis Influence: Today’s Rock Bands

Aramis Johnson: A big entry point for me with Oasis was that I used to work at this warehouse towards the end of college called FAST. It was a shitty manual labor job and I used to listen to Definitely, Maybe. On “Supersonic,” when Liam goes, “I need to be myself, I can’t be no one else”… When you write it down and say it out loud it sounds stupid, but the way he sings it makes you be like, damn. This is an absolute truth.

In modern American culture, the rags to riches story outside of rap music doesn’t exist. In my own rock and roll timeline, Oasis were the last working-class band that hit this newfound stratosphere. You have these lads who were fucking pouring concrete or whatever before they blew up. So much of their lore and what they say in the press is their bad boy image. But you listen to the music, it’s centered on yearning, or feeling small and wanting to feel big. Things anybody can relate to.

The timing of when I got into them, working at that warehouse, is no coincidence because, man, I really wanted my life to change. I think their thing in those first few albums and why their run was so short is because it’s like, what do you write about once you escape the thing you’re running from? All the songs at the beginning are about wanting to be seen and to get to where you’re going and do the impossible.

The hook is this moment where the clouds part and the sun comes out. My goal is to always make that part of the song feel like that. I think the hardest thing to do when you write a song is to make it be about nothing but to feel like it’s about everything. Like, what the fuck is “Champagne Supernova”? But for those eight minutes, I know exactly what he’s talking about. There’s this transcendent feeling. “Walking faster than a cannonball.” It’s gibberish but it makes sense. The way it moves, it’s its own world.