Gettin' High

I could have found you if I wanted
I wouldn't even have to try
Saved you if I longed it
But you didn't wanna see me cry

You were gettin' high
You were gettin' high

I could have found you if I wanted
I wouldn't even have to try
Saved you if I longed it
You didn't wanna see me cry

You were gettin' high
You were gettin' high

I could have found you if I wanted
I wouldn't even have to try
Saved you if I'd longed it
You didn't wanna see me cry

You were gettin' high
You were gettin' high

I could astound you if I wanted
I wouldn't even have to try
Saved you if I'd longed it
You didn't wanna see me cry

You were gettin' high
You were gettin' high

Lyrics by:
Brown / Ibrahim

Available on:
Golden Greats (4.01)

Details:

"He became friends with a bag of cocaine. He put that before his friends."
(Ian Brown speaking about John Squire at the 1996 Reading Festival press conference)

Squire and Brown in their post-Roses work have each attempted to recreate Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir': Squire on Standing On Your Head (a song which originated from the Second Coming sessions), and Brown on Gettin' High. Brown's take is the better of the two. If one were to map the trajectory of The Stone Roses and Oasis, the former were falling to their nadir in the very same fortnight that the latter reached the peak of their powers. Gettin' High is aimed at Squire's celebratory guest appearance with Oasis at Knebworth, in August 1996, two weeks prior to The Stone Roses' shambolic last stand at Reading. At the Reading Festival press conference, both Ian and Mani were heavily critical of Squire's Knebworth cameo. Oasis' back-to-back shows at Knebworth, on 10th & 11th August 1996, drew the largest crowds ever to see a single act in British music history, with a combined audience of over 250,000 (a feat only topped by Robbie Williams' three night slot there in 2003). Over 2.6 million people applied for tickets for the Oasis shows, making it also the biggest demand for concert tickets in British music history. Squire appeared on both nights, performing two songs with Oasis - 'I Am The Walrus' and 'Champagne Supernova':

How many special people change
How many lives are living strange
Where were you while we were gettin' high ?
We were gettin' high
We were gettin' high
We were gettin' high
We were gettin' high...

Oasis, Champagne Supernova (1995)

Brown's assertion is that Squire was getting high with Oasis, after deserting The Stone Roses.

   

 

Top left: Champagne Supernova by Oasis.
Top centre: The queue for the bar at Spike Island, 1990.
Top right: The organisers of the Spike Island festival should have concerned themselves less with confiscation of what people might bring, and more with what the event itself should be providing. Sandwiches were confiscated from fans at the gates by management, in an effort to boost sales of five-quid burgers once they got in. The two most common complaints by many who attended the festival can be related to this sign at the festival's entrance: firstly, the sound system was inadequate and secondly, there was a distinct lack of any form of refreshment on offer. Regarding the first of these two factors, lessons had clearly not been learned from the Alexandra Palace event in November of the previous year. While the band arrived onsite at Spike Island in the back of a transit van with blacked-out windows, no expense was spared for the promoter and management, who arrived by helicopter. That night, The Stone Roses went back to Evans's nightclub in Manchester, and he had the audacity to try to charge them for a can of lager !
Bottom left: The 30,000 attendance at Spike Island (at which Noel Gallagher, Guigsy and Bonehead were present) was dwarfed by the 250,000 fans who flocked to see Oasis at Knebworth over two nights in August 1996. Reflecting on the enormity of the event ten years later, Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire recalled: "The moment for me was when John Squire came on and played 'Champagne Supernova' and just turned it into this Jimmy Pageesque, Led Zeppelin guitar solo from f*****g Mars. That moment did seem like a coming together of the great Mancunian mafia." (NME, August 2006). Upon reforming in 2011, The Stone Roses sold 220,000 tickets in 68 minutes for their three Heaton Park shows, with the first two nights selling out in 14 minutes. These were the fastest selling rock gigs in UK History.
Bottom right: The moment that marked the handover from one Manchester generation to another; John Squire performing Champagne Supernova with Oasis at Knebworth, August 1996.

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