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Oasis · S3 E2
Rockfield Studios
A residential studio on a farm in Wales. The band locks in to record the follow-up. Owen Morris behind the desk, pushing everything louder.
A converted farmhouse in the Welsh countryside, May 1995. Oasis lock themselves inside with producer Owen Morris, and twelve days later they walk out with the biggest album of the decade.
Oasis, Don't Go Away (1998). The kind of song that can only be written when you're locked in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but play. Rockfield gave Noel the silence to write ballads like this.
Don't Go Away, Oasis (1998)
From Be Here Now, 'Don't Go Away' is one of Noel's most tender compositions, stripped of the excess that weighed down the rest of that album. The vocal melody sits in Liam's sweetest register, and the acoustic guitar foundation recalls the way Noel first wrote songs at Rockfield: guide acoustic, guide vocal, then build everything on top. Listen for how the production stays restrained through the verses, letting the chorus do all the heavy lifting. It's a song that remembers how powerful simplicity can be.
Sources
oasis-recordinginfo.co.uk
The Farm
Rockfield Studios sits on a working farm near the village of Rockfield in Monmouthshire, Wales. Founded in 1963 by brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward, it became the world's first residential recording studio in 1965. Queen recorded 'Bohemian Rhapsody' here. Black Sabbath laid down their earliest demos in the Coach House when Ozzy Osbourne was sixteen.
Sources
Rockfield Studios, Wikipedia
ITV News Wales, 2021
Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire
A working farm turned recording studio in the Welsh countryside. Where Queen made 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' Coldplay wrote 'Yellow,' and Oasis recorded the biggest album of the 1990s.
“The sessions were the best, easiest, least fraught, most happily creative time I've ever had in a recording studio. Morning Glory, for all its imperfection and flaws, is dripping with love and happiness.”
— Owen Morris, producer, 2010
TAP TO REVEAL: Why can you hear a bird singing at the very start of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
Twelve Days
Noel's method at Rockfield is efficient and instinctive. He lays down a guide acoustic guitar and vocal to a click track, then the band overdubs drums, bass, and electric guitars on top. One track a day, twelve working days, and the album is done. 'My instinct is telling me this is gonna be great,' Noel later says. 'So therefore we'll go and we'll do it.'
Sources
Return to Rockfield documentary
oasis-recordinginfo.co.uk
Cast No Shadow, Oasis (1995)
Written about Richard Ashcroft of The Verve, and recorded at Rockfield during the Morning Glory sessions. The song is pure acoustic melancholy, Noel's tribute to a friend and fellow songwriter who he felt wasn't getting the recognition he deserved. It's one of the quietest moments on the album, and proof that the farm gave the band room to be gentle.
Cast No Shadow, Oasis (1995)
'As they took his soul they stole his pride.' Noel wrote this about his friend Richard Ashcroft, frontman of The Verve. A songwriter's tribute to a songwriter, recorded in a farmhouse in Wales where both of them could have stayed forever.
Which other legendary song was recorded at Rockfield Studios?
The album is recorded, but one song from those twelve days is about to become the most played acoustic guitar riff in history. Next: the story of 'Wonderwall.'
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