I was visiting my brother at RAF Chivenor in 1994, where he was based as an armourer. My parents and I had driven from Glasgow for the weekend so they could go for dinner with him and his new girlfriend. I didn’t want to go. Fortunately, my brother knew that and suggested I stay in his room and ransack his music collection. “Here, listen to that one first,” he said, handing me a CD. The now unmistakable opening chords of Rock ’n’ Roll Star started. The filthy guitar riff announced the arrival of Oasis in my life, when I was 14.
When I got back home, I rushed out to buy my own copy of Definitely Maybe, the band’s first album. My running trainers, jogging bottoms and Sweater Shop jumpers were replaced by Adidas Sambas, Adidas tracksuit tops and Fred Perry polo shirts. None of these were to be worn for sports. I wanted to emulate Liam and Noel Gallagher. I got a pair of Levi’s 501s and a Parka to finish off the look. The clothes were fashion accessories to give me a swagger, an identity and the mardy teenager look. Thankfully, my nana would buy me this stuff from a second-hand clothes shop as my mum never understood the importance of labels – unless it was Clarks shoes for school.
This was my uniform. This was my music. My parents had the Beatles and Rolling Stones. My older brother had the Specials and Smiths, and now I had Oasis and Blur. I was team Oasis. It’s not that I didn’t like Blur’s music – I did. However, I didn’t know people like Damon Albarn or Alex James. I knew guys like Liam and Noel: all attitude, swagger and strut. In the Glasgow vernacular we would call them “gallus”, a word to describe the trifecta of bold, daring and reckless.
I come from a working-class background and seeing celebrities who looked and behaved like people I knew made me feel there were no barriers for me. I was born in January 1980; it was a bleak period to grow up in the west of Scotland. The East End of Glasgow and the area around it was destroyed by the de-industrialisation imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s government.
My father had to work away from home as an electrician, mainly in the south of England, as Scotland had no jobs. My brother joined the Royal Air Force – it was an opportunity not to serve his country but to run away from the desperate decline he saw in Scotland. I watched many of my friends’ older siblings move from glue sniffing and giggles in a classroom to burning brown stuff on a teaspoon in the local woods. With no jobs available, they got lost in a sea of needles.
I became obsessed with Oasis. I bought every CD single and album. I would bunk off school to queue for new releases and gig tickets at HMV. I even slept on the street overnight with my friends behind the music store to buy a £22.50 ticket to see them at Loch Lomond. I was 16 and that concert ended up being one of the greatest weekends of my life.
As Oasis led the Cool Britannia revolution, Tony Blair was leading his own political one. The 501s-wearing, Fender Stratocaster-playing New Labour leader promised change. He sold me a dream of hope and prosperity. I felt change in the air. My friends and I became politically engaged because Oasis told us to vote Labour in 1997. Tony promised that things would get better and Noel sang in Don’t Look Back in Anger that we could start a revolution from our beds. And we did as first-time voters, not influenced by our parents but by our musical heroes.
Some Might Say things did get better for a while. The economy was on the up, Tony brought about the Good Friday agreement and for the first time in my life I could turn on the TV and not see violence on the streets in another part of the UK. As a lesbian, it was incredible to see LGBT equality on the agenda. The throwing out of section 28, which prohibited local authorities and schools from “promoting” homosexuality was monumental.
But it all came to an abrupt halt for me with the release of Be Here Now on 21 August 1997, an album that sounded like it had been recorded on cocaine with the hubris of Nero. Oasis took the disdain too far. Then, 10 days later, Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. Britain went into mourning. I felt it was all over: the hope, the change and the soundtrack disappeared.
I don’t know if it was my own circumstances, the world changing in general, or a combination of both. I strutted out of my lesbian closet with the same swagger as Liam, only to be rejected by those who were supposed to love, support and nurture me. I was 17 years old; I felt alone, guilty and ashamed. I felt I had let my family down. I left home to live with my beloved nana. Suddenly, I was an adult, albeit a small adult, underage drinking in a gay bar trying to find a girl to kiss.
Thirty years later, my wardrobe remains the same. The tracksuit top is a little tighter, the Fred Perry is up a size and Adidas Sambas are more expensive. My politics will forever be left of centre. I still love Liam and Noel, even if they don’t love each other. Their music was the soundtrack to a pivotal point in my life. It was a time of political progress for the marginalised and a time of hope. Those two lads made me believe, as a working-class kid, that I belonged in this country.
Susie McCabe’s standup tour The Merchant Of Menace starts on 1 November.
