Bonehead, when he first heard Champagne Supernova: “I just fell apart”

23 June 2024, 08:00

One of the classic Oasis songs from (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? …but what exactly are the lyrics about? And how did guitarist Bonehead react when Noel Gallagher played him the song for the first time?

Champagne Supernova is one of the many, many oasis Tracks that “should have been a single”. It was released as such in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in May 1996, but in the UK it remained one of the highlights of the mammoth album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?.

The song was part of the wealth of songs that Noel Gallagher’s songwriting catalogue offered in the mid-90s. He could afford to put tracks like Half The World Away and Acquiesce on the B-sides while he wrote one classic after another.

Oasis – Champagne Supernova (Official Video)

Noel introduced the song when the band were touring Europe in November 1994. He explained in 2006: “Just before we left to record Morning Glory, we were in the tour bus in Germany. We had arrived at the hotel early, so we were sitting in the car park.

“Someone asked me if I had any songs for the new album. So I said I’ll play them for you if you want. I played Cast No Shadow and all that. I played Champagne Supernova all the way on acoustic guitar. At the end I looked up and Bonehead was crying. He said, ‘You didn’t just write that, did you?’ I looked at him and thought, you fucking softie. Either that or it’s shit.”

Bonehead on the question of whether he would take part in an Oasis reunion

Bonehead himself told Radio X’s Toby Tarrant: “Noel said I’ll play you some songs I’ve written – I think he played us the whole next album. The first one he played was Champagne Supernova, start to finish, in the back lounge of the tour bus, about 8pm at night. And I just collapsed. That’s the cancer in me. It hit me, I was a crying wreck on the floor.

“I heard it really stripped down, it was just Noel’s voice and an acoustic guitar. That’s not a million miles from how it came out. But you knew it was a hit. I was that Oasis fan hearing it for the first time. It was too much.”

Oasis – Noel & Liam on Champagne Supernova

Since the song was released in 1995, fans have wondered about the lyrics. What exactly is a Champagne Supernova? What does it all mean?

“Some of the lyrics were written when I was no longer there,” he told the NME in September 1995. “This is probably the most psychedelic thing I’ll ever experience. It means different things to me depending on what mood I’m in. When I’m in a bad mood, it’s like suffocating, like I’m trapped under a landslide.”

But other inspirations also came from Noel’s childhood. The memorable line “Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball” was a memory from children’s television.

“(It’s about Brackett, the butler which used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chigley or Trumpton or something,” Noel revealed. “It always took him about 20 minutes to walk down the hall. And then I couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with ‘hall’ except ‘cannonball.’

“So I wrote ‘Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball’ and people thought ‘Wow, damn, man.’

Here is an excerpt from the series Chigley – Brian Cant sings the song as Brackett slowly walks down the hallway.

Brackett The Butler “The Mansion” Chigley

“There’s also the line ‘Where were you when we were high?’ because that’s what we always say to each other.”

It still annoys Noel Gallagher that the random inspirations behind Champagne Supernova are no longer appreciated by music critics. He complained to The Sunday Times in 2009: “This author talked about the text of Champagne Supernova.

“He actually said to me, ‘You know, the only thing that keeps it from being a classic is the ridiculous lyrics.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘So, walking slowly down the hallway, faster than a cannonball – what do you mean?'”

Noel replied, “I don’t know. But are you telling me that 60,000 people who sing it don’t know what it means? It means something different to each of them.”