Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com.
Alan McGee loved rock and roll. Loved it. Growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, McGee was enamored with psychedelic British guitar bands of the 1960s and the punk rock movement that later swept the nation during his late teenage years. In fact, McGee even formed a band with future Primal Scream bandmates Bobby Gillespie 
and Andrew Innes while sorting out his own post-school plans. Eventually, he moved down to London and started his own record label, Creation Records (named after the ’60s band, The Creation). From that point forward, McGee embarked on an almost Quixotic search for that perfect sound that married the swirling guitars of those ’60s bands with the aggression and venom of punk.
For a decade, from 1983 to 1993, McGee was the center of London’s underground music scene, launching bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Teenage Fanclub. All of them touched some part of McGee’s musical psyche, because Creation didn’t sign bands McGee didn’t love. But still, the search continued.
It was mid-May, 1993, when Alan McGee visited his family in Glasgow. On the night of May 18, Alan and his sister decided to hit a club called King Tut’s Wah Wah Club to check out one of his signees, 18 Wheeler. Also on the bill were Manchester band Sister Lovers, a band called Boyfriend and, beyond that, the details were a bit fuzzy. Sister Lovers had invited the band that rehearsed in the room next to their rehearsal space back in Manchester. The group were a rough looking bunch fronted by a tall young man who looked remarkably like The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown.
The group were called Oasis. They had been together for roughly two years, having formed out of another band called The Rain. The Rain were an admittedly rough bar band featuring Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs on guitar, Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan on bass, drummer Tony McCarroll and a singer named Chris Hutton. In 1991, the group had sacked Hutton in favor of an acquaintance of Arthurs who seemed like a more suitable frontman. His name was Liam Gallagher. The foursome played their first gig in Manchester in August 1991. In attendance that night was Gallagher’s older brother, Noel, who was employed at that time as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, though he aspired to be on the other end of the equation. Noel didn’t think the band were great, at that moment, but he saw enough raw potential to make them an offer: he would join the band as a guitarist if the band would agree to follow him as their leader and sole songwriter. With little to lose, the band agreed, and for two years, the five-piece rehearsed like the devil and took any show they could get.
On this day, they packed a van with themselves, their equipment and some friends and drove six hours to get on a Glasgow stage for 20 or so minutes as an opener for Sister Lovers. But no one told the doorman. Club security had heard nothing of this surly looking lot as they showed up and weren’t about to let them show up and hijack the stage. Things were coming to a boil when, mercifully, Sister Lovers intervened and the group were allowed to play.
From McGee’s perspective, with multiple double Jack Daniels consumed, it was a somewhat confusing scene. McGee recently told The Sun: "I was up in Glasgow seeing my dad and I wasn't sure I'd even go to the gig. I got there early by mistake. Oasis were on first, before most people arrived. There was this amazing young version of Paul Weller sat there in a light blue Adidas tracksuit. I assumed he was the drug dealer and that Bonehead, the guitarist, was the singer. It was only when they went on stage I realized it was the lead singer, Liam Gallagher.”
They only played four songs—to an audience of 12 or so people—but within seconds, McGee was mesmerized. Here before him was the band he’d been looking for all along. In Liam, he saw the archetypal frontman, a magical combination of good looks, killer voice and sheer and utter menace. McGee could see, though, that the boss was the diminutive guitar player, who led the band into an overdriven barre chord blitz on the audacious opener, “Rock N’ Roll Star.”
As the group plowed through a setlist that would be burned into the hearts of rock fans everywhere within a year—“Bring It on Down,” “Up in the Sky” and a killer cover of The Beatles’ “I am the Walrus”—McGee had a single thought: ““I knew I had to sign them.”
After the show, McGee approached Noel at the bar and introduced himself as Alan McGee of Creation Records and offered to sign them on the spot. Gallagher reached for a demo, but McGee said, “I don’t need to hear it.” They shook hands and four days later made it official: Oasis signed with Creation Records.
McGee would later gush that he had just seen “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band since The Beatles.” History would seem to agree. In 1994, they would release the fastest-selling debut album in U.K. history with Definitely Maybe. That and the group’s second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, would be voted the top two British albums of all time in a 2008 poll conducted by the U.K. magazine Q and HMV record stores.
“I was lucky to be there,” McGee said. “We didn't send out scouts. Most of my signings were because I happened to see new bands. That couldn't happen any more. If a new band as much as farts [now] it's all over the Internet.”
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