I signed Oasis by accident, it was a fluke I was even at the venue – I’d never even heard of them

THE damp and dreich Monday evening in Glasgow on May 31, 1993 has entered into rock and roll folklore as the moment that Oasis were “signed on the spot”.

That was the first time Creation Records founder Alan McGee saw the support act purely by “fluke” after arriving for a gig at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut uncharacteristically early.

But it’s a story that sounds almost too good to be true.

However Alan, 63, once told The Scottish Sun: “Well, it is 100 per cent true. What isn’t true is the 5,000 people who also claim to have also been at King Tut’s that night.”

Under the Scotsman’s guidance, Noel and Liam Gallagher would of course go on to be one of the biggest British acts of all-time selling over 75million records.

But Alan still maintains that he only managed to catch the set by the Manchester band after they managed to bully their way on stage.

The ex-British Rail worker, who founded Creation Records in 1983 before going on to find chart success with the likes of The Jesus And Mary Chain and Primal Scream, recalls: “It was a complete fluke.

“I was at an 18 Wheeler show in Glasgow at King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut.

Third on the bill were a band from Manchester. They were friends of Oasis and they’d told the band they could play fourth on the bill.

“So Oasis hired a van and drove up from Manchester with their mates and when they arrived the promoter says, ‘No. F**k off’.

“And they’re saying, ‘Look, it’s cost us £200 to hire the van and equipment and get here. If you don’t let us play, we’ll smash your club up. There’s 10 of us and only two security’.

So the promoter lets them play.”

He adds: “Now, I wouldn’t have got to see them normally, because when a band of mine’s playing I usually get in five minutes before they come on stage.

“However, because I’d gone with my sister Susan, who doesn’t happen to own a watch, I got there two hours early. I witnessed all the shenanigans, so I wanted to see what they were like.

“The first song was really good. Then the second was incredible. By the time they did this fantastic version of I Am the Walrus, I’d decided I’ve got to sign this group, now.

“I said, ‘Do you have a record deal? Do you want one? I wanna do it’.”

Alan maintains his “dead minger” looks allowed him to steal a march on his big bucks rivals.

He says: “Eventually they had 20 record companies offering them deals and at the last minute Mother Records, owned by U2, phoned and said, ‘We’ll offer double what McGee is offering’.

“But one of the reasons I made it was because I wasn’t a good-looking guy. No one took any notice of me. They didn’t see me coming.

“And before they knew it, I had the biggest band in the world.”

The following year Oasis played the King Tut’s tent at the inaugural T in the Park when it was staged in Strathclyde Country Park. But it was any wonder they made it on stage at all after Noel began playing frisbee across the M74 motorway after their van broke down enroute from Manchester.

Simon Mason, who was part of their entourage at the time, says: “Noel and Phil (Smith, pal and band DJ) decide it would be a perfect time for a game of frisbee. “They proceed to have a game of frisbee across the motorway, with six lanes of f*****g traffic.

“I’m sitting in the van going, ‘I’m going to jail’. It went for a while, but thankfully the AA turned up.”

But Mason maintains that the brothers knew they were about to explode on the scene after that first T in the Park performance.

He added: “It was a phenomenal gig. We could have walked outside of that tent after that gig and there could have been a nuclear war, and no one would have given a f**k.”

It was also the first time their svengali boss McGee had watched them sober – after beating his drink and drugs demons in rehab.
He says: “Oasis played one of their best ever shows at the first T In The Park back in 1994.

“To this day the Gallagher brothers don’t know I was actually there — they thought I was drying out in rehab.

“But I made it in time to sneak in with my sister Susan. It was the first time I’d seen them clean and sober — they were still great.”

In December that year, the band returned north this time to play Glasgow’s Barrowland but fiery Liam lost his voice and stormed off stage.

To placate the baying crowd, Noel finished the gig playing acoustically – it was the first time he had sung lead vocals.

In total they would play 42 gigs in Scotland, including a two-day concert at Balloch Castle Country Park in front of 80,000 fans in 1996.

But tragedy struck before their double-header when roadie James Hunter, 28, from Hamilton was crushed to death when a forklift truck reversed into him. The band sent their sympathies to his family.

Their last concert in Scotland at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on June 17, 2009.

Speaking on stage that day Liam, told the crowd: “Scotland’s the f***ing b*****ks and so are the people.

“You’ve always been very kind to us since we started out with Oasis.”
But while the famously feuding brothers will officially announce their £400million comeback tomorrow, Alan reveals he once came up with a very cool way for Liam, 51, and Noel, 57, to earn an instant fortune – by playing at the South Pole.

He says: “I tried to set up a pay-per-view Oasis gig in Antarctica. We’d have sold it around the world for £10 a ticket.

“It would have easily made us £50m for just one gig. But Noel didn’t fancy the cold.”

Now Oasis fans everywhere will be grateful that the frosty relations between the Gallagher brothers look to have well and truly thawed – for now.