“It mentions drugs and boozing and social comment and listening to tunes, what more do you want?”: Noel Gallagher on the making of Oasis’s classic anthem Cigarettes & Alcohol

Noel Gallagher was dead against releasing Cigarettes & Alcohol as a single, but Oasis’ guitarist and chief songwriter has never regretted caving in to label pressure to put it out. The classic Oasis anthem came out 30 years ago this week, the fourth single from their era-defining debut Definitely Maybe and, in the eyes of Noel, it was one song too far to be lifted from the same album for a standalone release.

“We got a little leant on to put a fourth single,” Noel said in an interview conducted for the group’s 2006 compilation Stop The Clocks. “I wasn’t into the idea at all. I was like, ‘Fourth single? Fucking hell, I don’t know about that…’.”

But Gallagher recalled the moment he realised the single was pushing Oasis’s fast-blossoming success into another realm. “We were in Detroit and we got the phone call that not only had it got in the charts but it was the biggest selling single we’d ever had. I remember putting the phone done,” he remembered, re-enacting rubbing hands together, “and going, ‘Now we’re talking, this is going to get fucking stupid’.” It was like, ‘There’s no going back from this now, this is gonna be sensational’.”

Fame and fortune felt a long way off when Noel first wrote it in his flat in Manchester, he said. “Two guys used to live above me and in those days, the geezer that I was, I used to write on the electric guitar with my amp in the room in a block of flats,” he stated. “One of the guys might have worked at the Hacienda as a local crew guy or something and I remember him passing me on the stairs going, ‘You’re not gonna write a song with that riff are you? That’s fucking rubbish’. I was going, ‘Listen fat arse, it’s gonna be amazing when it comes out’. I remember going down to the rehearsal room with this song and Bonehead used to always be the tut-tutter. I went ‘I’ve got this tune called Cigarettes & Alcohol’ and he does his tut-tut and then I did the riff and he went ‘Whoa, you can’t do that, that’s T.Rex’ and I was like, ‘I don’t give a shit who it is, no-one’s gonna hear it anyway’.”

Talking about the track again a few years later, Noel said it never lost its impact at the band’s shows. “It became a proper youth anthem. That song, right up until the end at the last gigs, that’s when people go fucking apeshit. It mentions drugs and shagging birds and social comment and boozing and drinking and listening to tunes, what more do you want?’.”

It will sure to be amongst the numerous euphoric singalongs at the band’s reunion shows next year. This week, Oasis announced extra shows in the US and South America to cater for demand. See the details here.

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.