Recording and Production
The sessions for Be Here Now began on 7 October 1996 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. The album's producer Owen Morris described the first week of recording as "fucking awful", and suggested to Noel that they abandon the session: "He just shrugged and said it would be all right. So on we went." Liam was under heavy tabloid focus at the time, and on 9 November 1996 was arrested and cautioned for cocaine possession following a bender at the Q Awards. A media frenzy ensued, and the band's management made the decision to move to a studio less readily accessible to paparazzi.
The Sun's showbiz editor Dominic Mohan recalled of the period: "We had quite a few Oasis contacts on the payroll. I don't know whether any were drug dealers, but there was always a few dodgy characters about." Oasis's official photographer Jill Furmanovsky felt the media's focus, and was preyed upon by tabloid journalists living in the flat upstairs from her: "They thought I had the band hiding in my flat." In paranoia, Oasis cut themselves off from their wider circle. According to Creation publicist Johnny Hopkins: "People were being edged out of the circle around Oasis. People who knew them before they were famous rather than because they were famous." Hopkins likened the situation to a medieval court, complete with kings, courtiers and jesters. As he explained, "nce you're in that situation you lose sight of reality."
On 11 November 1996, Oasis relocated the sessions to the rural Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey. Though the band reconvened with more energy, the early recordings were compromised by the drug intake of all involved. In 2007, Morris remembered that "in the first week, someone tried to score an ounce of weed, but instead got an ounce of cocaine. Which kind of summed it up." Noel was not present during any of Liam's vocal track recordings, typifying the high drama surrounding the sessions. Morris thought that the new material was weak, but when he voiced his opinion to Noel he was cut down: " I just carried on shovelling drugs up my nose." Noel, wanting to make the album as dense and "colossal" feeling as possible, layered multiple guitar tracks on several of the songs. In many instances he dubbed ten channels with identical guitar parts, in an effort to create a sonic volume. Alan McGee, owner of Oasis's label Creation Records, visited the studio during the mixing stage; he said, "I used to go down to the studio, and there was so much cocaine getting done at that point ... Owen was out of control, and he was the one in charge of it. The music was just fucking loud."
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