The London Quireboys

The brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher and their swagger and sense of self belief, have become popular with anti-authority youth movement and soccer hooligan culture of Great Britain. With their rock band Oasis, the highly popular, outspoken Gallagher brothers’ careers have skyrocketed, to international rock stardom, since their days running wild in streets and pubs of Manchester, England in the early Nineties.

In a popular book titled, “Oasis: What’s The Story?” by Ian Robertson, former Oasis road-manager/security man, supposedly provided a look into what a wild ride of the rock and roll lifestyle was really like with the Gallaghers. Yet, according to two members of another veteran British rock band called the London Quireboys, singer Spike Gray and guitarist Guy Griffin, most of what Ian Robertson based the book, “Oasis: What’s The Story?” on, was in actuality, not completely accurate in regards to the Gallaghers. Nor was an article which appeared in a major British paper, fully truthful, simply because Robertson did not have enough first hand, wild stories about the Gallaghers to sell.

Furthermore, Spike accuses the highly successful and prolific songwriter Noel Gallagher of not actually coming up with many original ideas for the music to his million selling hit singles. “He just rips them off,” says Spike. In the following interview Spike and Guy reveal their feelings regarding the book, “OASIS, WHAT’S THE STORY” by Ian Robertson and Robertson’s story which he sold to a British newspaper. Along with what they say is the truth regarding the real individuals behind Robertson’s tales of sex, drugs and rock and roll with Oasis.

(Q)- Please state your name, age and place of birth.
Guy Griffin- I’m Guy Griffin. I am thirty-two and I am from Bedford England. I currently live in Los Angeles.
Spike- I’m Spike. I’m from Newcastle and I’m thirty-four.

(Q)- During the Nineties, the rock group Oasis became extremely popular and made multi-millions of pounds. Yet the London Quireboys broke up and then basically sat on the sidelines and watched Oasis advance on.
Guy Griffin- Yeah they did. You’ve got a band like Oasis, they’re just about to come out with a record now. (2002) It’ll probably be a really big record. Because all of a sudden, it’s almost like people are ready for Oasis again because there’s no one else and there’s not many bands that have any sort of element of danger about them.

(Q)- Well what about you and your band?
Guy Griffin- The thing is, I’ve never sort off…. it’s always hard for us to.. I mean we’ve always stayed the same. We’re both (Guy and Spike) still. the same. And when you’re popular, things get blown out of proportion and it gets ridiculous. We’re not a lot different now, then we were then (pre-1990). We live the same. Hopefully we’re a little bit more mature, hopefully not too much.

(Q)- You go to bed at night instead of staying up all night drinking.
Guy Griffin- Yeah. (laughs) We still love music. We’re really happy to have the chance to go out once again and play our music.

(Q)- What do you think about Oasis success and the stories of their not sleeping for days on end, all night drinking, doing drugs and wild sex with groupies?
Guy Griffin- It’s funny because there’s a book about Oasis (title “Oasis: What’s The Story?” by Ian Robertson. Published by Blake Books.) He is their former (Oasis) tour manager. He was our tour manager for a while with the Quireboys. The book was one of the books of the year in “Q” (magazine) or something like that. I’m mentioned in that book. But he (Ian Robertson) had a lot of the stories in there, were actually Quireboys stories. Because there wasn’t as much wild stuff to write about with Oasis as many people would like to make out there is (laughs). So, some of the stuff is just kind of little bits and pieces based on his being out on the road with us and stuff. It is just the same thing, just different haircuts. The thing for us is that we could have never came out in the middle of all of that (mid- Nineties) and also in England everything is so flavor of the month there. It’s weird to me because Oasis is a such a sort of rock and roll type band but you’ll never see them in any of the rock magazines.

(Q)- They are celebrities first off and rock and roll stars secondly.
Guy Griffin- Yeah. They are kind of like in “NME” (magazine). We were always lumped in with the sort of rock sort of thing. But Oasis was doing well at that time (Nineties) and it was really basically all coming from the exact same influences we had.

(Q)- Are you saying the stories outlined in the book, “Oasis: What’s The Story?” by Ian Robertson, the stories regarding Noel and Liam having stayed up for days and nights on end, doing drugs like cocaine, drinking alcohol and having sex with all sorts of women, are actually in many instances, not true and are actually about you and Spike and the times that Ian Robertson spent with you two?
Guy Griffin- Yeah.
Spike- Yes. They’re Quireboys stories. What happened was he as on the front cover of “News Of The World” and he sold a story about Oasis. And then I rang up Robbo (Ian Robertson) and I was like, “Robbo. That was the night that we were out.” And, it was all those Quireboys stories that he’d been making up. (laughs)

(Q)- Who was this individual you spoke with Spike?
Spike- Robbo. (Robbo is Spike’s nick name for Ian Robertson.)

(Q)- So you’re actually the man who is drinking, doing drugs all night long and having wild sex with all of these woman as depicted in that book?
Spike- Yeah. You’ll have a good time with us pal. I’ll tell you.

(Q)- Was it a bit odd or funny seeing your life actually lived out in the tabloid stories accredited to Ian Robertson and the book by Ian Robertson as well?
Spike- Yeah. Shit yeah. You know what he said to me when all of that came out? He (Ian Robertson) said, “Well the thing was, they was such boring bastards that I just had to make something up.” I was like, “Cheers pal.”

(Q)- Did he (Ian Robertson) ever tell anybody that down the road?
Spike- No. He wouldn’t. He just wanted to get his money off of the book. I was like, “Well, good luck to you.”

(Q)- That’s pretty amazing.
Spike- The thing is, they’re from Manchester, I’m from Newcastle. I can drink twice as much as them.

(Q)- What are you saying Spike? Are you saying that growing up in Newcastle for you was tough?
Spike- I’m from Newcastle man, I can drink pal. When I grew up it was tough man. Man I’m from the fucking real world. You know what I mean?

(Q)- What about Oasis success with their music Spike? You had quite a bit of success as rock and roll singer with your band the London Quireboys in the late Eighties and suddenly your band disappeared by the middle of the nineties. Then the popularity of rock and roll music really took off in England, mainly because of Oasis major hit singles.
Spike- what do you mean?

(Q)- Oasis brought rock and roll music back into mainstream popularity with the masses in the mid Nineties.
Spike- What it was, was he (Noel Gallagher)… I know this from (song) writing with different people. He (Noel) created like a whole thing were it is alright to rip off songs. You know? I’ve never been able to do that sort of thing. But I know that a lot of people just started to just copy songs and it was like, find an obscure song. It was more like, “I’ll find an obscure song.” Noel does that. That’s what he does. He finds obscure songs and he just rips them off.

(Q)- What did you feel whenever you saw Oasis live?
Spike- So, me go and see Oasis live? To me, I mean I want to have a bit of fun. I like to have a bit of fun when I was a kid going to se a concert you know?

(Q)- On another subject what British rock band actually was an influence for you Spike?
Spike- I love T Rex. June Bolan was Marc (Bolan) wife. (Marc Bolan (d. September 16, 1977) former wife, June, died of a heart attack aged 48 in August of 1994, while on a holiday in Turkey.) She was one of our first managers. She gave me a bag full of Marc’s clothes when I first started in the Quireboys. All of those jackets I used to wear in the pictures of us in the early days, were Marc Bolan’s.

(Q)- Do you still own those clothes?
Spike- No. My ex-girlfriend has got them now. She lives in London and the clothes are all framed (glass enclosed display cases) on the wall now. (At her place in London.) I had two big bags full of marc’s clothes, from his trousers to his jackets to his shirts.

(Q)- Did the clothes fit you?
Spike- The jackets did the trousers didn’t. But yeah all of them early picture of the Quireboys, that was me wearing Marc Bolan’s jackets and stuff. I don’t have those clothes anymore.