Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis

The best band since the Beatles? Naah. Okay, the best Beatlesque band since the Beatles, not counting Badfinger? I say maybe. In any case, Paolo Hewitt's breathless, ungrammatical bio is a treat, mainly for its day-by-day documentation of exactly how the Brothers Gallagher just can't seem to get along. These belligerent Mancunians bicker, denounce each other to the press, and resort to fisticuffs at the drop of a hat. Noel is always giving Liam right proper stick, or vice-versa. And while the other band members end up with second-banana roles, they don't lag far behind in the hedonism derby, as witness this pharmaceutically-enhanced performance in Manchester: "By the time they got on-stage, they were seriously gone. Bonehead played with three cigarettes in his mouth, Noel was E'd up, Guigsy fell off the stage and McCarroll forgot to tighten the nuts on his cymbals so when he first hit them, his drum kit half- collapsed." The rest is history.