(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis’ long-awaited second album, has gone down in Britpop history, not least because the first week of the six-week recording session ended in a terrible fight between Liam and Noel Gallagher that nearly sank the band.
“A fight?” recalled one member of the group’s entourage. “There were air rifles, fire extinguishers and a television hanging from the window, still plugged in.”
During the 1995 session at a studio in South Wales, a bored Liam (still waiting to be called back to record his vocals) spent the afternoon in a nearby pub, where he made some friends while drinking heavily.
When he returned to the studio with his new followers, Noel became upset. He tried to force the group to leave, and Liam “lost control” and lunged at his brother and attacked his guitars. Noel responded with a cricket bat.
The band’s photographer, Michael Spencer Jones, said he had seen some mayhem before but this was “next level”. “It was chaos and the scene of devastation in Liam’s room afterwards was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like a nuclear explosion had happened.”
Liam Gallagher to perform live at O2 Forum Kentish Town on March 25, 2024
Liam Gallagher and his girlfriend Debbie Gwyther wearing a Burberry dress at the February 2018 show during London Fashion Week
Liam Gallagher and Debbie Gwyther attend the Q Awards in London in 2017
The damage amounted to £800, which the band paid to the studio before returning a week later to finish recording the album, which sold a record 345,000 copies in its first week.
For Liam, this was all part of being a rock and roll star. As was the fact that he had his teeth knocked out in a drunken brawl on tour in Munich in 2002, leading to 20 armed police officers raiding his five-star hotel and ending up with a €50,000 fine.
So the organisers of next year’s eagerly awaited Oasis reunion tour will have to be forgiven for a certain trepidation, but Liam is a changed man. He toured solo this summer and there are no reports of smashed guitars or TVs hanging from windows. Instead of the 24 cans of quality beer he drank in the late 90s, the 51-year-old sticks to one pint after every gig and goes to bed at midnight.
The person behind this transformation is Debbie Gwyther, 40, Liam’s girlfriend of ten years and also his manager. She has been hailed as his saviour, the rock legend’s tamer, the woman who managed to get Gallagher to tour Britain completely sober.
A friend of Liam’s tells me: “He’s like a different person on this tour, there’s no rock and roll in sight. It’s all very sensible and sober. Debbie knows what’s best for Liam. She’s strict with him. She’s not only his girlfriend, but she’s also his manager, so she knows exactly what needs to be done. Unlike his previous girlfriends and wives, he listens to Debbie, adores her and trusts that she knows what she’s doing.”
As those who have known Liam for years admit: “You have to have a very strong character to be able to exert any kind of influence on him. Many people have tried and failed, but he loves her and knows how positive her life has been.” In short: “She is not intimidated by anyone.”
Not only did Debbie manage to keep Liam (who proposed on Italy’s Amalfi Coast in 2019) sober, but according to a source close to the pair, she was instrumental in orchestrating the Oasis reunion.
While the ‘brilliant businesswoman’ has played hardball with international promoters Live Nation and SJM, as well as Noel’s team, her greatest negotiating feat has been between the two brothers.
Debbie, 40, has been Liam’s girlfriend for ten years and is also his manager.
Noel and Liam Gallagher proved they had buried the hatchet in their 15-year feud when they reunited this summer to pose for a photo together on the occasion of Oasis’ comeback tour.
“Debbie came on the scene after the band split up, and it was a fresh look and a cooler head without all the baggage,” says a source. “Debbie blew everyone away. Let’s just say that if it hadn’t been for her, things wouldn’t have gone as smoothly as they did in the end.”
‘I was determined to get Liam back on stage with his brother.
“She’s been saying for years that she thinks they should try to patch things up, and she loves Liam’s family, especially his mother, Peggy, and wanted them to smooth things over for her as well. It’s hard to imagine this would have happened without her. She should be working for the UN with those skills.”
Debbie was a working-class girl growing up in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, the daughter of a postman and a stay-at-home mother.
He did not go to university, instead moving to Dalston, east London, as a teenager to look for work in the music industry.
Debbie met Liam when she was working as his personal assistant in 2013, after taking a job at his then management company Quest, run by Paul McCartney’s manager Scott Rodger. The pair began a relationship after he divorced All Saints singer Nicole Appleton in 2014. He has said Debbie introduced him to “a whole new world” beyond his comfort zone of Primrose Hill in north London, where he had lived during his marriages to Appleton and actress Patsy Kensit. It is also where he raised two of his sons, Lennon, 24, and Gene, 23, whose mother is Patsy.
Liam admits that Debbie “saved” him. He said: “Debbie picked me up when I was falling. She just said, ‘Stop being a prick.'”
“It got me out of the house, introduced me to all sorts of people outside my world and made me do new things. I’d lived in London for a long time, but I only really knew Hampstead.”
He added: “It was a breath of fresh air, man. It helped me get in shape. She and I like to do the same things. We like to laugh. I’ve found my soulmate, I’ve met my soulmate. It’s good because the kids love her, the boys love her.”
But Debbie hasn’t always been known for her absolute sobriety. She and her sister Katie, who also works in the music business and helps manage Liam’s career, had a reputation as party girls when they emerged on the London rock and roll scene.
They ran a PR firm, Fear PR, and were regulars at gigs. Debbie and Katie often had late-night drinking sessions in seedy clubs, but few could reportedly match their resilience. “They were quite a wild couple when they wanted to be,” admits a source. “But they have calmed down now.”
Debbie Gwyther on tour in London in June 2019
Oasis’ 1996 Knebworth concerts saw the highest demand for concert tickets in UK history.
As well as owning a £4m house down the road, Debbie and Liam moved into a mansion near Stroud in the Cotswolds this year. They are believed to be renting the property for £17,000 a month. The move, friends say, is another part of the “New Liam”. They spend less time supporting the bar at their London venue, The Flask, and instead the couple are seen walking their dog on nearby communal land. Liam sets his alarm for 5am to go for an early run.
In his pre-Debbie years, he would still have been out partying at that hour, friends say. Debbie, whose wedding to Liam at Lake Como last year was postponed because he had hip surgery, once said: “The Liam I know and the Liam in the public eye are totally different. He’s impulsive and swears a lot, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be sweet at the same time.
“He has a huge responsibility to his family. The way he behaves with me, my family, his children and his mother is the reason why I love him. I knew he would never be happy unless he sang.”
That said, things haven’t always been easy.
In 2018, Liam was pictured apparently assaulting Debbie in a nasty late-night incident at Chiltern Fire Station, a celebrity hangout in London.
CCTV footage showed Liam apparently placing his hands on her neck during a drunken brawl, prompting subsequent questions from police, but the pair fiercely denied any malicious intent and Debbie was angry the footage was published.
As a source later said: ‘They are used to exciting moments; it’s their world.
“What seems horrible to some people, for them it is different and they have to face it themselves.”
There are fewer passionate moments in their lives now. In fact, Liam has “wonderful” relationships with all of his children. He became estranged from his eldest daughter, Molly, 26, following a brief fling he had with model Lisa Moorish while he was married to Ms Kensit.
“That was Debbie, too,” says a friend. “She knows what’s best for Liam and he listens to her.” Let’s hope her peacekeeping skills last through next year’s sold-out tour.
