"You always used to see 'em knocking about, but I didn't hang around with their crowd. The area I lived in and the area they lived in used to be at fucking war with each other, man. It was serious: two mad gangs used to kick fuck out of each other". Paul Arthurs is remembering his particular patch of South Manchester around the mid-'80s. He speaks, as is his style, in curt, slightly defensive sentences that will always contain at least one emphasised word (often an expletive, as it happens). He smokes - as is Oasis' in-house rule - Benson & Hedges. And he's recently moved to the verdant Cheshire suburbs, escorting his wife and daughter to what's best described as Manchester's footballer belt. "So yeah", he concludes, having momentarily lost his thread. "Them two areas hated each other. But I knew who they were". He's talking, of course, about the twin-headed cultural cyclone who all but define Oasis' persona. There is more than enough raw material to ensure that Liam and Noel alone can manufacture the requisite levels of superstar intrigue. The synopsis for the eventual bio-pic is surely overstuffed already - what place for the three figures that hirsute disco prince Peter Stringfellow once labelled "The Tailgunners"? To omit Bonehead, Paul McGuigan and Alan White from the script, however, would be an act of quite considerable idiocy. Their experiences, after all, provide a neat reflection of the Gallagher brothers' progress, as proved by a clutch of episodes from the last three years. When Noel Gallagher called an ad hoc band meeting in a parked tour bus to premiere the songs he had written for "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?", it was Bonehead's reaction that gave the clearest indication of what they had in their hands: having heard "Champagne Supernova", he openly wept. Alan White's place in Gallagher-centred mythology is amply demonstrated by the occasion when he and Noel sped out of Rockfield Studios, leaving behind the wreckage from the brothers' worst-ever ruck. And Guigsy's centrality to the story is surely demonstrated by the pivotal gigs that took place at Earl's Court, lent a tear-jerking resonance on account of his return from a nervous breakdown. Thus, even in the most cornball reading of the Oasis story, their presence would be assured. Besides, these are the three men who, in a centuries-old rock tradition, have come to supply Oasis with the level-headed, earthed element that all groups most possess if they're not to implode within minutes of their decisive splashdown. The Beatles had Ringo. The Rolling Stones had Charlie Watts. The Who had John Entwistle. Noel and Liam Gallagher, fortunately enough, have triple their permitted share - there, surely, lies much of the explanation as to why Oasis have remained intact despite fall-outs that would send most groups spinning towards termination. In addition, such speculative thinking clouds one concrete fact. Remember, it was Guigs and Bonehead who formed Oasis in the first place. GUIGS IS AN EXTREMELY LIKABLE INTERVIEWEE; A LITTLE shaky at first, but endowed with an ability to recount chunks of Oasis' history - replete with dates, times and price-tags - in the manner of a soft-spoken raconteur. A fat joint, never offered to the journalist, is glued to his right hand, and he speaks in a measured drawl that never picks up speed, even when his anecdotes are spiralling into hilarity. That he is the member of Oasis whose loyalty to the other four has often led him into violence is hard to believe; this afternoon, in fact, he is about as placid as any member of a world-renowned rock band could conceivably be. He looks a little more lithe than he has in the past - rid of the weight that appeared in the wake of his breakdown - scrubbed and polished in the manner of the freshly wealthy. He's married, too: resident in London with Ruth, a picture framer who he met on a plane to Japan. Back, anyway. To Burnage, at the start of the 1990s. To a Friday night enterprise that was at least cheaper than throwing money into the tills of the local pub . . . "Me and Bonehead had this band", he remembers. "It wasn't really a band, actually: it was just three geezers and a drum machine, trying to fucking do something. The geezer we had as a singer was a twat, basically - so we sacked him. He sang things like "Wild thing, you smoke a draw" and fucking things like that. He was a twat. Swung his microphone round and all that. His favourite ever bands were New Order and Joy Division . . . but he didn't have any of their records". The surname of this individual is all Oasis have ever been prepared to give away. He was called Hutton - and history relates nothing of him after his sacking. He was elbowed out, as was only right, by one William John Paul Gallagher - by which time the sprig-headed Tony McCarroll had replaced the drum machine, and the name "Oasis" had replaced the flatly awful "Rain". The true quantum leap, however, continued to elude them. "We didn't find our feet for a long time", says Guigs. "What happened then was, we had a drummer - as everyone knows - who no one particularly liked, and the four us did a gig at the Boardwalk in Manchester as Oasis. September 14th, 1991. I've got the poster for it. And it was fucking terrible. "Anyway, Noel came down to the rehearsal the next Sunday after that, and after about half an hour he said, "I'll go and get me guitar". Then he came down and said, "Your tunes are shit. I'll show you some tunes". Everybody knew he was into playing his guitar and that, but he'd never been in a band in his life. So then he went, "Right, I'll be in charge". And, even then, was he convinced that the world would fall at your feet? "[Pause] I know he thought that if it was going to happen, the only way it was going to happen was if we started grafting, and got our heads proper down. We started rehearsing every day of the week. And that was as well as trying to do day jobs. We spent about 18 months rehearsing. Without doing any gigs. We played every single day of the week: if we were working, we'd rehearse from 6 till 11. If we weren't we'd go from midday to 10 at night". "THE STONE ROSES?" SAYS BONEHEAD, IN RESPONSE TO an inquiry about the group that sired Oasis, only to be superseded by them. "Smoke too much pot, don't they? Or summat like that - I don't know. Us and them were like chalk and cheese, really. Our attitude is "Right, we've got all these tunes, and we're going to get out and graft and play 'em to everyone. We want everyone to hear 'em". We're passionate. So that's what we do, full on - which is, like you say, totally opposite to the Roses". Pride about the songs runs almost as deep in Bonehead as it does in his boss; indeed, there are times when he appears to be more evangelical about the Oasis canon, given that his enthusiasm need to be couched in any kind of humility. They're somebody else's songs, after all - so why not proselytize about them? Besides, among all the members of Oasis, it's Bonehead who seems to be the most touched by Noel's gift. "He showed us "Whatever" very early on", he recalls, "and it freaked me head out when he came in with that. I was like, "Nah, you haven't fucking written that". But it's like that now - every time he comes in with a song, it blows my head off". As with "Champagne Supernova", Bonehead has occasionally admitted that "Cast No Shadow" has the power to make him weep. As, it appears, does at least one of the songs on "Be Here Now". "The one that sticks out", he says, "is All Around The World". Before we got signed, we were like, "Fucking hell - that'd be a killer single to come out with". And he was like, "Nah, I'm going to save it for the third album, when we can afford strings and get an orchestra in". We were all laughing, going, "We haven't signed a deal yet - what are you on about, third album?" But when you hear it now it's a killer. Having said that, I think "Fading Out" is my favourite". For "Cast No Shadow"-type reasons? "Yeah. Absolutely. You put it on at 4 am and it's like [deep breath], fucking hell" Bonehead looks out onto the nearby railway line and mutters the kind of sentence that illustrates precisely how awe-struck he can be by the unfathomable ability of Noel's songs to hit him just there. "The thing is", he says, "there's just something about the tune . . .". "WONDERWALL". "DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER". "I was let loose on that one. I'm really proud of "D'You Know What I Mean?", "Stand By Me", "All Around The World". Most of these ones, really". "Definitely Maybe", in retrospect, was a fine example of the only kind of record on which Tony McCarrol could have done a satisfactory job: a debut shot through with goggle-eyed enthusiasm and ambition, true - for the most part - to the garage-band blueprint. Once Noel resolved to send his music elsewhere, a more virtuoso approach was bound to be required - which explains why an alarmingly affable 25-year-old native of South London (who's freshly engaged, incidentally) is sitting on the rehearsal studio's roof, rattling off the performances of which he's the most proud. It's understandable, of course. Alan White's drumming on "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" is one of the key ingredients that give it that air of dizzying progress: "Wonderwall" and "Don't Look Back In Anger" are the most obvious examples, and yet even on the superficially straight-laced "Roll With It" and "Hey Now!", his contribution is absolutely crucial. It's what imbues these song with newly acquired panache; the sense that, even if the chord structures and lyrical sentiments remain largely the same, the music has a strikingly fresh, nimble perfection. Bonehead and Guigs' contributions tend to be subsumed within the songs' backcloths; Alan White's often seem part of the foreground. His colleagues were doubtless aware of it as soon as he played with them - which may explain (in addition of their hatred of McCarrol) why he was welcomed so readily. "I soon cottoned on", he laughs. "I was the Cockney c*** and they were the Manc fuckers. It was easy, really - as a kind of family unit, it felt really good really quick. Before I joined I was reading all these things - you know, Liam and Noel are always at one another's throats. But my brothers used to that, so it was no big deal". One rather doubts whether Steve White - drummer with Paul Weller and inspiration to the adolescent Alan - ever beat up his siblings with a cricket bat, argued with them about what time of the day it was, or resolved to smash their dearest possessions into small pieces. Whatever, the ease with which Alan has slid into his role is admirable indeed, not least on account of the seismic jobs that he faced from the beginning. "I did "Some Might Say" on Top Of The Pops", he remembers, "then a gig at Bath Moles [it was Bath Pavillion, actually], and then Glastonbury. That was my second gig [laughs]. After that, it was just steamrolling, so I never really thought about it until the time we had off not long ago, when it all went pear-shaped". Then, pleasantly enough, came a belated revelation. "I felt fucking brilliant", he enthuses. "Top band, great record, just about to start another one . . . it's fantastic". His enthusiasm about this album, needless to say, is overwhelming. Alan White, it appears, is as ecstatic as he probably should be. "The thing is", he says, "we had time to think about this record. The last one, I was straight in, and I didn't really know the songs. With this one we had the tape for three months, cos Noel had demoed it in Mustique. I think it sounds a whole lot more together as a band now. I'm happier. Overall, I think it's fucking . . . having it". Mark your current peace of mind out of ten. "Double happy. Ten out of ten". IT'S DIFFICULT TO SAY WHAT WAS wrong with me, really. It's pretty weird. I went to see about 15 different doctors and they all gave me a different explanation. At first, I couldn't even get out of fucking bed; couldn't stand or nothing. I was fucked. My body was fucked and my head was gone. Nervous breakdown, me crumbling . . . whatever you want to call it". In addition to the Gallaghers' two epochal bust-ups, one key episode has temporarily fractured Oasis' internal chemistry - when, soon after the release of "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?", Guigs fell victim to the kind of spirit-sapping stresses that were bound to claim at least one of the group. One Scott McLeod briefly took his place - before absconding in America and joining our friend Hutton in the "Who The Fuck Were They?" file. "I didn't know if I'd get better or whether I was ill or what, so I was happy it went on without me", says Guigs. "There was talk of it all stopping cos I wasn't there, but it's bigger than that. It was down to me to get me head together". Was he ever worried about falling out of the band for good? [Pause] "Course. I was double worried. But not for the sake of not being in the band - more cos these four geezers are me four best mates. And not being able to see them every day was very difficult". And how's it been since? "Top. Everything's good, man. I got some pills for a bit: beta blockers. I've got variable blood pressure or summat. Me mum's got it actually. It's a hereditary thing. So they gave me some of those, and some other things - Temazepam. Fucking no thank you, a spliff and beer'll do me very nicely". Guigs seems to be markedly less pleasurecrazed these days; to have arrived, finally, at something like adulthood. "Well, we don't go out every day, which we used to. I think on the first two British tours I didn't actually get in a hotel bed the whole time. I sometimes got carried up to one and put on it, but I didn't ever get in one. That's how it was for everyone, really". A LITTLE WHILE LATER, AS LIAM'S GUITAR-PLAYING BLARES from an open fire escape - basic blues, played pretty well - Bonehead reaches for the last of his Bensons and gropes towards a conclusion. "We're still the same people", he says, just as he's called back to rehearse. "Everyone's changed in obvious ways - "He drives a flash car, he's got a big house", whatever. But all that aside, we're still the same lads. I was having a bit of a one in the studio once, and Noel said to me", "Bonehead, man, all it is, is five lads making music. That's all it fucking is. So get on with it or you're sacked