“It’s so easy”: The classic Oasis song Rod Stewart compared to The Faces

Posted On August 14, 2024August 14, 2024

Oasis were the quintessential British rock band of the 1990s, complete with brash attitudes, a strong image, and a discography of defiant rock and roll music. The band are virtually inseparable from the Britpop era of the 1990s, but they took a lot of inspiration from the music of the 1960s. Of course, The Beatles had an undeniable impact on the Gallaghers, but so did the revolutionary rock of groups like The Who, The Kinks, and The Small Faces.

The sound of Oasis was distinctly Mancunian and firmly rooted in the modern music scene of the 1990s. Although their image and instrumentation owed a lot to groups like The Beatles, it is difficult to imagine Paul McCartney ever uttering the words “Your music’s shite, you keep me up all night,” with the same sneering arrogance as Liam Gallagher. In that sense, the band were much closer to the adolescent rebellion of mod rock groups like The Small Faces, who were always a little more hardcore than the Fab Four.

From their formation in 1965, The Small Faces were among the strongest groups of the swinging sixties, but that quality would not last forever. After the creative visionary Steve Marriott left the group in 1969, the remaining members recruited Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart to become Faces, who failed to live up to the high standards that the Marriott era set. Nevertheless, Stewart and company still viewed themselves as young rock rebels breaking down the boundaries of the music industry.

Even as he grew older, Stewart has always maintained that same attitude in spite of his intense level of success and the diminishing returns of his musical output. Whereas groups like The Small Faces and, later, Oasis sought to destroy the institutions of the music industry, Rod Stewart has been an institution of that industry for decades, even if he will scarcely admit to such a fact.

Perhaps one of the most cringeworthy moments of Stewart’s career – of which there are many to choose from – came in 1998 with the release of When We Were the New Boys. With a tracklisting largely made up of cover songs, the album gave the impression of an ageing rocker trying anything to remain relevant. On the album, Stewart recorded versions of tracks by Primal Scream, Skunk Anansie, and Oasis. These choices are made all the more strange when considering the fact that Stewart specifically chose to cover the Oasis track ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’.

Justifying this questionable choice, Stewart once told SFGate, “I always thought ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ sounded like a Faces song anyway.” This begs the question of whether Rod Stewart has ever actually listened to the song. Oasis’ original version drew from the banal reality of working-class life, with the narrator finding themselves disenfranchised from modern life, taking solace only in cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. It is difficult to see how the globally famous multi-millionaire Rod Stewart found himself relating to that tale.

Nevertheless, the singer claimed, “It’s really meat and potatoes for me to sing that stuff,” explaining, “We didn’t actually do it in the studio. We did it ’round my guitar player’s house. We had the guitars in the toilet, the bass in the bedroom and the drums in the garage, so we had a loose atmosphere to start off with. We recorded it six or seven times and used the first take.” In a final act of modesty, Stewart then concluded, “It’s so easy for me to do that stuff.”

Stewart’s toe-curling version of the Oasis classic acts as an ample reminder that just because something is easy does not mean you should do it. Perhaps that is why the bizarre cover has largely been lost to obscurity in the years since it was initially released to the public by Stewart back in 1998. 

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