There was a time when Ocean Colour Scene was the hottest band in the world. Andrew Hamilton talks to frontman Simon Fowler about the new folk revival, being happy on the fringes of Britpop and how being unfashionable has become the key to their success.
Down the years, the sleepy village of Knebworth has become accustomed to a certain amount of action. Sat lazily in the northern end of Hertfordshire, just to the south of Stevenage, Knebworth is a village unremarkable in just about every way. Except, that is, that every so often it plays host to some of the most important concerts ever. It started in ‘79 when Zeppelin came to town; Queen soon followed and then Deep Purple chose it as the venue for their first gig in more than 15 years. But there was no bigger night than August 11, 1996. On that day, Oasis were joined by Ocean Colour Scene for the second in a set of two concerts that would re-write history. Close on 400,000 people saw Ocean Colour Scene perform live over those two balmy evenings, but more - 2.6 million more to be exact - requested tickets for what has since been recognised as the largest free concert ever to take place. But that was just the start for Ocean Colour Scene. Eight months later, their third album Marchin’ Already would push their mentors Oasis off the top of the album chart, making them, for a while at least, the top dogs of Brit pop. Yet despite the massive help that it gave his band, Britpop was never something that sat easily with Simon Fowler. “I think Oasis changed the perception of what popular music really was at that time. We had been doing the same kind of thing for years and then suddenly they come along and say that, actually, they do like The Beatles and they don’t have to make excuses for it. So we would have been in their camp and in Paul Weller’s camp but really I would have seen Britpop as more about Blur and Pulp and the NME, and we weren’t really linked with that. We certainly weren’t welcome in the NME club,” he says.
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