It’s quite the image: the Union Jack swirling down the toilet. The artwork of the first Oasis demo cassette, like other beloved artifacts of Britpop, means something different depending on whom you trust.
For Alan McGee, the Creation Records founder who signed Oasis on a whim, convinced that they would be the biggest band in the world, this artwork captured a feeling of a new decade’s promise. Margaret Thatcher was out, U.K. rave was slowing down—Parliament’s infamous Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was only a year away—and something traditional about long-repressed Britain was swirling into something new and exciting and vaguely psychedelic. The post-rave generation was ready for the next party. The future was in McGee’s hands. Now he could sell it.
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