Oasis - All Around The World. From 3-minute 1992 rehearsal song to 9-1/2 minute Beatlesque epic in 1997,

[highplainsdem]

and with a 7-minute Beatlesque music video.

Video of a 1992 rehearsal in the basement room Oasis used at the Manchester club the Boardwalk. Frontman Liam Gallagher would have been 19 or 20 then, and they were a year away from having a recording contract and 2 years away from releasing their first album, which became the fastest selling debut album in British history to that point.

But this song wasn't on their first album, or even their second one. Noel Gallagher, who'd written it, had greater ambitions for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Around_the_World_(Oasis_song)

The song was one of the first to be written by Noel, and there are recorded sessions of the band rehearsing it at the Boardwalk club as early as 1992. However, despite Noel's fondness for the song, it did not appear on their first two albums—Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory?—as he wanted to wait until the band could afford to produce the song in the extravagant manner in which it eventually appeared.[citation needed] Gallagher has claimed that this is one of the best songs he has ever written.[1]

The final production sound for the song was envisaged as early as spring 1994. In the interview "Wibbling Rivalry", Noel Gallagher said of the song, "With Supersonic, I worried I was never going to write another song after that 'cos I thought, 'It sounds that good'... Two days later I superseded it by about 50 fuckin' times. The reason we haven't recorded that song is because there isn't enough money in Creation Records' bank balance to pay for the production of that record." Noel also added when asked if there would be an orchestra on it, "Orchestras, man? It's not got to be one, it's got to be two".[2]

-snip-

Noel described the song shortly before the release of the album: "I wrote this one ages ago, before 'Whatever'. It was twelve minutes long then. It was a matter of being able to afford to record it. But now we can get away with the 36-piece orchestra. And the longer the better as far as I'm concerned. If it's good. I can see what people are going to say, but fuck 'em, basically."[3]

"The lyrics are teeny-poppy. But there are three key changes towards the end. Imagine how much better Hey Jude would have been with three key changes towards the end. I like the ambition of it, all that time ago. What was all that about when we didn't even have our first single out? Gin and tonics, eh?"[3]

If you count the instrumental track "All Around The World (Reprise)" - 2:08 - closing their third album, Be Here Now, with the 9:20 album track (the 10th track of the 12 on the album), then the combination was 11-1/2 minutes long. Oasis then released a longer version of the album track, 9:38, as a single - the longest single ever to reach #1 on the UK singles chart. (I don't know why the single was longer.)

The music video - which was nominated for a Grammy - was 7 minutes long. By the time this was released in early 1998, Liam was 25.

Album track:

Slightly longer single version:

Instrumental album closer, All Around The World (Reprise):

Noel talking about the song:

[highplainsdem]

1. A couple of live performances from 1997...

This is the shorter one - and it's actually only about half the performance at G-MEX in Manchester on 12/14/97. This edited video was used for Top Of The Pops in January 1998, when the single was #1.

And the 10-minute version below was from their 12/17/97 Wembley concert, captured by a fan filming the screens.