PHOTOGRAPHER WHO CAPTURED OASIS AS THEY WENT SUPERSONIC

LARKING around in Amsterdam in 1996, trying to crack the US a year earlier and relaxing while recording Be Here Now, these never-before-seen images of Oasis capture the supersonic rise of one of the UK's greatest bands.

- BY MARC BAKER

Taken by their trusted photographer Jill Furmanovsky, the pics give a tantalising taste of life with the infamous Gallagher brothers.

The photos printed here are just a few of the 500 to feature in a new book, Oasis: Trying to Find a Way Out of Nowhere, published on Tuesday.

The book, overseen and edited by Noel Gallagher, is being released as the band prepares to play the final British shows of their world reunion tour at the weekend, with two last gigs at Wembley Stadium.

The book follows Oasis from the end of 1994, when their album Definitely Maybe was the fastest-selling debut in British chart history, through their dizzying 90s Britpop era success, to the last tense shows in 2009 before they split.

Noel, who relays the inside stories of the pictures in the book, believes nobody has captured life with Oasis the way Jill has.

He said: "We loved Jill from the moment she rolled up at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge in 1994. I met her on a stairwell backstage. She kind of reminded me of a dinnerladyand that's not an insult. It's a compliment because my mother [Peggy] was a dinnerlady.

"Then, during the gig, I'm kinda rocking out and there in the pit is the dinnerlady with a professional camera. At the time she was working on a book of her photography called The Moment and I saw an early draft of it. The first photo in it was a picture of Paul McCartney outside his house taken by Jill as a schoolgirl.

"She was looking to end the book with a contemporary band that was on its way up. We were just blowing up at that point, so we were perfect.