Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis

Hewitt (Days Lose Their Names and Time Slips Away) seems to have been granted total access to the celebrated British pop group Oasis, and he's clearly smitten with them, tempering braggy tales of the band's excessive drug and alcohol intake with sentimental peeps at the private, sober moments of rock's most recent bad boys. The result is a book that reads more like a campaign biography than a new chapter in pop music mythology. Hewitt barely mentions the time that Noel Gallagher, Oasis's lead guitarist and principal songwriter, declared to a British journalist that he hope two of the members of a rival band would ""catch AIDS and die,"" but he devotes two pages to fully recounting a forgettable conversation between lead singer Liam Gallagher and a doting female roadie, who thinks Liam is ""such a sweet boy."" Readers looking for shocks, dark secrets or delicious mystery will be disappointed. Hewitt sticks mostly to events that fans are already familiar with--such as concert triumphs and album releases--peppered with tour itineraries and vague accounts of the band's marathon cocaine parties. Hewitt sprinkles, rather than dishes, the dirt on Oasis, revealing the band members to be neither squeaky-clean nor terribly interesting. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)