Songfacts®:

• This was the first song that Noel Gallagher wrote with Oasis. He recalled to Q magazine: "One Sunday afternoon I was at home watching EastEndersd when our kid rings up and says, 'You coming down for a jam?' I'd never played with anyone else ever. I went, 'Alright.' I'm asking, 'Do you know any Beatles songs?' 'No.' 'Not Ticket To Ride?'
  
  "We sit there for hours and hours, dead hot and sweaty, and its great," Gallagher continued. "Same the next Sunday and – just because they didn't know any Beatles, really – we decide to write a song ourselves and I come up with what turns out to be Columbia."
• Oasis opened their first gig at Manchester's Boardwalk on (probably) January 15, 1992 with this song. Noel Gallagher recalled to Q magazine: "It went down like a f---ing knackered lift (laughs). We played this epic, six minute, stone-grooved song, dow, wow, dow, duh duh, the total crossing of rock music and dance music beyond anything that's been heard before and everyone's like (blank face). Soul destroying. This bowl of silence."
• This was Bonehead's favorite song to play live. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Daragh - Dublin, Ireland
• Noel Gallagher explained the song's background in the liner notes to Definitely Maybe's 2014 reissue: "When we started, we didn't have a lot of songs so we would jam out current Acid House favourites and f--k about. 'Columbia' derived from one of those nights. It was an instrumental and we played it the first night I ever did a gig with Oasis. When we started at The Real People's studio, somebody had the idea of adding lyrics and it's still a bone of contention to this day who actually wrote the words. We were all on acid at the time but I know I wrote 90 percent of them. It's named in honour of the hotel (in London). Because when I was a roadie with Mark Coyle working for the Inspiral Carpets, we loved that hotel, it was the scene of many nights of nonsense. And it sounded like a good title. I mean, why call anything anything?" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• Oasis debuted the song on August 14, 1991, during their first gig at the Boardwalk club in Manchester. Noel Gallagher had never played the guitar standing upright before. He was stressed beforehand, as he believes how a guitarist holds his stringed instrument determines the type of woman he attracts.
  
  "If it's too high, you don't get no fit birds, mate," he said on Gibson TV's Icons series. "If it's too low, she gettin' a goth, alright? But if you get it right, you know, the Gunslinger'... And I remember looking in the mirror thinking, Doesn't look right.'"
  
  "We were doing one song of mine, which was 'Columbia,' but it was instrumental," Gallagher added.
  
  "We've got a gig on Tuesday, and it suddenly dawns on me that I've never played guitar standing up. Not only that, I don't own a f---ing strap. This is Sunday night. And I'm skint. Never played guitar standing up."
  
  "That seems [like a] preposterous f---ing notion now," he continued. "But I can only tell you that the Monday was probably the most stressful f---ing day of my entire life. I'd say [I spent] a good hour looking in the mirror. And I think where you hold your guitar for the first time is crucial."