Twenty-five years of Oasis, the best British band of their generation
The Mancunians were regular chart-toppers until their split in 2009—but it is their everyman appeal that makes them unique
By J.T.
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, on August 18th 1991, four Mancunian lads plugged in their instruments at the Boardwalk nightclub, and strummed away to an audience of barely a dozen people. It was not an auspicious start for The Rain, a band of layabouts in their 20s who couldn’t even afford a microphone stand. If, as the group trundled off the stage at the end of the set, you had told one of the listeners that they had just witnessed the debut of the best British band of their generation, you might have elicited a chuckle—and a couple of expletives.
Holding the microphone that night was a young Liam Gallagher; among the onlookers was his older brother, Noel. Neither of them had done much with their lives. The sons of two Irish immigrants, the Gallagher boys had a rough upbringing, suffering at the hands of an abusive, alcoholic father, who beat them and their mother. Both struggled at school and developed a taste for truancy, shoplifting and marijuana. They drifted in and out of construction jobs and frequently found themselves on the dole. Noel eventually landed a job as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, an indie band from Oldham.
It was on a break from touring that Noel found himself in the Boardwalk, listening to his brother. Liam liked the idea of being a front-man in a band, but Noel was devoted to music. He had grown up admiring groups from Manchester, especially The Stone Roses, and Johnny Marr’s jangling guitar-playing for The Smiths; he liked the grungy punk of The Sex Pistols, and The Jam. All of these sounds found their way into the songs that he, Liam and their mates—Paul “Bonehead” Arthur, Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan and Tony McCarroll—played together.
Noel joined the group shortly after the Boardwalk gig, and renamed them Oasis. They developed a signature sound: Noel thrashing guitar chords and picking bluesy riffs, Liam howling and whining the words. This brash combination dominated their first album, “Definitely Maybe”, which jumped to the top of the British charts when it was released in 1994. But while the raucous playing sold well—the album sold 15m units worldwide—it wasn’t what made the band special. By far the best track on the debut record, and perhaps the finest that the band ever produced, was “Live Forever”: a profound song about never quite being what you want to be, and the bond between Noel and his mother. It was the first one he ever wrote—and the mark of a brilliant, sensitive lyricist.
Throughout the 1990s, Oasis albums continued to include loud tracks with nasal singing: the crashing Britpop songs that contrasted with the cleaner pop tunes of Blur, their rivals in the charts. The two bands might have battled for supremacy—Noel once publicly wished that his opponents would “catch AIDS and die”—but they had very little in common. Blur were a group of middle-class students, who sang about “Coffee and TV” when Oasis called for “Cigarettes and Alcohol”. They wrote about big houses in the country and people who can tell “claret from a Beaujolais”. The Gallagher boys, by contrast, were quite literally “parklife”: they used to get high sniffing glue after kicking around a football. They had an everyman, rough-around-the edges appeal that Blur didn’t.
Yet for all the sneering and shouting, Oasis were capable of producing remarkably sophisticated songs, with the sort of melodies that would make Paul McCartney proud. The Gallaghers invited comparisons with the Beatles at every opportunity. Their band was named after the first venue in Manchester that the Fab Four had played in; Liam claimed to be the reincarnated soul of John Lennon; Noel included references to numerous Beatles songs in his lyrics and pinched the title of “Wonderwall” from an album by George Harrison. The band frequently covered Beatles’ songs, briefly employed Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) as their drummer, and had fights that made the Lennon-McCartney feud look tame. The brothers often criticised each other in public—and sometimes physically brawled. Noel once attacked Liam with a cricket bat during a recording session.
That animosity is difficult to recognise in some of the beautiful songs the band produced. “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” are the most famous tracks on Oasis’s second album, but the gentle harmonies of “Cast No Shadow” and the gradual building of “Champagne Supernova” are more impressive. By this stage, Noel had already composed the string-accompanied anthem “Whatever”, the striving horn sections of “The Masterplan” and the pensive acoustic piece “Half the World Away”—none of which even made it onto a studio album. Future records would feature the plaintive “Don’t Go Away”, the moody “Where Did It All Go Wrong” and the existential “Little by Little”: “why am I really here?” asks a man who once told listeners to “wipe the shit from your shoes”. Many of the best tracks came on the 2005 album “Don’t Believe the Truth”, including the poignant closing track “Let There Be Love”, and some genuinely listenable tunes by Liam, who had gradually taught himself how to write them.
By the time the band split in 2009, after one fight too many and a number of changes on the bass and drums, they had produced seven albums—each topping the British charts—and 23 top-ten singles. Though Coldplay have equalled their global sales of 70m and U2, who released their first record 14 years before “Definitely Maybe”, have had nine chart-topping albums in Britain, Oasis’s tally of eight number-one singles is the best of any modern rock band. The Gallaghers have gone their separate ways, making moderately successful records with their respective groups (Beady Eye for Liam, the High Flying Birds for Noel). But Oasis’s claim to be the best British group of the last quarter of a century remains compelling.
