CityLife

Definitely or maybe? Is it really the end for Oasis?

IN HAPPIER TIMES: Liam and Noel

EVEN when they were making history, Noel and Liam Gallagher were at each other’s throats.

On the second night of their era-defining 1996 concerts at Manchester City’s Maine Road stadium, Liam and Noel bickered in front of the adoring crowd, and Liam sulked his way through one of the pinnacles of his music career.

It was ever thus. Public slanging matches were commonplace, fisticuffs not unusual. Frequently, the band took the stage minus a Gallagher because of some strop.

“I love my brother. But I also hate him,” Noel once said. “Some days I despise him.”

So those of us who have documented the sibling rivalry for 15 years greet news of Noel’s departure from Oasis with two contradictory thoughts: Firstly, how did they stay together this long? But, secondly, if they survived such terrible rows in the past, can this one too be patched up?

In 1994, Liam whacked Noel with a tambourine on stage in Los Angeles. In 1995, Liam flounced off before a Later with Jools Holland recording, leaving Noel to take over vocals.

In 1996, Liam refused to fly out for a US tour, and when he did rejoin the band, Noel then exited two-thirds of the way through the tour. In 2000, the brothers came to blows in Barcelona and Noel left Oasis’s European tour.

Just this month Noel said the brothers weren’t talking or travelling together to gigs.

As if making excuses for petulant children who have stayed up past their bedtime, the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy, now blames tiredness for Noel and Liam’s latest rift.

And there was a real weariness to Noel’s resignation statement – expressing his relief at escaping the ‘verbal and violent intimidation towards me, my family, friends and comrades’ and holding out the prospect of seeking ‘pastures new’.

So if this is the obituary for Oasis, what do we say of them?
In 1994 and 1995, they produced two of the greatest albums in British pop with Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?

Since then they have given us albums which could best be summed up as ‘OK, but no Morning Glory’.

Dig Out Your Soul

Ironically, their 2008 album Dig Out Your Soul offered the most protracted burst of brilliance from Oasis since the glory days. Five of the 11 songs were magnificent – all of them written by Noel, who has made no secret down the years of his ambition to record a solo album.

There never was anything original about Oasis. Noel made no secret of using The Beatles as his songwriting template.

Liam’s surly body language was obviously cribbed from Ian Brown, and the gobby, cocksure geezerishness of Oasis was clearly a legacy of Madchester.

What Oasis did brilliantly – apart from being rock’s most outspokenly entertaining interviewees – was the big event: Maine Road, Loch Lomond and Knebworth in 1996 alone. 

Years after these high watermarks, the same huge anthemic songs were roared out across arenas which would sing them back in beery unison, turning an Oasis gig  into something more like a football match.

If Oasis had become stolid and predictable, they wore this mantle with the same pride as the Rolling Stones. And like the sometimes fractious relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the Gallagher arguments seemed like a necessary creative tension – the grit which yielded musical pearls.

But Noel’s exit gives the Oasis story a frisson of excitement it has not seen for years. He may well seek those ‘pastures new’, as may Liam.
But time will undoubtedly tell that Oasis were greater than the sum of their parts. In further imitation of their heroes The Beatles, the next chapter of the Oasis story will be the speculation about a reunion.

Pop history tells us there is virtually no chasm between former bandmates that can’t be bridged for the sake of a lucrative, prestige-enhancing reunion tour.

Don Henley once said the Eagles would reunite only ‘when hell freezes over’.

Their 1994 reunion album was, naturally enough, titled Hell Freezes Over.

What price an Oasis reunion? Definitely? Maybe?