Oasis returns to the stage: the story of a return denied a thousand times | Culture

Noel and Liam Gallagher have not been together in a room for 15 years, but the power of that unbeatable feeling called nostalgia and the prospect of breaking their bank accounts have knocked down the wall: Oasis are back. The English group resisted almost from the week after their split, in 2009, but this morning and through a message on their social networks, the band that put bad-tempered rock back on the sales charts has announced that they are resuming activity. There will be 14 dates for the moment in 2025 to perform at Cardiff Principality Stadium (July 4 and 5), Manchester Heaton Park (July 11, 12, 19 and 20), London Wembley Stadium (August 25, 26 and 2 and 3), Edinburgh Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium (August 8 and 9) and Dublin Croke Park (August 16 and 17). Tickets will go on sale from Saturday, August 31. Next year marks the 30th anniversary of one of his two best albums (along with the first, Definitely Maybe), the second of his career (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), which includes his most popular theme, Wonderwall. There is no possibility of editing new material at the moment.

It’s been 15 years of exchanging insults, at first funny and then tiresome and pathetic (“Noel is quite dark. But so was Hitler,” Liam said of his brother), and multiple messages in which they affirmed that the group would never get on stage again, especially Noel: “It wouldn’t make sense.” Well, it’s going to happen. In this story only two people count, the brothers Noel (Manchester, England, 57 years old, guitarist and vocalist) and Liam Gallagher (Manchester, 51 years old, lead vocalist), dysfunctional, quarrelsome, self-confessed drug addicts, rude, egomaniacs… And also authors of a handful of songs that marked rock in the nineties. The pride of British rock when the grunge American was beginning to falter: Oasis’ first album, the muscular Definitely Maybe, It was released in August 1994, four months after the suicide of Kurt Cobain, leader of Nirvana.

NME and Melody Maker, The two music weeklies that sold thousands of copies in the nineties, salivated over the adventures of these hooligans They were bushy-browed and always appeared with a can of beer in their hands. And they told stories in their pages about how on a ferry trip to Amsterdam they met some fans of the London West Ham. As they are tough Manchester City supporters, Liam began throwing empty cans of the beers he was drinking at them (and there were many). The West Ham fans played the same sport until, inevitably, they came to blows. Liam spent two days in a Dutch cell. Also prominent is the story of when Noel made “some lines in a toilet at 10 Downing Street” when he was in the bathroom. He went to visit Tony Blair in 1997, the head of government of brit popalthough many of the musicians who supported them later disowned them. One could fill a book with the brothers’ mischief, but it would end up being tedious. Even the English press found some worthy rivals for their bad boys: Blur.

Musically, Oasis offered an irresistible pastiche: the memorable Beatles melodies, the swagger boogie of T. Rex, the turbidity of the Velvet Underground, the shamelessness of the Rolling Stones. You can take the group’s hits and draw slightly reasonable similarities with songs by the aforementioned. But since their surrender as fans of the rock classics, they genuinely sounded like Oasis. Rock and roll star, Live Forever, Wonderwall either Don’t Look Back In Anger are the hallmarks of an Oasis style. Liam’s aggressive voice, stretching out the words, Noel’s thick guitars. Nobody wanted to be a rock star like them. In concert they didn’t need to dance or do pirouettes. Their attitude of rough working-class boys was enough. Liam sang nailed to the stage, with his hands clasped behind his back as if waiting to be handcuffed, his legs slightly bent and his neck stretched out with his mouth pointing to the microphone. When he finished his vocal part he would tie a tambourine and walk arrogantly with his legs open, the height of the manspreading, and with a funny grimace on his face. Noel barely moved, manipulating his large guitars, and gave off the presumptuous attitude of someone who exercises control as a composer and boss when it comes to making decisions. The rest of the group adopted the same apathy: why, if saying fuck between songs we have enough.

In the 2000s their albums became more dense, bordering on psychedelic. And in 2009 came the famous fight in the dressing room of a concert in Paris and Noel left the group accusing his brother of “an intolerable level of verbal intimidation and violence”. It was also said that the vocalist threw a guitar at Noel, although some versions also add “a plum” to the aggression. And the fraternal psychodrama began, with a profusion of family dirty laundry and insults. Since then, the brothers have pursued solo careers, much lower in quality and, above all, popularity than that of Oasis. Liam first as Beady Eye and then under his own name and often with ex-members of Oasis in the line-up; and the guitarist (and at this stage lead singer) under the name of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.

Despite their strenuous efforts and some songs with substance, the solo careers of both have not taken off. Both have toured Spain and it has been evident in the reaction of the people: indifference and visits to the bar with the solo songs and euphoria when they proposed the Oasis repertoire, which increased as the tours went on: in the 2024 tour Noel already occupied half of the recital with pieces from Oasis and Liam has just performed at the Reading and Leeds festivals as part of the 30th anniversary tour of Definitely Maybe, where he performs songs from Oasis’ debut album. All roads led to the same place…

Liam has been the most interested in the reunion and has fluctuated between negativity and green shoots of hope. In 2019, and in an interview with this newspaper, he was down: “I get asked all the time when Oasis is coming back. It doesn’t look good right now. I’m starting to think that Noel really doesn’t like me. I always thought that when he messed with me he was joking, that he actually loved me. But I have the feeling that it’s true that he doesn’t like me. It’s a shame. I love him. We’re brothers. I have another brother and he doesn’t talk to him either. Noel is in his own fucking world right now. I don’t know what’s going on with that bastard. He’s not happy doing it. cosmic pop. He’s not happy being the frontman. He’s not happy having all the money. He’s not happy with his beautiful girlfriend. He’s not happy with his £80m. He’s not happy with anything. What the fuck makes him happy? He’s going to end up playing in pubs because Oasis fans are going to get fed up with him.” A year later, in 2020, Liam was on a high: “I just got a call from my brother begging me to reunite Oasis,” he wrote in a tweet, although it later fell through. And a few months ago, in March 2024 and also in EL PAÍS, he was lukewarm: “It could be (an Oasis reunion), but it won’t happen this week.”

Noel, however, has wavered slightly and has maintained his refusal. The most hopeful thing he said on the BBC in January 2023: “You should never say never. There would have to be a series of extraordinary circumstances. And that doesn’t mean those circumstances will never happen.” Those circumstances did not occur months later, because Liam tried to reunite with his brother to celebrate this 2024 the three decades of the first album. Noel did not accept, and the vocalist has been touring the emblematic songs of that debut with overwhelming full houses since June. Once again the triumph of nostalgia. Now Noel has also given in. The English tabloids, excited by the material that the reunion will bring them, assure that the rebirth of Oasis can generate 400 million pounds (472 million euros) and that each of the Gallaghers will pocket 60 million euros. The cultural journalist Tim Jonze, who worked at NME and today it does so in The Guardian, commented this Monday in this British newspaper What Oasis’ 2025 concerts mean for the UK: “I don’t think Oasis’ music changed the world, but a few nights of unity and drunkenness in such a divided country… Who wouldn’t want to be there?”