Let’s be perfectly clear. There is nobody who attended a Liam Gallagher solo gig or a Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds gig in the last decade who wasn’t imagining and wishing they were at an Oasis gig. In the 15 years since the brothers and thus the band split acrimoniously, we’ve continued to humour them, accepted their solo work, rolled our eyes at the juvenile public jabs, but ultimately waited it out to hear them play Live Forever or Champagne Supernova. I thought seeing Liam return to Knebworth two summers ago would be the closest thing I’d get to a reunion. I thought seeing him in Dublin earlier this summer on his extremely cheeky jaunt to mark 30 years since the release of the debut Oasis album Definitely Maybe meant that a reunion was never going to happen. Until this week.
On Saturday morning, tickets for at least two Croke Park Oasis shows go on sale. An hour later, presumably to give the Ticketmaster website a fighting chance and possibly to gauge the level of interest, London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh will open up. I had my alarm set for 7.45am this morning for the 8am announcement – and I’ll be resetting it for Saturday morning. In the 90s, back when all this was fields, we used to queue overnight outside the local Ticketmaster agent (RIP Top Twenty, Naas). My parents would agree to write rock and roll notes for school so I could leave early on the day of the shows to go and queue again for a spot at the very front of the Point Depot. Sadly, my collection of 90s band T-shirts finally bit the dust around the same time my parents got the bathroom done up in the mid-2000s. I used to keep them in a plastic bag in a press in the old bathroom and was repeatedly asked if I would consider parting with them as they were serving no purpose except taking up space and gathering dust.
Any misty-eyed premonitions I had about Oasis and Blur someday being part of the zeitgeist again, or me ceremoniously handing these retro historical pieces down to my awestruck children obviously went the same way as the ancient blue bath and the pine fittings, because the T-shirts are long gone. I looked up a particular favourite collared Oasis shirt on eBay and it did sting a bit to see it now fetches hundreds in decent condition. Luckily, and depressingly, I can now replace my Nirvana Unplugged T-shirt in Penneys.
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I still have the memories, though, and it was back at the Point in 1997, that I attended my first solo Noel Gallagher show. It was supposed to be an Oasis gig but Liam had pulled out as frontman, blaming a throat infection. Even then, just a few years into their lifespan as Oasis, his illness excuse was assumed to be a cover for band tensions. When I attended my second Noel Gallagher headlining show last summer in Kilmainham he was still embroiled in a public feud with Liam. So, what changed?
I foresee Bono re-enacting that famous photo with David Trimble and John Hume, except with Liam and Noel
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Oasis reunion highlights the total collapse of the full-time music press
Noel’s divorce has been pinpointed as a turning point. Not only is his split from Sara McDonald rumoured to be expensive, but her relationship with Liam was also non-existent after he took scathing public swipes at her over the course of her marriage to Noel. I strongly suspect that everyone’s favourite peacemaker – Bono – also played a part. He’s thick as thieves with Noely G and his son Elijah Hewson is best friends with Noel’s daughter, Anaïs. The pair grew up together, nepo babying around the south of France. Elijah is a bona fide musician in his own right and is the frontman of the band Inhaler, who opened for Harry Styles in Slane last year. Anaïs has stoked the hopeful fires of family reconciliation for the past few years, occasionally posting Instagram photos with her cousins Gene and Lennon, Liam’s sons. If the kids are all right, why can’t the dads be?
I foresee Bono re-enacting that famous photo with David Trimble and John Hume, except this time with an anoraked Liam and a wry Noel. The Nobel Peace Prize committee is probably having an emergency meeting at this very moment.
The jokes about Oasis falling apart again had started even before they officially announced they were back together. However, the cynic in me believes that the revenue generated from these shows will be more important than any familial rift.
I really hope for the fans’ sake, for their mother Peggy’s sake, and for their own sake that there’s more to it than money, because it’s going to be really special to finally be able to roar Don’t Look Back in Anger at them once more, with feeling.