The moment Noel Gallagher knew Oasis had peaked
No band can remain at the top of the world forever. Even though it might be fun playing stadiums worldwide and creating anthems that millions of fans will sing along to, there is always an expiration date that comes with it. Oasis may have had a considerable reputation as the greatest rock band in the world for years, but Noel Gallagher knew the exact moment when everything fell apart.
For the first few years of the group’s career, though, it looked like the Manchester act would be the indie rock answer to The Rolling Stones. Having worked on their debut, Definitely Maybe, multiple times to make it sound right, the band and producer Owen Morris created one of the most enduring albums of the 1990s, introducing the world to Noel’s songwriting and his brother Liam’s signature snarl.
Although the band were often volatile whenever they got out on the road, Noel had the big picture in mind when he entered the studio. Looking to outdo the success of the previous album, the band descended on Rockfield Studios to create What’s the Story Morning Glory, which would dominate the rock landscape upon release.
After trying his hand at punk-tinged rock songs on the band’s debut, Noel grew as a writer when he wrote this album. This is evident in his anthems that could stand alongside The Beatles’ greatest work in terms of melodic immediacy like ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. While the album sold in droves across England, it wasn’t until they hit the road that they saw the real fruits of their success.
After playing to progressively bigger venues throughout their first tour, this would be the first cycle that took the band into stadiums around the world, playing the kind of festivals that were usually reserved for the gods of rock. Although the band had multiple highlights around this time, like their performance at Maine Road, it wasn’t until they hit Knebworth that they could truly claim to be the biggest band on the planet.
Storming onto the festival grounds, those two nights at Knebworth would become the turning point for Britpop, with Oasis claiming their spot in rock history every night. Although Noel was proud of the band’s success, he also knew that the band could never have topped their performance without seeing some artistic slump.
Looking back on that time, Noel thought that Knebworth was the last stellar performance that Oasis had, telling Mojo, “After that, it was all downhill. That was the beginning of the end. After that, we were so big we had no control of the vehicle anymore.” Noel would be even more vicious when slagging off the next album they made as well.
When working on the long-awaited follow-up Be Here Now, the band would go down the rabbit hole of endless guitar overdubs, which Noel thought was the death knell for all of the band’s goodwill towards their fans. Even though Oasis was still the biggest name in rock music after Knebworth, they were never the same indie band that got started back on The Boardwalk in Manchester.
