“There’s no way you can’t love them”: Dave Grohl on why it is impossible to hate Oasis
There’s no such thing as a perfect band. Even though some fans swear up and down that their favourite act is flawless in everything they do, there’s a good chance that there are some cracks in the armour that people tend to let fall by the wayside now and again. Although Dave Grohl is more than happy to shout the praises of anyone that he comes in contact with, he admitted that there’s hardly anyone that he knows who can’t fall head over heels for these 1990s rock heavyweights.
If we’re talking about the biggest names of the decade of irony, though, there are still some fans who think Nirvana had a perfect career. While tragedy prevented them from seeing where they could go, there’s hardly anyone who could go through an album like Nevermind and not find at least a few jams to sing along to, especially when all they had to deal with before was the latest Warrant single.
But at the same time, it’s not like grunge was the cheeriest music in the world. Every band to come out of Seattle had their own personal baggage to unpack in their songs, and when Kurt Cobain took his own life, all of that darkness became shockingly real in an instant, to the point where the first Foo Fighters album sounds like an unintended response to Cobain’s passing.
When something changes the culture that quickly, though, it doesn’t take long for things to start swinging back the other way. Once Cobain passed away, everyone needed something to lift their spirits, and while artists like Weezer and Green Day provided a sunnier side to what rock and roll could sound like, something different was happening the minute the Gallagher brothers arrived on the scene.
Despite their pompous attitude and carrying themselves like God’s gift to rock and roll stars everywhere, Definitely Maybe was the first time Oasis seemed like bonafide superstars. They were still singing about growing up in Manchester and dreaming about being a rock star, but with hooks like ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Live Forever’, everyone had that same determination to see the man on the street get their own version of authentic rock and roll once again.
Even though Grohl was behind the kit for the American musical revolution, he thought there was hardly anything wrong with Oasis when he saw them, saying, “I love Oasis. There’s no way that you can’t love them because they make such excellent fucking music. There are really very few bands that make it that difficult to hate them just by being so fucking good.”
Is there a level of pompousness that comes with the band? Of course, but that’s hardly an urgent matter when the songs work so well. Even when going through different shakeups, hearing them bring songs like ‘The Shock of the Lightning’ and ‘Little By Little’ to life in stadiums reminded everyone that they still had the same fire that they had when playing to only a handful of people on The Boardwalk.
And while Grohl has carved out his own legacy as frontman of Foo Fighters, it’s no surprise that he found a way to work off the band, eventually performing with Liam on his solo single, ‘Everything’s Electric’. There are certainly many attributes that have made Noel and Liam despised amongst countless rock and roll fans, but given how well their songs have worked over the years, it becomes more and more difficult to argue with their claim of being one of the biggest acts in the world.
