The Oasis song inspired by a bar brawl
In 2002, Oasis hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons after landing in trouble with German police after an altercation broke out in a Munich hotel. Months after the debacle, Liam Gallagher was still troubled by the incident and wanted to clear his name, turning to songwriting to tell his side of the story.
The fight in question occurred after Oasis had finished their German tour in 2002, and along with their entourage, Liam was enjoying some refreshments at the luxury Bayerischer Hof hotel in the early hours of December 1st when all hell broke loose. After a fight occurred between team Oasis, without Noel, over a dozen armed officers were reportedly called to the scene.
Following the mass brawl with a set of Italian businessmen, Liam was arrested on suspicion of bodily harm after being detained for a short period. Oasis always maintained the fight started following an unprovoked attack on them. However, German police claimed Liam attacked one of their officers while “very drunk”. Additionally, a spokesperson for the authorities claimed “several of his teeth were punched out” during the brawl.
Ultimately, all charges were dropped as prosecutors could not decipher who caused the trouble, but Liam was still fined $65,200. Although he was never found guilty of any wrongdoing, it took two years for German police to conclude their incident with the threat of a jail sentence hanging over the singer’s head.
While the track didn’t appear on an Oasis album until 2008’s Dig Out Your Soul, Gallagher wrote about the fight on ‘Ain’t Got Nothin”. On the song, he sings about being “out on bail” and states: “I don’t care what they say anymore, All I want is the truth”.
Explaining the song to Q Magazine, Gallagher said: “I wrote it about six months after it happened because everyone was going around saying, ‘It was down to them (Oasis), they started it.’ No, it fucking weren’t. And it wasn’t even the press. It was the police and even friends of mine that I thought would be on my side.”
Due to the inebriated state of those involved during the incident, the truth of the events of that night in Munich will likely never come out. In 2018, during an interview with The Guardian, Gallagher attempted to explain his version of events and accused the German authorities of giving him a “whack over the head” while he was in custody.
“Here’s what I think happened,” he began by saying. “It all went down after I kicked a copper at some point in the fucking lobby, I think, because after that, I woke up in the fucking nick. So I think they give me a whack over the head in the back of the fucking van, and I think they’ve just gone, ‘Fuck you, you cunt’, later on. Because they were pulled out completely perfect.”
While the event was traumatic for everyone involved, it did lead to the creation of an underrated Oasis track. Listen to ‘Ain’t Got Nothin” below.
