The shows Liam Gallagher thought were impossible to play: “Lost his sh*t”
Liam Gallagher was going to really deliver if he had any hopes of reaching the heights he talked about with Oasis.
It’s easy to listen to half of the Manchester legends’ songs and think that they were poised for stardom from the moment they started, but for a brief moment in time, there was a chance that they were all talk underneath those giant monobrows and Beatles haircuts. But even though Knebworth solidified them as one of the defining bands of the 1990s, it was a lot for a bunch of once-penniless musicians to take in all at once.
Despite acting like they had earned the right to talk shit about every single band on the planet, it was bound to take a lot more than being in the right place at the right time to get them to where they were. A lot of discipline went into every song Noel Gallagher played, and while there are more than a few tunes that come off as either too trite or outright crap, no one could really argue with the power that came with listening to ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ in a massive arena.
If you listen to the stories from their early days, though, there’s almost a sense of sad humour that comes from them playing such iconic songs in sweaty clubs. Anyone else would have been laughed out of the room if they started talking about being a ‘Rock and Roll Star’ if they were playing to 20 people at The Boardwalk in Manchester, but the reason why it works for them is because they didn’t mince any of their words.
You could feel that Liam truly believed that they could take on the world when they first started gigging, but when bands first start blowing up, there’s always a sense of mystery about what’s on the other side. They could fall flat on their face or become the biggest band in the world, but once the band started packing major stadiums, even he had to take a moment to take everything in and realise that they were making history.
Because according to their longtime road manager Iain Robertson, Liam was nervous to play their first arena gigs for fear that the band would never get that big in their lives, saying, “Liam lost his shit. He was screaming ‘What the fuck are you thinking? There’s no way that we will sell half the tickets to fill this venue’. And it was done in an hour and a half. That was the first sign that they were going to back up all of those words.”
But beyond being a massive venue to play, there was definitely a feeling in the air that was changing when it came to rock and roll. The Stone Roses had suggested that something could blow up, but when they first started making serious numbers across their first few albums, it was clear that it didn’t matter what any critic said about them. They were going to become one of the biggest bands in the world whether they liked it or not.
Although that came with its own set of problems, Liam wouldn’t have traded that kind of high for the world. He knew that there was a way to make a name for himself as a vocalist from day one, and if he had it his way, the band would have never left Knebworth since they began playing it all the way back in 1996.
It’s not very often that someone deliberately calls their shot like a rock and roll version of Babe Ruth, but every single rock fan probably had to have a conversation with themselves when an album like What’s the Story Morning Glory came out. Definitely Maybe had been a fantastic album, but if there was them staking their claim as one of the biggest bands in the world, most people had to ponder whether they were actually right when songs like ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ and ‘Wonderwall’ soared up the charts.
