“Rubbish”: the tour Noel Gallagher thought Oasis played terribly
A little over a month ago, the country lost its collective mind. Two Mancunian multi-millionaires, who had spent the last decade and a change playing their old band’s decent pub rock singles, were now going to play those decent pub rock singles *together*. For a certain generation of Brits who fear new music like cavemen feared thunder, it was Christmas come early. Now, they too could pay £400 for the privilege of standing near the back of Heaton Park hearing a bunch of lads pissed up on Darkfruits and 33 bumps of coke bawl something that sounds like ‘Champagne Supernova’. But I guess Oasis will be drowned out by the crowd, won’t they?
If you feel I’m sounding a little bit cynical about this, then good job, Columbo, nothing gets past you. The prospect of Burnage’s finest burying the hatchet for the sake of their dear old mam (why would they care about the multi-million-pound payday? They already have that!) fills me with the kind of existential ennui that a century back could have inspired a Kafka novel, but it’s 2024, and we have content now, so that’ll have to do.
It’s not even that I don’t like Oasis; their one-and-a-half decent albums are decent, and a few of their singles are even (gasp) good! So why has this news got my back up so much? To me, it’s simple. It’s not about the music, and it’s definitely not how well they’ll perform the music; it’s the spectacle that’s causing hundreds of thousands of music fans to fund Noel Gallagher’s divorce settlement that he could already afford. The smoking gun in all this? The fact that Oasis were good live from 1993 to halfway through 1994 and have been utterly catastrophic ever since.
Liam has sung like Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia since Tony Blair was elected, the band behind him plods along with all the passion of Margaret Thatcher’s sex life, and y’know who agrees with me? Noel Gallagher! In an interview with News, Noel talked about the first time they toured Australia, a set of shows a shambles even he couldn’t cover up with his legendary hubris.
“They were f***ing rubbish. But we had a great time. That’s probably why they were so rubbish.”
It’s worth mentioning here that “having a great time” here refers to his brother breaking a 23-year-old fan’s nose by headbutting him and drunkenly groping a woman in a Sydney bar. But he’s funny on Twitter, I guess, so that’s just being a #lad. Don’t worry, though; Noel also covers himself with glory. The band were banned from Cathay Pacific Airlines because, surprise surprise, Liam got violent. Noel, in his classic, almost Wilde-ean wit, responded by waving his Platinum Amex card around on the Australian breakfast show, saying, “This could buy the planes we’re banned from!”. 400 quid a ticket, mind, 400 quid a ticket.
In the grand scheme of rock history, it’s small potatoes. Tell-all rock biographies are full of much more horrifying stories. I’m not here moaning about the fact we’re propping up immoral people. We’re fans of rock music. We do it all the time. However, with other bands and artists, there’s something else there other than personalities. There’s intensity, passion, chemistry, and the ability to actually sing. In the same interview as above, Noel talks about what makes Oasis a better live band than Coldplay and U2. “We have two guitarists in our band. They have only two between them. End of story.” That’s his idea of a good live band, and y’know what? It figures.
