Beware the resurrection: What Oasis can learn from the Stone Roses reunion

Fourteen years ago, one of the greatest and best-loved bands from the 1990s Madchester scene announced their reunion. Five years later, it was all over, the excitement of their comeback extinguished by underwhelming gigs and dubious new material. As Oasis prepare to stage their own comeback this summer, Ed Power assesses how Liam and Noel can avoid making the same mistakes

Shortly after 9pm on 23 May 2012, Liam Gallagher stood amid the crowd at Warrington’s 1,000-capacity Parr Hall, watching an adored 1990s North of England band stage a reunion few had believed would ever happen. “The Stone Roses getting back together. It’s all too much,” Gallagher confessed to filmmaker Shane Meadows, who was making a Channel 4 documentary about the return of the iconic “Madchester” quartet behind hits such as “She Bangs the Drums” and “Waterfall”. “They’re the best band to ever come out of Manchester.”

Oasis fans will know how he felt. Three years before the Roses got back together, the quintet Liam established with his older brother Noel in 1991 – for many, also the best band to ever come out of Manchester – had imploded following Noel’s abrupt departure. If Liam felt like a kid whose Christmases had come at once, imagine how Oasis fans responded when he and Noel announced last summer that they were patching up their differences and putting the group back together in 2025. Or, as Roses bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield told Meadows as the original Roses lineup prepared to play their first date together since the early 1990s: “And so it begins. Bloody World War III.”

Mani predicted fireworks, yet in the event the Roses’ return was a damp squib that petered out over five uninspiring years. By the time of their final show at Hampden Park, Glasgow, in June 2017, their half-cocked resurrection was widely seen as a futile cash grab. It arguably tarnished their legacy, robbing the Roses of the mystique and romance so crucial to their original appeal.

Oasis fans will hope Liam has been paying attention to The Stone Roses’ underwhelming comeback. As the Oasis tour, which kicks off in Cardiff in July, fast approaches, he and his brother would do well to heed its lessons. Flop in the same way, and Oasis’s big comeback could well take a shine off his and Noel’s past achievements. There is a lot to gain from the return of Oasis (including an estimated £50m payday for the two siblings). The failure of The Stone Roses is a stark reminder of how much there is to lose.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Stone Roses and Oasis were two bands joined at the figurative hip. They had both come swaggering out of greater Manchester (Altrincham and Burnage, respectively), seemingly on a mission to save rock’n’roll.

Each was in their own way bigger than music, defining an era as much as they did a sound. The Roses and their lairier spiritual siblings, the Happy Mondays, spearheaded the so-called “baggy” movement, characterised by bucket hats and ferociously wide jeans. Oasis, when they broke through half a decade later, took Britpop to the next level, becoming tabloid and evening news fixtures.

Oasis were rarely out of the headlines at the height of their fame (PA)

Yet there has also always lingered a sense of unfulfilled potential around both bands. Both released just two decent albums and would later fall apart as personal and professional pressures drove a wedge between singer and guitar player. Liam knows this better than most: he is a friend of Roses guitarist John Squire, with whom he collaborated on a (thumpingly average) LP last March – its title, Liam Gallagher John Squire, as imaginative as its reheated psychedelic rock.

On the surface, the timing for a Roses reunion was ripe. By 2012, Squire and singer Ian Brown had seemingly patched up their differences and persuaded combustible drummer Alan “Reni” Wren to return. The timing was perfect, too, with Oasis having split three years previously. The field was open – the anthemic indie rock crown theirs for the taking. Instead, they fumbled it.

Their early gigs failed to capitalise on their fans’ excitement. The gigs were lacklustre, the creative spark diminished. When interviewed after that first warm-up gig in Warrington, even diehard fans were ambivalent about the band having something new to offer. “He [Brown] can’t sing, but he never could. It was alright,” one attendee told the BBC. “Started off a bit ropey but it got better,” shrugged another.

There were signs of strain at another warm-up gig in Amsterdam in early June. Reni flounced out before the encore – apparently frustrated by glitches with his in-ear monitors. To boos from the crowd, Brown went back out and labelled Reni a “c***” – adding, “I’m not joking, the drummer’s gone home. Get all your aggro out on me, I can take it.”

Things didn’t seem to have improved markedly at Heaton Park. While some fans basked in the novelty of witnessing the group in the flesh – for those of a certain age, it was like watching The Beatles come back to life before their eyes – the reviews were more measured. They were positive on the whole, but this was not the live resurrection Brown had promised. “Not bad,” said The Independent. “A great show with the occasional flat moment,” agreed The Guardian.

That flatness was also evident at the Phoenix Park, Dublin show I attended later that July. The excitement was undeniable: my goodness, there they were! The swaggering Brown, the laconic and moody Squire, the mischievous Mani, the inscrutable Reni. And the first few moments were magical as the band opened with jangling juggernaut “I Wanna Be Adored”, a song so huge not even a vast field felt big enough to encompass it.

Lacklustre: The Stone Roses perform at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2013 (Getty)

Alas, the sense of occasion quickly seemed to get the better of both band and crowd. It wasn’t awful. Some of it was great. But the set meandered, with too many B-sides at the top. Brown’s voice was hoarse and craggy. Squire simply looked disinterested.

The Roses had broken up for legitimate reasons. They were left hollowed out by the protracted process of recording their second album, 1994’s Second Coming, and by a lengthy and ill-tempered legal battle with their former record label as they sought to extricate themselves from what they regarded as a one-sided contract.

The apparent ubiquity of cocaine in the studio didn’t help either. By the time Squire announced he was leaving in the spring of 1996, the Roses were already a dead band walking (a disillusioned Reni had already exited in March 1995, a month before the Second Coming tour). After a final disastrous farewell at Reading, with Squire replaced by sometime Simply Red guitarist Aziz Ibrahim, the shutters came rattling down. For band and fans alike, it felt like a mercy. We’d all been put out of our misery.

It’s easy to be wise after the event and say the Roses reunion fell short because they only did it for the money. It was certainly lucrative – Brown, Squire and company were estimated to have earned £10m alone from their first three big outdoor gigs at Heaton Park, Manchester in June and July 2012 (they would go on to play more than 50 shows across four continents over the next five years).

But plenty of musicians get back together just for the loot and discover they still have something new to offer. When Boston indie legends Pixies reformed in 2004, it was widely regarded as a cash-in, but they went on to release five solid post-comeback LPs, of which this year’s The Night the Zombies Came is perhaps their strongest. And just look at Blur, who will have had a monster payday headlining Wembley twice last year, but did so while promoting their Ballad of Darren LP– a fascinating exploration of midlife malaise. You can top up your pension fund while continuing to move forward creatively.

Alex James and Damon Albarn on stage at Wembley Stadium in 2023 (PA)

In contrast, the Roses settled for unleashing a dire double-whammy of comeback singles, “All for One” and “Beautiful Thing”, in 2016. The response was uniformly negative.

“The most disappointing thing about The Stone Roses’ first song in decades is not that it’s absolute crap, though lyrically it verges on it,” said DIY in a review of “All for One” (chorus “All for one, one for all/ If we all join hands, we’ll make a wall”). “Even worse – it’s so middle of the road, it may as well live out its days in a minor back-road’s cat’s eye, reminiscing about the good old days instead.”

The Roses’ fanbase was even less forgiving. “This is really poor; the lyrics are terrible,” wrote one Reddit user of “All for One”. “It sounds really dated and nothing like the power of the older material. A big thumbs down.”

It wasn’t just fans who felt that way. In the studio, Squire was forced to face the bitter truth that the Roses were running on empty. “We did two new songs in 2016, but the spark wasn’t there,” he would tell The Sunday Times. “People change, relationships change. Being in a band is like a marriage, and a lot of marriages fail.” The band eventually admitted defeat at Hampden Park in 2017. “Don’t be sad that it’s over, be happy that it happened,” said Brown as the final curtain loomed. Yet for many, this is a moot point. Surely it would have been better to be left with the memories of the band as they were in the 1990s, when their fans were young and starry-eyed, and the group believed they were shooting for the moon?

Being in a band is like a marriage, and a lot of marriages fail

Stone Roses guitarist John Squire

There has yet to be official word on whether Oasis plan to put out new material. However, Liam appeared to confirm a fresh batch of tunes by declaring on social media that a new album was “in the bag” and that he had been “blown away by” Noel’s “new songs for Oasis”. If he was telling the truth, it could be the start of a wonderful new chapter. Or it could be an unfortunate misfire from a group whose songwriting peak was arguably 30 years ago – and was followed by a streak of increasingly underwhelming LPs containing more filler than a recently plugged pothole.

The Gallaghers and their audience will hope their tour fares better – and can consider The Stone Roses as a warning that it requires more than good intentions for a band to ascend once more to those old dizzying heights. It takes heart and soul. Oasis will need to work hard to prove they still have both.