I had a ringside seat for their demise – so can Oasis rise again?

I spent two years laughing and partying with Oasis as they rose to stardom, writes Paolo Hewitt. But fame brought its own demons and the question – as they sell out shows all over again – is whether they can rediscover what made them so special in the first place

Noel Gallagher of Oasis live at the Astoria in London on 19 August 1994 (Getty)

It’s 21 August 1997. The death of Oasis has arrived. Be Here Now, the band’s third album, is released. More than 400,000 copies are sold in a day. It was the fastest-selling album in the UK. Ever. Then come the reviews. All positive. Five stars everywhere. Oasis dominate the media. Oasis dominate the airwaves. Oasis dominate the country.

Yet Oasis are about to die.

I would like to say I saw their death approaching and gave out warnings. I was certainly in a position to do so.

I had befriended Noel, had seen his band go from playing the Kentish Town Forum to undertaking worldwide stadium tours. I had spent two years, laughing, partying, but always witnessing and chronicling, the band’s rapid and stupendous rise.

And stupendous is the correct adjective to deploy when writing about Oasis. In one year, they went from playing a quarter-filled pub in Yorkshire, to selling out the Utilita Arena Stadium in Sheffield. One year.

Another 12 months after that they had two million people trying to score tickets to see them at Knebworth. Unheard of. And why? Because Oasis had it all.

Some context. For years, UK rock music had been in the doldrums. No glamour, no excitement. The best it could offer was shoegazing. The most interesting bands – The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays – all had links to the hip-hop and acid-house scenes, not rock ones.

Not Oasis. They played loud guitars and openly worshipped at the Mount Rushmore of rock – The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, with The Jam and The Smiths thrown in for good measure. Lyrically, Noel always opted for the easiest of rhymes. In his canon, all the roads are winding, all the lights are blinding.

Those early songs sang of the underclass, escapement and unfulfilled dreams, and then came the anthems, (inspired by the songs of the football terraces,) that charmed a nation – “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Wonderwall”, “Live Forever”.

Noel told the press: “I know this won’t last and I am going to end up back in the gutter where I came from but as long as my songs are up there with the best of them, I don’t give a s***.”

Oasis represented a pushback against other genres in favour of a classic rock energy (Redferns)

Catchphrase for the band that, don’t give a s***. Where other bands feared to speak, Oasis talked openly about their desires – money, women, drugs, rock stardom of a huge nature. They conducted their first major NME interview quarrelling with each other. They walked out of gigs, walked out of the band, got cautioned for drug possession, said mad things such as, “I sprinkle cocaine on my cornflakes every morning”, and hit photographers and threw beer at journalists. Don’t give a s***.

And as the band ascended, so the excitement in and out of the band increased. “F***ing hell! We are going to Japan. How mad is that?”, “We are playing Earl’s Court. How mad is that?!”, “Two million people applied for tickets for our Knebworth concerts. How mad is that?”

Oasis were discovering The First Law Of Stardom: It is the road travelled towards stardom that grants you the best days of your life, not stardom itself. The turning of dreams into reality, everything you wished for becoming real, that’s the true high.

And then they released Be Here Now, and in doing so, were hurled upwards to that exclusive space occupied by U2 and Springsteen, et al. And all that excitement they had generated, all that chaos, and fun, vanished. Gone. Oasis were rock stars. Normal boring rock stars. A band member told me in exasperation, “I thought the idea was we got as big as Led Zeppelin but then the rules changed.”

I went on the Be Here Now Tour and witnessed the dramatic change from joyous excitement to dour world-weariness. “Not going to Japan again, are we? Not that f***ing crap hotel again.”

‘Be Here Now’, the band’s third studio album, saw the band hit superstardom (Creation)

The band trudged all around the world and it was noticeable that as they did so, they kept thinking of the old days, kept going back to the war stories of the early years.

“Hey guys remember when we were stopped by the police, and they opened the back door and a cloud of your smoke hit them straight in the face?”

“Hey Noel, remember that first tour and that girl on reception and her boyfriend?”

Liam fought a losing game against this new situation. In New Zealand, he drunkenly strolled onstage, stood at the microphone, and after every line pulled out a kazoo and tooted it.

Noel’s face instantly assumed a raging anger. Liam repeated the action throughout the whole song. Noel glared at him and then slammed his guitar down onstage and walked. Liam followed.

The brothers squared up to each other. “What the f*** are you playing at?” Noel screamed. In the background, the crowd had started booing. Noel turned and walked back onstage. Liam followed. The band played on. “This song is called, ‘It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)’, and it’s not,” Liam shouted at Noel.

Noel had many fallouts with Liam before the band had to break up (PA)

No encore, Noel left as soon as he could, and Liam retreated to a backstage dressing room. He told his manager, Marcus Russell, that he wanted a band meeting as soon as possible. “I want to ask them what they want? Don’t they want chaos, excitement?”

“What they want is to…”

Liam stopped Marcus mid-sentence. “The magic is gone, simple as that,” he said.

And there it was – right out in the open.

Which begs the question – can the magic ever be sustained? Must it always disappear into the ether to reveal the harsh reality that while you form a band primarily to avoid the nine-to-five routine, if you get successful enough, you have to deal with a different numbing succession of hotels, planes and stadiums.

One way is to self-explode. Here are Sex Pistols. The other is to accept that the brilliance of your early years can never be sustained in later life. Reinvention is the key. Bowie, Madonna, the Bee Gees, and many more, did so regularly. They all changed their music, and in doing so found a new magic. Oasis could not attempt such a daring musical leap. Noel’s songwriting has always stuck to his rock template, kept there in part by deep commercial considerations.

The proof is that after Be Here Now, the band issued album after album, every one of which they tried to tell the world was as good as their first two albums. They weren’t but the people stuck by them. Their love for the band is unshakeable, football-like in its devotion.

In 2009, the famous split occurred. After 15 years of the brothers hurling insults at each other, they return. They do so with Morning Glory still in the charts after a staggering 650 weeks. Who has been buying it? Not the Millennials, too raw for their tastes.

It has been reported that the duo’s children, one of which being Noel’s daughter Anais Gallagher, have played a part in creating the reunion (Getty)

This leaves us with Generation Z. Specifically, Noel and Liam’s children who, reports suggest, played a role in persuading their fathers to reform the band. For many Gen Z’s, Liam is a father figure, a rebellious spirit that none of them can locate in any of their contemporaries, while Noel is a class songwriter whose songs burn down the ages.

Noel and Liam will be happy they reformed. The current tidal wave of interest in all things Oasis will remind them of their time in the Nineties when they were The Kings Of All.

But as they revel in this time of huge attention, a recent quote of Noel’s may serve to temporarily interrupt the party in his head. “For three years the band and the audience were the same,” he recently reflected, “because neither of us had any money. And then we did have money and it changed everything.”

A pause. “I’d give anything to get those three years back.”

Paolo Hewitt is the author of ‘Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis’ and ‘Forever the People – Six Months on the Road with Oasis’ – both available on Dean Street Press