Morning Glory

Oasis are back

Tambourines at the ready. It’s 8am British time, and the biggest news of the millennium is now free from embargo.

Oasis are reformed. Noel and Liam Gallagher have buried the hatchet, after that fateful night in Paris at Rock en Seine, and the announcement of their split on August 28, 2009. Fifteen years to the date, the feud has ended. Officially. In 2025 Oasis will play live. These are the first batch of announced dates, with more to come.

JULY 2025

4th - Cardiff, Principality Stadium
5th - Cardiff, Principality Stadium
11th - Manchester, Heaton Park
12th - Manchester, Heaton Park
19th - Manchester, Heaton Park
20th - Manchester, Heaton Park
25th - London, Wembley Stadium
26th - London, Wembley Stadium

AUGUST 2025

2nd - London, Wembley Stadium
3rd - London, Wembley Stadium
8th - Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium
9th - Edinburgh, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium
16th - Dublin, Croke Park
17th - Dublin, Croke Park

Hallelujah! (screamed like the Happy Mondays over baggy beats).

Back in the ‘90s, the rivalries between guitar bands served the market but it was always clear that Oasis were the market at the epicentre of it all. We had Pulp’s “Common People”. Blur’s “awlllll the people!”. Suede’s “painted people”. But Oasis were - and remain - the special people. The “Champagne Supernova” people. Oasis are The People, period. At the end of the 2016 documentary Supersonic, elder brother Noel Gallagher is reflecting on the band’s mega gigs at Knebworth in 1996, where a quarter of a million punters descended over two nights to see Britain’s biggest band since The Beatles play live, and he talks about how it could never happen again. And he’s right. Oasis achieved something no other band could or will ever do again, unless the world profoundly changes and goes back to making more sense, unless the world gets smaller once more so that ordinary people who create extraordinary moments can feel bigger.

Oasis have their own place in the canon of rock’n’roll history, stood up beside the fireplace, taking that look from off your face - whatever on earth that meant. They’re not the best players, or the best songwriters, but that doesn’t matter. They were the best at connecting with millions of everyday people. Whatever any of their lyrics meant, they were felt in the bones, and remembered despite high levels of inebriation. Memorized by a nation. A British nation. At a very specific time. When music didn’t have to be about anything other than music. Imagine that. No politics. No statements. Just big tunes, great haircuts, and good jackets. That’s where we went wrong. Demanding that people in bands do more than be great at being in bands. If I was in any way ever a part of that, I apologize profusely. I was never embarrassed of Oasis. And by the way, not all the lyrics are nonsense. A lot of them make sense. To many of us. When drunk. And high. And whatever else. The meaning is the feeling, and the feeling is always invincible. Guaranteed. You can’t listen to Oasis and feel bad, unless you’re an arsehole, or in some way irretrievable.

Rumors began swirling about his enormous news of a reunion this past Saturday. The London Times published an exclusive story with the headline: “Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?”

Look if Noel and Liam can make amends, anything is possible. I am suddely feeling a lot more optimistic about more or less absolutely everything. It’s a brotherly love story we have all been invested in for decades. We’ve believed in this moment for almost two decades despite constant whining from Liam and Noel about each other. We did it. It’s our victory. We kept the possibility alive. We spread the vibes, and the vibes hit. I’m sure that the momentary positivity will wear off before next summer, but then there’ll be next summer. Next summer Oasis are playing live – in Heaton Park. Oasis are playing live – at Wembley. Oh my god. Will they headline Glastonbury? I said, maybe… And if they do, what if it’s like this?

Oasis isn’t just the records, and the songs, and the choruses. It’s Liam and Noel. It’s the characters that we know like family members you can’t take anywhere, unless you want to get arrested. We love to love them. Love to hate them. Love to be them. The two of them bringing the best and the worst out of one another since the day Liam was born 51 years ago in Longsight, Manchester.

I interviewed Liam a couple of times after leaving the UK, which is how it was supposed to happen. A cure to homesickness once every blue moon. I did a conversation for VICE and another profile years after for GQ. The VICE interview was the first time I felt a kind of nervous I’ve never felt before. I think I was worried aout a number of things. I didn’t want him to be less than. (He wasn’t). I didn’t know if I would be able to match him. (Who can). It was at the Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica. I felt like I’d won the lottery. An audience with the funniest man alive. On record. Bloody hell. I must have done alright in my little life to have arrived there.

I’d seen Liam about many times in London, probably when I lived in Belsize Park. He was a regular at the pub down the road. This was the type of interview I’d never imagined possible, especially because I was a girl in an ocean of blokes and there are approximately zero men in the British music press who would pass up the opportunity to interview Liam or Noel so that some younger lass could do it, or indeed anyone other than them. Everyone wants to interview Liam and/or Noel.

But the upshot of moving to America was that editors understood that this was my language. I appreciated that. I’ve personally never touched the equivalent of what I would deem to be deeply American subjects. Springsteen, Tom Petty etc. I’m a fan but I can’t write about those legacies the way Americans can. It’s the same for our stuff, I think. Leave it to us. As soon as I went to America, I was asked to write about Oasis every now and then. And I loved it. But I particularly loved sparring with Liam.

From VICE, 2017:

Are you doing Carpool Karaoke?
Not for me, man. Not for me.

What d’you not fancy about it?
Fuckin’ organized fun is not for me. I can have the best days of my fuckin’ life in a lift, or with a barman, or with any geezer outside, or in a fuckin’ petrol station. If it’s organized fun I just shit up shop. I know I’m a funny cunt but I’d just come across like a rude cunt. In America they want fuckin’ bells and whistles don’t they? And I can’t do that. There’s enough fuckin’ clowns in the world. We don’t need another one.

People always talk about your iconic onstage presence: that singing stance and your tambourine…
I don’t really play the tambourine. People come up to me and go, “Oh you’re amazing at tambourine.” Are you fuckin’ having a laugh? You’re taking the piss. I have it to hold onto just cause I fuckin’ need something to do, you know what I mean?

When did you work out that putting your hands behind your back was the way to fully project your voice?
I dunno but it’s like when you’re being nicked [arrested]. You know when you’re being nicked and you got your hands behind your fuckin’ back, and you’re going, “Fuck off!” to the copper and you’re in the back of the van and all that? It’s like that.

How many times have you been nicked?
Oh a few times, man. Not been nicked for a bit. Touch fuckin’ wood.

Noel, I’ve never interviewed, but met many times. He has a good memory, remembers faces and names. Makes him charming. I hope that Paul Arthurs, professionally known as Bonehead, the founding guitarist in Oasis is going to be in the lineup. In the early 2010s, Bonehead used to dwell in the cupboard at NME whenever he wanted, looking at old articles about himself and his band in the archives. I don’t think there was a staffer at NME who didn’t have Bonehead’s number. “Alright, it’s Bone,” he’d text, before swinging by during lunch hour. Magic moments. Sometimes I think back at the years before all of whatever this is that I’m doing now and think - Gosh, that was class, and amazing. How did I end up there doing that? Mad.

A lot has gone on for me and mine in the last few years, and especially in the last 12 months. Covid happened to us all obviously. Magazines I used to write for closed down and the industry totally hemorrhaged. My friends have been struck down with awful life rubbish between health emergencies and death. I’ve been at war on numerous fronts in very public ways. That’s even before October 7 happened. It gets hard and complicated as you get older, but when there’s news like today’s, you think – well fuck all of that. Fuck the heartbreak, and the grieving, and the uncertainty, and the anger, and the hopelessness. There’s Oasis.

Everyone wants to believe that they were born and lived through a great time, and Oasis is proof that there was greatness in this period of history. Even if the planet becomes a toxic wasteland in 100 years, and the human race dies, and it’s 10 billion years before any other lifeform stumbles across our planet. If strangers come to Earth and find a copy of Definitely, Maybe, they’ll hear the essence of the human experience, immediately, blaring as it escapes from the confines of whatever empty space it’s found in.

“I live my life in the cit-ayyyyy, and there's no easy way out/The days moving just too fast for me.”

When the losers moan that Oasis are overrated, I think - how can that possibly be? They’re not overrated. They’re not underrated. They’re adored by millions and are beyond rating. Oasis is bigger than Oasis. It’s bigger than Noel and Liam, or Liam and Noel. It’s us. It’s our band and our songs. It’s “I need to be myself, I can’t be no one else”. It’s the ocean spray at the start of Champagne Supernova. It’s “in my mind my dreams are reallll”. It’s stupid Wonderwall. It’s “sooooo Sally can wait…” carrying its way down the rainy streets of Manchester at 3am after everyone’s been kicked out of the bar. It’s the stuff fantasies are made of. Growing up poor and making a fortune. I don’t reckon Noel and Liam are reuniting for money. What could they need money for? I think they know that this is what healing looks like and - more importantly - sounds like. For them. For us. For everyone.

Some silly choruses. Some beer mixed with some piss flying through the air. Some sibling rivalry. Some gin and tonic. “You can have it all, but how much do you want it?”

Anyway, here’s Live Forever, because we definitely won’t, but Oasis will.

Tickets will go on sale on August 31.