Oasis

Burnage

The Gallagher brothers grew up at 8 Ashburn Avenue in Burnage, south Manchester. Their father, Thomas Gallagher, was an Irish immigrant from Duleek in County Meath. Their mother, Peggy, raised three boys in a house where money was tight and their father's behaviour made things worse. Thomas was abusive. Peggy had tried to leave years earlier, but Thomas refused to go, kicking in the door if she locked it. In 1984, she arranged a new house in secret and moved the boys out while he was away. Noel has spoken publicly about the violence in the household. It shaped everything that followed.

Noel, the middle brother, was born on 29 May 1967. Liam, the youngest, was born on 21 September 1972. Paul, the eldest, stayed out of the music. The five-year age gap between Noel and Liam meant they didn't grow up close. By the time Liam was becoming a teenager, Noel was already out of the house and working as a roadie.

Noel got a job as a guitar technician for the Inspiral Carpets in 1988. He toured with them, learned how the music industry worked from the inside, and spent every spare moment writing songs. He filled notebooks with lyrics and chord progressions. By the time he came home to Manchester, he had a catalogue of material that most bands would spend a decade trying to write.

The Rain Becomes Oasis

While Noel was on the road with the Inspiral Carpets, Liam had joined a band called The Rain with Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs on guitar, Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan on bass, and Tony McCarroll on drums. They were mates from Burnage and Levenshulme, rehearsing in rooms around south Manchester and playing to nobody in particular.

When Noel saw them play, he told them they were rubbish but that he had the songs to make them brilliant. The deal was simple: he would join, but he was in charge. He would write the songs, make the decisions, and they would do it his way. They agreed. The Rain became Oasis. The name came from an Inspiral Carpets tour poster on Noel's bedroom wall listing a venue called the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon.

From the very first rehearsals, it was obvious that Liam's voice was extraordinary. Raw, nasal, sneering, and utterly distinctive. He sang with his hands behind his back, chin tilted upward, staring down his nose at the audience as if daring them to look away. Nobody taught him that. It was pure instinct, and it became one of the most iconic frontman stances in rock history.

Definitely Maybe

Creation Records boss Alan McGee saw Oasis play at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 31 May 1993. The story goes that they weren't even supposed to be on the bill. They had blagged their way onto the lineup, or a friend had persuaded the promoter to give them a slot, depending on who's telling it. McGee offered them a deal that night. The Creation contract was signed some months later.

Their debut album, Definitely Maybe, was released on 29 August 1994. It entered the UK chart at number one and became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history at the time. "Supersonic," "Shakermaker," "Live Forever," "Cigarettes & Alcohol." Every track sounded like an anthem. The production was dense, loud, and gloriously over-the-top. It sounded like a band that had been waiting their entire lives for this moment, because they had.

"Live Forever" was the song that broke them wide open. Noel wrote it as a deliberate counterpoint to the nihilism he heard in grunge, particularly Nirvana's "I Hate Myself and Want to Die." He wanted to write something about hope, about survival, about refusing to lie down. It reached number 10 in the UK singles chart in August 1994 and became the song that defined the band's worldview: working-class, optimistic, and absolutely certain that they were going to win.

Morning Glory and Knebworth

(What's the Story) Morning Glory? was released on 2 October 1995. It sold 345,000 copies in its first week in the UK. Within a year, it had sold over four million copies in Britain alone. Worldwide, it has sold over 22 million. It remains one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history.

"Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," "Champagne Supernova," "Some Might Say." The album was inescapable. "Wonderwall" became the band's signature song, a track so ubiquitous that it eventually became a punchline for every person who has ever picked up an acoustic guitar at a party. "Don't Look Back in Anger," with Noel singing lead for the first time on a single, reached number one in February 1996.

Then came Knebworth. On the 10th and 11th of August 1996, Oasis played to over 250,000 people across two nights at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire. An estimated 2.5 million people had applied for tickets. It was the largest demand for concert tickets in British history. The band walked on stage on the first night knowing they were the biggest band in the world, and they played like it.

In between, the Battle of Britpop had played out. Blur released "Country House" on the same day Oasis released "Roll with It" in August 1995. Blur won that particular chart battle, reaching number one while Oasis peaked at number two. But Oasis won the war. Morning Glory outsold The Great Escape several times over. The rivalry was real, it was personal, and it sold an awful lot of newspapers.

After the Peak

Be Here Now was released on 21 August 1997. It sold 696,000 copies in its first week, a UK record at the time. The reviews were initially ecstatic, then quickly turned. The album was bloated, overlong, and buried under layers of production and cocaine. Noel has since acknowledged that the sessions at Abbey Road and Ridge Farm Studios were chaotic and that the band were in no state to make good decisions about what to keep and what to cut.

The band continued, but the magic of those first two albums was never quite recaptured. Bonehead and Guigsy left in 1999. Gem Archer and Andy Bell replaced them. Tony McCarroll had already been sacked in 1995 and replaced by Alan White, who was himself later replaced by Zak Starkey and then Chris Sharrock. The revolving door around the Gallagher brothers became part of the story.

They released four more studio albums: Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Heathen Chemistry, Don't Believe the Truth, and Dig Out Your Soul. Each had moments of brilliance. "The Hindu Times," "Stop Crying Your Heart Out," "The Importance of Being Idle," "Lyla." But the albums were measured against Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory, and nothing was ever going to match that.

The Split, and the Return

On 28 August 2009, backstage at the Rock en Seine festival near Paris, Noel Gallagher quit Oasis. The brothers had argued. Noel issued a statement saying he "simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer." A guitar was allegedly smashed. The details depend on which brother you believe, but the result was the same: Oasis were over.

What followed was 15 years of solo careers, side projects, and public sniping. Noel formed Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Liam formed Beady Eye, which lasted two albums before he went solo. They communicated primarily through the press and social media, trading insults with a fluency that suggested they'd been practising since childhood, which they had.

On 27 August 2024, they announced the reunion. Oasis would tour again in 2025. The internet broke. Tickets sold out in minutes. Manchester, Wembley, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin. The demand was staggering, with millions attempting to buy tickets and dynamic pricing controversies dominating the headlines for weeks. Fifteen years of people asking "will they, won't they" was finally answered.

A good friend of mine was born and raised in Burnage. I took him to watch his last cricket match there. We both knew he didn't have long left. I'm not a cricket fan, but I sat and watched it with him. He passed ten days later. Burnage meant something to him that had nothing to do with music, and that afternoon it meant something to me too.

Two brothers from Burnage who couldn't stand each other but couldn't quite exist without each other either. That's the story of Oasis. It always was.