Colin Sheridan: The Beatles were history, Oasis was our reality

Whichever way you look at it, Oasis scored a moment in time that was a collective coming of age, writes Colin Sheridan

Liam and Noel Gallagher: The first two albums aside, their body of work is, well, fairly shite. Picture: Simon Emmett/Fear PR/PA 

“Maybe I just wanna breathe

Maybe I just don’t believe

Maybe you’re the same as me

We see things they’ll never see

You and I are gonna live forever”

— Live Forever

W hen your computer had the temerity to present you with an empty box on the screen this morning and ask you were you a robot, how did it make you feel? Did it anger you to the point of clasping both hands behind your back, leaning forward, and yelling an obscenity into the monitor? Did it inspire you to open a can of Stella, put on a parka, flip open a notepad, and write a song about how the internet is the devil?

Did it cause you to fall out with a sibling, starting a war of words that will last 15 years, only for it all to end with you singing a bunch of songs together in front of hundreds of thousands of people on consecutive nights, making you both ridiculously rich (again)?

Yes, there is an irony in AI asking you if you’re a robot as the first step in logging on to buy tickets to see a band called Oasis.

Oasis at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 1996. Picture: Dan Linehan

A band that has been accused of many, many things — genius and mediocrity and among them — but never being robotic.

Idiotic, certainly, but not robotic. That was Radiohead. For a robot does not feel pain, love, or anger. A robot does not drink too much and sabotage relationships.

A robot cannot move a generation, for good or bad, based on an energy so visceral it captured a youth — however briefly — in its (very) flawed authenticity. That’s what Oasis did.

Like them or loathe them, there was a time when they flew so close to the sun that they made Icarus look like Ronan Keating.

I wonder, did you get them? The tickets? Were you one of the lucky fans who had enough tabs open?

Who was smart enough NOT to refresh your Ticketmaster page, thereby pushing yourself back to the back of the queue? Did you call in a favour with an industry friend? Are you on a promise from some corporate junket?

Oasis' fans go wild at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 1996. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

The real question is: Do you deserve them? Did you go to Slane in ‘95? The Point in ‘97? Fairyhouse in 2002? Did you get your first shift to 'Live Forever' at a school disco, seizing a moment so precious you never knew it would come around again? Did you get your heart broken to 'Slideaway', dumped by a girl who told you Blur were better anyway? Do you remember the Patsy Kensit years?

Does the name Meg Mathews ring a bell? Do you even know who Louise Jones is, or what genius she inspired?

Have you ever heard of The Inspiral Carpets, and did you know that, long before Manchester City took the Emirati soup, they played at a place called Maine Rd and Niall Quinn was the closest they came to Erling Haaland?

How blown away were you by Tony McCarroll’s drums on the opening seconds of ‘Live Forever’?

Were you bemused, but ultimately understanding of Be Here Now, accepting that Oasis were so ambivalent to convention that they skipped the difficult second album, and decided to make it their third?

Were you inclined to lose faith after Heathen Chemistry, till John Lennon’s ghost came whispering to your mind to tell you: “We wrote some woeful shite, too.”

Does Dig Out Your Soul make you want to dig out your own eyes at the sheer dichotomy between it, and Definitely Maybe?

Did the end, when it finally came in 2009, give you some peace, the same way the death of a long suffering relative does, the grief qualified by the relief you no longer have to visit them?

If any of these questions matter to you, then I hope you got a ticket.

An ad in Dublin city centre for Oasis Live ahead of ticket sales for concerts in Dublin in 2025. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

It likely means you are a teenager of the '90s. A decade so confused, we thought:

“Wake up the dawn
and ask her why

A dreamer dreams she never dies

Wipe that tear away
now from your eye

Slowly walking down the hall

Faster than a cannonball

Where were you while we were getting high?”

— Champagne Supernova

I THINK I was in fifth year in school when, at a school debate, I argued Blur would outlive Oasis because the Gallaghers were a pair of musical Picassos, and Damon Albarn, a misunderstood Cézanne.

I can’t recall whether I had a choice which side of the argument I was on, but I do remember feeling a tad fraudulent.

I sort-of loved Oasis, but understood liking Blur was a classier thing to do (after all, nobody really LOVED Blur, we just pretended we did to impress girls).

Like the great lawyer I would never become, I put forth my arguments like Johnny Cochrane and won. It was a pyrrhic victory, however, because as I left school that evening I cast no shadow, so to speak.

Looking back at it now, I realise I was the guy sending back the expensive wine while my friends got sloshed on Buckfast.

Pretension is an awful look, especially in teenagers.

Given the gaudiness of the Union Jack-swaddled Britpop movement, I don’t think Oasis would have mattered as much to us if their mum wasn’t from Charlestown and their dad from Meath. They had the whole English Blood, Irish Heart schtick down to a T.

Oasis fans at the Point, Dublin, in 1997. Picture: RollingNews.ie 

They looked like us. Their Mancunian accents set them apart from the London elite. Their love of football was relatable and not performative. The absence of the internet meant there was no industrial complex of pop culture references like we have today.

You “heard” of bands, and if you were lucky enough to stay up late and watch The Word, you maybe got see what all the fuss was about.

Oasis’s debut album Definitely Maybe was released 30 years ago, last Thursday. Thirty freaking years.

To put that in context: 30 years before that, Beatlemania was in its pomp. Yet, to us, the very scuts Oasis that would go on to captivate, infuriate, and inspire, John, Paul George and Ringo were part of the same black-and-white history as JFK, Vietnam, and the moon landing. They were relics, so much so that when Noel Gallagher claimed the group was “bigger” than The Beatles (he said years later that he was “high” when he made the comment).

Those of us born from 1980 on just shrugged and believed him.

The Beatles were history. Oasis was our reality.

Aside from my Peter-esque betrayal of them at the school debate, there was another personal element to this story.

Oasis’ rise coincided with that of Mayo’s Gaelic football team. That they were sons of Charlestown made the parallel more apposite.

So too did Mayo’s failure to win an All-Ireland at the end of those long, glorious summers. As we were losing, Oasis were slowly falling apart. Galway were our Blur.

Noel Gallagher on stage at Slane Castle in 2009. Picture: Collins 

Whichever way you look at it, they scored a moment in time that was a collective coming of age. It was exciting, but it was often very ugly.

“Your music’s shite,

It keeps me up all night

Up all night”

— Married With Children

It's funny because, as you transcribe the lyrics of Oasis songs now, you realise how pretty ordinary they are.

You could trawl through every song Noel Gallagher ever wrote, and ‘Masterplan’ (a B-side) might be as good as it gets. But that sort of misses the point.

I don’t think any of us mistook Oasis for Cat Stevens or Jonie Mitchell. The lyrics were an aside.

Listening to their songs this week, one is struck not by the mystery of their mastery, but by how they got away with it. The first two albums aside, their body of work is, well, fairly shite. (Forget Blur, I would argue, now, that Ash were an infinitely better band).

Craft-wise, they have not aged well — nor has their misogyny or homophobia. In a lot of ways, Oasis was the school bully you like and respect until you move away to college and realise what utter pricks they really were. 

That may read as revisionist history, but any detailed examination of statements made, or bad behaviour carried out by the Gallagher brother since 1991 would make for uncomfortable reading.

Oasis fans at Slane Castle in June 2009. Picture: Collins

Noel’s friendship with Russell Brand alone might be enough to disqualify him from grazing his sheep in Charlestown. Nostalgia forgives a lot, however, and their masterful manipulation of their Mancunian Cain and Abel story was enough to feed our curiosity.

These last few days, we have conveniently forgotten literally every note of music they made after 2001 and chose only to remember the halcyon days of ‘Champagne Supernova’ and ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’.

Likewise, revisiting the notorious “feuds” between the two is to feel embarrassed at the petty name-calling, bogus lawsuits, and public shaming.

About the only thing that makes it believable is the utter ridiculousness of it. Calling your brother a knobhead isn’t really that funny.

Renaming his new band High Flying Birds the High Flying Turds, is — but only just.

It’s the “feuding” that diminished their Irishness, to be honest.

When brothers fight round our way, it usually ends up inspiring a play — later adapted for screen and starring Richard Harris as a tormented farmer. Whatever their local row evoked, it wasn’t the Iliad or The Field. 

Liam Gallagher at Slane Castle. Picture: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

I can’t name or sing a song that either has written since they broke up in 2009, which only goes to prove that, had they stayed together, all they’d be doing is a series of Greatest Hits tours every five years. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Which brings us back to why did we really love them in the first place, and why could they sell out 10 nights in Croke Park instead of just two? Because when we were young, nobody died. And nobody got older. The first time that you loved, you’d all your live to live. At least that’s what you said.

That’s a ‘Whipping Boy’ lyric, by the way, but their words perfectly encapsulate the ignorance of youth and why Oasis mattered.

We were angry at something, even if we didn’t know what, and a band of brothers that emerged from a council estate in Burnage were angry too. Not about what they had. No, they sang — like most great musicians — about what they wanted, and that resonated with us. 

It was only when they got it in the guise of world domination or, at least, domination of the limited world they lived in, that they became the very thing they hated. A pair of knobheads.

They couldn’t have scripted it any better: the rise, the fall, the rehabilitation, the redemption. All they need to do is avoid each other, it seems, and they will own the summer. Will I be going?

“Don’t know

Don’t Care

All I know is you can take me there.”