Friday June 25, 2004

After three dreadful albums and much critical disdain, the Gallagher brothers still command a fanbase more loyal than Millwall's and maintain their place in a very select bracket of rock royalty. The reason, experts say, is called Liam

Alexis Petridis

The Guardian

There is something oddly comforting about the rumour doing the rounds on the internet that relations between Liam and Noel Gallagher have plunged to such depths that the two have insisted their Glastonbury dressing room caravans be as far apart as possible.
Rock and pop may shift and alter, artists and whole genres may rise and fall with bewildering speed, the entire music industry may allegedly teeter on the brink of financial oblivion thanks to bad deals and illegal downloading, but one thing at least remains certain: there will always be some corner of a muddy field where Noel and "Our Kid" are locked in a bitter, inexplicable feud, ready to kick lumps out of each other at the slightest provocation. Oasis's sheer immutability has become a joke of which even the band's members are aware. Noel Gallagher is fond of saying both that Oasis will "go on and on and on", regardless of his fractious relationship with his brother, and that their forthcoming records will contain "the same old pub rock bollocks".

Nevertheless, they are a very different band from the Oasis that played Glastonbury a decade ago, in what turned out to be one of the pivotal shows of their career, and not just because the Gallagher brothers are the only members who have not quit or been fired over the intervening decade.

That Sunday afternoon Liam Gallagher strolled on stage with the cocksure swagger of an artist receiving an unprecedented level of blanket critical acclaim that was about to become an unprecedented level of blanket commercial success: "It's really rare that you put a band on that early and they fill the stage with such potential and arrogance," says festival organiser Emily Eavis, a teenager at the time. "You normally see shy indie bands, terrified because it's their first Glastonbury. Everyone was really taken by their how assured they were."

Ten years on "blanket critical acclaim" is not a phrase anyone could associate with Oasis. Since their mid-90s heyday they have released three new studio albums. Two, 1997's Be Here Now and 2000's Standing On the Shoulder Of Giants, were so flatly awful that Noel Gallagher felt compelled to apologise to fans, claiming drug addiction and intra-band ructions had contributed to their failure. The third, 2002's Heathen Chemistry, was even worse, but with nothing to blame for its shortcomings other than a lack of inspiration, Noel Gallagher brazened it out in the press. Virtually every one of Oasis's mid-90s achievements has been overshadowed. Other artists have sold more records, played bigger concerts, succeeded in countries where Oasis failed and even behaved more outrageously: the antics of current press darlings The Libertines, replete with heroin and crack addiction, prison sentences and security guards in the studio to keep warring band members apart, have made the Gallaghers' cocaine-fuelled fisticuffs seem rather quaint. As John Harris, author of definitive Britpop history The Last Party, notes no one in their right mind compares Oasis to the Beatles anymore. "It was a seductive idea, I thought that myself at the height of Britpop, but in the cold light of day it was an absolutely hysterical point of view, there was no excuse for it at all."

And yet Eavis believes the main reason this year's Glastonbury festival sold out so quickly is because word leaked out that Oasis were performing. Matt Allen, editor of the festival's daily newspaper, claims "there is a genuine excitement about Oasis playing this year. Their albums are greeted with muted enthusiasm, but they're very much seen as a band who, if they're in the mood, can get Glastonbury rocking on a Friday night." Despite the cool critical reception, Oasis records still sell in vast quantities: their last three albums all yielded number one singles.

Danny Eccleston of Mojo Magazine believes their ongoing success may be due to nostalgia for a period already being hymned as a halcyon age less than a decade later. "They were fortunate enough to define an era. We're meant to be sniffy about Britpop now, but at the time it was really exciting, there was a sense of the culture revolving around a relatively leftfield concept of rock and roll. Oasis were so central in that that I genuinely think their apogee was comparable to that of the Beatles and the Stones. There are an awful lot of people who came into loving music through liking Oasis and no amount of bad records will take that away."

Oasis's impact in the 1990s had two long-lasting effects. The first was fans who display an almost comical degree of loyalty. Deserted by the supermodels and fashionistas who packed the backstage area at their 1996 Knebworth shows, Oasis have been left with a fanbase that more closely resembles football supporters of tabloid myth than the traditionally fickle rock audience. They are predominantly male, occasionally given to violent outbursts and knuckleheaded anti-social behaviour (Edinburgh council complained about the amount of human excrement found around Murrayfield Stadium after an Oasis concert in 2000) and, despite the band's resolutely leftwing politics, dalliances with the far-right. At their July 2000 gig at Bolton Reebok Stadium, sections of the crowd chanted "no surrender to the IRA" and, more inscrutably, "Heil Liam", the latter slogan raising some intriguing questions about precisely what constitutes the Master Race in the eyes of your average Bolton fascist.

They are easy to mock - Harris describes the audience at a recent Oasis show as "70,000 people, all of whom looked like Grant Mitchell off EastEnders and believed only poofs don't like Oasis" - but they are also staggeringly faithful. Just as no self-respecting fan would desert their team if they were relegated, so Oasis's lacklustre musical output over the past eight years has had little effect on the band's popularity. Indeed, their fans' attitude towards Oasis occasionally looks less like standard rock star hero-worship than dogged Dunkirk spirit.

"It's a very passionate audience," agrees Allen. "When I went to see Oasis at Finsbury Park it was like going to see Millwall: bottles flying around, blokes in Hackett shirts and Burberry caps, a degree of testosterone-fuelled tension. If England get through the football it's made for a great Oasis show at Glastonbury because that whole sense of getting behind our boys is going to be right through the festival."

The second effect of their Britpop success was to fast-track Oasis into a very select bracket of rock royalty. They are the 90s' solitary contribution to a club largely comprised of 60s and 70s survivors - Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones among them - who remain a vast concert draw, despite rather than because of, their ongoing recording career. "You go and see the Rolling Stones because you know they'll play Tumbling Dice and Brown Sugar - who cares about their new album?" says Harris. "That's where Oasis are now. I don't want to sound mean-spirited but I sincerely doubt whether their new album will be any great shakes. But it doesn't matter because their new album is just a glorified press release that says, 'we're going on tour to play all our great old songs'."

Eccleston agrees: "It's about the quality of emotional engagement with your audience. People turn up in their droves to see Bob Dylan every time he plays, unsure as to whether they're going to get a good gig or not. It's like Christmas. You have to meet up with your family and it might be a decent experience or it might be awful, but you have to go because it's your family."

And while Oasis may have stumbled musically in recent years, no artist has emerged to challenge their place in the public's affection. Robbie Williams may have played more nights at Knebworth, Radiohead may have sold more records, but somehow Oasis remain unique. That is at least partly down to the nature of their mid-90s fame, the brief, dizzying moment when everything from fashion to the incoming prime minister associated with them.

According to Harris, however, it has more to do with one man, who, if anything, seems even more unique in 2004 than at the height of his fame, and who was recently photographed walking around London, wearing on his head for reasons known only to himself a Paul Smith carrier bag with two eyeholes cut out of it: Liam Gallagher.

"The last time I saw them, Liam was pissed out of his mind," he says, "he'd been up for two days, he obviously wasn't talking to his brother and there was this magnificent moment at the end of the concert where he said to the crowd, 'I'm not going anywhere until you've all gone home'. It was great theatre." While the bands that followed in Oasis's wake are full of Noels, none of them boasts a Liam to give them a bit of flash, Harris says. "That's why no matter how washed out they become, no matter how awful their musical legacy is, on their day, Oasis can still be fantastic."

Life in short

Noel Gallagher

Born May 29 1967, Manchester

Education St Mark's High School, Didsbury, Manchester

Married Meg Matthews 1997, dissolved 2001, one daughter, Anais

Liam Gallagher

Born September 21 1972, Burnage

Education St Mark's, Didsbury

Family Married Patsy Kensit 1997, divorced 2000, one son, Lennon. Daughter, Molly, with singer Lisa Moorish. Son, Gene, with current partner, former All Saint Nicole Appleton

Albums Definitely Maybe (1994), (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), Be Here Now (1997), Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000), Heathen Chemistry (2002)

Liam "If you're a rock star, be one."

Noel "Being me is best gig in the world