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OASIS, ALL GROWN UP: Britpop superstars still conjure the magic, minus anger, drugs and hype

June 17, 2005

BY BRIAN McCOLLUM
FREE PRESS POP MUSIC WRITER

A kinder, gentler Oasis? An Oasis without the tabloid sideshows? An Oasis minus the bratty interviews and cocky bombast?

Oasis
With Jet and Nic Armstrong and the Thieves

7 p.m. Saturday

Meadow Brook Music Festival, 3554 Walton, Rochester Hills

$28.50, $48.50

248-377-0100

Well, yes. Kind of.

No fears -- the British quartet hasn't become Up With People. But today's Oasis is certainly a tempered version of the band that one decade ago earned a reputation both noteworthy and notorious, thanks to a double whammy of exemplary rock and offstage raucousness. Those were the whirlwind years, a swirl of hype and hits whose personal impact, says leader Noel Gallagher, is only now being properly absorbed by the band.

Now, as Oasis traverses America on a tour that will bring it to Meadow Brook Music Festival on Saturday night, the vibe is different. Where the Oasis story once played out in a very public way, band members' lives have been steadily tucked behind the scenes. There are wives, kids, domestic comforts -- and a new album that has been resuscitating the musical reputation of Gallagher and his brother Liam.

On the new "Don't Believe the Truth," released in May, "the new songs are better than the last set of songs," says Noel Gallagher in requisitely wry fashion. "In that sense, we've grown."

The emphasis, in other words, is back on the music, a move that has pleased Gallagher and those fans who feared that the creative abilities of Oasis had become a mirage. While the heady days of "Definitely Maybe" and "(What's the Story) Morning Glory" came with all sorts of amusing tabloid fodder, Gallagher says, they were also full of distractions -- drugs and alcohol not the least among them -- that caused subsequent work to suffer.

There are countless examples of the combustible, old-style Oasis approach -- enough to fill a book or even, as it turns out, a whole shelf of them. But you just have to look back to the band's first arena show in Detroit, in August 1996 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, for a handy reminder.

On top of the world

With "Wonderwall" everywhere on the radio and "Morning Glory" scaling the album charts, Oasis headed to Michigan with vocalist Liam barely in tow. At the peak of Oasis mania, he'd suddenly threatened to quit, disappearing in London while the band opened its tour in Chicago. The younger Gallagher emerged and met up with his bandmates the afternoon of their Detroit gig -- a show that turned out drama-free, with the famously contentious brothers amiable together onstage.

It was the sort of antic that stoked the continuous media frenzy in England while spurring onlookers to question just where the line sat between reality and PR. But whether genuine or forced, or some mix of both, it kept Oasis in the headlines, and kept records moving.

Noel Gallagher, Oasis' chief songwriter and frequent voice of reason, says it wasn't until years later that he was able to put the era into perspective.

"I'm only looking back on that period now. People are still talking about '95 and '96 -- two years," he says. "When I look back, I think, 'What an amazing time.' Back then, you're too close to it."

Gallagher concedes the dramas came with a price.

"At the time, I thought it was quite embarrassing," he says. "Now, looking back, I'm kind of relieved it didn't overshadow the music, which is kind of cool. If I have one regret, it's that we should have taken two years off after 'Morning Glory' instead of going right back into the studio and the madness."

The result was "Be Here Now," a mixed-bag album that launched an erratic creative stretch for Oasis and invited snickers from naysayers.

Older and wiser

Gallagher, who used to unflinchingly proclaim Oasis to be the universe's best band, has adopted a stance more suited for the world of 2005. With the critical and commercial success of "Truth," which debuted at No. 12 on Billboard's U.S. chart, it's clear he feels grateful to have survived not only the public's volatile tastes, but his group's own high-profile follies.

The album is carried by some of the most accomplished songwriting of Gallagher's career. And though it's typically derivative -- with inevitable swipes from the Stones, Beatles and Kinks -- it's also refreshingly Oasis, at times evoking the ebullient, soaring feel that had been missing for several years.

Gallagher is proud that the record sounds relevant, recapturing the vibrance of earlier Oasis work while brimming with a sense of immediacy.

"I think that once a new generation comes along, it's difficult for bands like us from previous generations to carry on," says Gallagher, 38.

Music's tectonic plates have shifted considerably since Oasis stormed onto the British landscape in 1994, triumphed in America the next year, and inserted the term "Britpop" into the musical lexicon. Most significantly, rock has seen its position eroded, its cultural currency grabbed up by hip-hop and dance-pop music. In the U.K. press, the pages once dominated by the brothers Gallagher are now occupied by the likes of Kylie Minogue and Justin Timberlake.

"That's the challenge for us -- to keep a level of interest so that the albums aren't just advertisements for the tours," says Gallagher. "Our albums still matter. I don't mean that in the scheme of 'It's gonna change music.' I mean that when somebody buys a new Rolling Stones album, they don't give a (damn) -- they just want to see them on tour. When people buy our records, it still means something."

Onstage, where Gallagher says "it's all starting to come together," there have been some tweaks: "We've reintroduced 'Wonderwall,' which we never used to play, because we finally found the right speed and it sounds great. The older songs that we've ditched? There's lots of stuff we don't play, but we only have an hour and 40 minutes. Liam's not the kind of guy you can spring a song on before you go out, because he freaks out."

With the recent addition of drummer Zak Starkey -- son of Richard Starkey, also known as Ringo Starr -- the Gallaghers have secured a direct line to the band whose music, more than any other, has inspired Oasis over the years. Inspiration, some Beatles fans contend, that has often lapsed into a license to borrow and steal.

Noel Gallagher can still whip out the snark, dumping on modern hip-hop ("very sinister, should be stopped"), the White Stripes' live show ("OK, I get the point, now go get a bass player") and his brother ("he still doesn't know the words to 'Supersonic.' "). But he'll never dis the group that he readily admits fueled the Oasis fire.

"I don't listen to the Beatles as obsessively as I used to when I was a kid. Back then I knew every single note inside out," he says. "But I still, to this day, can put on 'I Am the Walrus' and go, 'How did they do that?!' It's still magic to me