In the early days everyone was needed. The songs before Noel were OK at best, but as you say the other 3 + Noel wouldn't have been anywhere as successful.

Ok at best is probably being very generous. The band would never have been signed without Noel’s songs. The band would never have been as massive without Liam’s voice.

Noel’s songs and Liam’s voice are the two essential ingredients to oasis. Both were required and you can’t really break them apart.

Of course they're not just that, but what gave them such mass appeal was their pop sensibilities.

As soon as the 2000s came and they stopped making pop records, and more mid paced middle aged dadrock, the public deserted them. Songs like Better Man, Force of Nature don't do them any favours in selling records. Or actually, a better argument would be with good songs - The Turning, Bag It Up, Part of the Queue. Regardless of what the fans think (and they're good songs), you're still not going to be selling records with these songs.

Only when they were at their poppiest would they endear themselves to the public again (e.g. Stop Crying).

Absolutely, what I was saying is that they are GREAT pop songs

Songs that without Liam would never have reached that rock'n'roll flavor. The world of music is full of beautiful or great songs, but what emanates as "essence" is what remains, and Oasis left a notable trace in the English rock'n'roll scene of the 90s and much of it " rock essence "was the merit of Liam. Noel said that without him he would have arranged the songs in a softer way, some of which also in an acoustic version (Morning Glory for example, it could have been like the
by Noel at Earls Court 1995). I'm sure that without Liam Oasis would have been much less rock, and the slice of their fans would have been much more "sweet" and adolescent .... Nothing to do with the rock'n'roll revolution that they really brought to concerts and in the rankings ...

Point is that great music doesn't need to be rock, obviously we are talking about an alternative scenario, as I've said Oasis the way they existed wouldn't have achieved even half of what they did without Liam because whar made Oasis was Liam's voice on top of Noel's songwriting as well as their tightness as a unit
But one could make the argument that Oasis without Noel are another of the countless average rock bands that there are out there, they've got the sound, they've got the attitude, they've got the voice, but if you don't have the songs it all falls short
There's no denying that Liam gave Oasis their rock n roll edge, but a band like ABBA didn't need the rock n roll edge to become a timeless and great act with timeless and great tunes

Oasis without Liam just aren't Oasis, as someone else said the great thing about them is that it was pop music played as if it was The Sex Pistols (arguably the great thing about the Pistols themselves too tbh)
There's still nothing inspid about those songs too, they're great pop tunes, you don't get bored of those

I can see what you're saying but I disagree, they were a more professional band when Alan joined and they played more technically demanding songs. Thats where I think they coasted on the impression created in 94 with Tony, its like when a sitcom or show changes but it works initially, when it stays that way and the trick wears old is when people realise the story is over. Whats the story was an evolution on Definitely Maybe, Be here now was largely a lot of the same but not as great (at least according to most of the public). So in my opinion, White joining was the beginning of the end, as great as how it was.

They may have sounded "better" with White but there isn't another band that sounded like Oasis in 94 and early 95, they were more original then and the northern working class identity was fully intact. They had weaknesses and worked around it which was what made them unique. After that it felt more like a take on U2 (or Pink Floyd on the more experimental albums like DOYS and SOTSOG), it'd all been done before.

Nothing to do with Oasis, but I wouldn't say Weller "burned out."  He surely didn't lose any of his passion or his energy -- now he's mellowed out a bit in his 60s, but he was extremely driven after he left The Jam, just in a different way.  I don't think it's because being a great songwriter with attitude was too much.  Ya, he left the sound of The Jam behind but that was a creative choice, not a surrender (not even a beat surrender ... sorry, couldn't help myself.)  

Yeah, it's a quirk of this board, if you accidentally backspace into the quote section, you can't easily escape it!  

But agree with what you wrote.  I'm still a massive fan of The Jam and forever will be, but there's no way Weller could have done that for the rest of his days.  It's still a bit of a different situation from Oasis. Weller really was The Jam -- he wrote the songs, he was the frontman, and great as Rick and Bruce were, he alone made it the band that broke out of the punk mold to becomes its own phenomenon.  But Oasis was always Liam and Noel, Noel and Liam, the yin-yang combo of their personas and talents.  When Noel left, he may have in his mind just been taking a musical left turn, but he was also splitting apart their destinies, which is part of why people will never get over it.

I know Noel has in some ways modeled himself after Weller, but for me, the end of Oasis will always be more like the Beatles splitting than like Weller leaving The Jam.  Weller kept on being Weller.  But the solo Beatles, amazing as they could be and as much as their music continued to thrive, could never have that magical thing of the combined Beatles, which always had a tinge of sadness to it.  

The manufactured punk band that relied only on hype and couldn't sing nor play their instruments...

*runs & hides for cover*