For music fans who think that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, have I got news for you? Yes, I have. This weekend, Oasis reform for the long-awaited ‘Pension Pot’ tour with two nights at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, or whatever it’s called this week, and on 13th July the popular oldies station ‘Greatest Hits Radio’ is broadcasting 1985’s Live Aid, all ten hours of it, in real time. Following ‘Sir’ Rod Stewart’s flagging appearance at Glastonbury, it seems the desire to hear the music of yesterday is stronger than ever before.
Despite the derivative and generic nature of Oasis, not to mention Noel Gallagher’s abysmal lyrics, I am the first to acknowledge that the senior Gallagher brother has an ear for a good tune, or sometimes just a good riff. And it would be mean indeed to not acknowledge that the band’s first two albums, Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, were so good I even bought them on cassette, even though it was obvious to everyone else that CDs were the way forward. Even their greatest fans will acknowledge that the band’s subsequent albums were nowhere as near as good as the first two, Noel could still write a tune. Their split in 2009 suggested they had gone as far as they could. Their comeback in 2025 – the whole thing sold out in a matter of hours, despite the usual rip-off dynamically priced tickets – is in business terms a masterpiece in timing.
There is some honesty to the Oasis comeback, too. There is no pretence that this will be all about new music because they have said from the start there won’t be any. And my guess is that for the hundreds of thousands going to the shows, the last thing they will want to hear is: “here’s a brand new song you won’t have heard before”. Whoever the artist is, when it comes to nostalgia, fans want the hits, all the hits and nothing but the hits. I would be amazed if there were even ‘deep cuts’ from the band’s catalogue, either. Does anyone seriously expect Liam Gallagher to finally be able to sing in tune? All people will want is a sneering, snarling Liam, preferably arguing – or pretending to argue with – his brother.
If you were there, 30 years ago; lads on the lash, beered-up after an all-day session, being in a stadium where your favourite band banged-out all your favourite songs, why would you not want to do it all over again?
As for Live Aid, that I cannot understand for the life of me. I watched most of it ‘live’ and most of it was shit. The day dragged like hell, especially in between acts, and by the time Paul McCartney, who many regarded as old and past it (he was 43), came on and most of the microphones didn’t work, I headed down the pub. 40 years on, I can remember how appalled I was to see Queen resurrected after defying the anti-apartheid campaign by playing Sun City in South Africa while the prisons were full of political prisoners including one Nelson Mandela. I am never one to abandon a grudge, I’m afraid, and I will never, ever forgive them. (It’s worth pointing that Rod Stewart and Status Quo also played Sun City but assuaged their respective consciences, no doubt, by making a donation to charity. I never forgave them for that, either, and now Stewart shows his true colours by endorsing Nigel Farage.) INXS were very good, Bowie was great of course, so were U2 – a great rock band on their day – but I can still remember dross like Adam Ant, Paul Young, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Spandau Ballet and because he organised the fucking thing, Bob Geldof and his rubbish Boomtown Rats. But it’s Queen that I still remember.
Freddie Mercury singing:”No wrong, no right. I want to tell you, there’s no black and no white.” Yeah, right Fred. And near the end, Mercury along with Brian May took the stage again to sing Is This the World We Created?, which, I understand, took issue with disease, suffering and human evil in general. But not in South Africa, it didn’t. Fucking hypocrites. I hope they apologised to Mandela when they met him in 2005, several million pounds better off, no doubt. It could be my visceral loathing of Queen that might prevent me from listening to Live Aid all over again but in truth, while it was ostensibly all in a good cause, and I don’t mean in resurrecting the fading careers of ageing rock stars, it was mostly crap. And I’ll still never forget how super rich rock stars harangued their audience, many of whom would not have had a pot to piss in, to hand over “yer fockin’ money’. People want to hear that again? Seriously? Christ, I’d rather see Oasis.
Despite Rod Stewart’s endorsement of the far right in Britain, who seek to divide us more than ever, his contradictory comment from the Glastonbury stage that “music can bring us together” is true. From Saturday in Cardiff, Oasis will be entertaining tens of thousands of over fifties and sixties, enabling to live if not their youth, then their best years, all over again and on 13th July 2025 ‘Greatest Hits Radio’ will remind us of a time that perhaps created the illusion that we were all in it together, at a time when Margaret Thatcher was still wrecking the country and Mandela still had three years to serve in Robben Island.
We all love a bit of nostalgia – I’ve seen Toto this year and I’m seeing The Doobie Brothers this month, so I am not exempt from its lure – and there’s nothing wrong with that. The truth of the matter is that I think far too much about things and, yes, I bear grudges. Enjoy Oasis, friends, and I hope they give you what it is you want. And enjoy Live Aid, too, in real time, if you can. My guess is. you will be bored senseless not longer after Quo have finished. I was back in 1985. Forty years on, I’d be comatose.
