You have to hand it to Oasis. A rock band who haven’t made a decent album since 1995 (What’s The Story?) or indeed any albums at all since 2008’s dismally generic Dig Out You Soul are set to announce a massive UK tour in 2027, likely to be among the highest grossing shows in British rock history. How do they do it? Simply because people want to see them.
There will likely be no new music as they play 12 shows at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, which of course will be extended to 20 nights “due to overwhelming public demand” and – and here I am just guessing – a week or so at Knebworth. Start saving, folks, because tickets for the Gallagher Pension Pot tour will undoubtedly be sold by way of dynamic ticket pricing. But then, as we know, people who attend heritage shows do not expect, or want, Liam Gallagher to announce that “we’re going to fucking play some fucking tracks off our new fucking album”. They want the hits, more hits and even more hits.
I rather admire the honesty of the Oasis approach to making money. There is no pretence that this is somehow an artistic development or to take the band in a new direction. It will be a series of greatest hits shows, just like they played last year, with absolutely identical set lists every single night, backed up by a million or so merchandise outlets and hundreds of thousands of delighted punters.
The days when superstar rock royalty acts have a limited shelf-life are over. At their 90s and 2000s peak, they captured the attention of a generation and many of that generation have grown up and grown old with the band themselves. By the time the gigs take place, Noel Gallagher will be within seven years of his state pension and so will a sizeable proportion of the audience. This is not unique to Oasis. You can find any number of artists and bands from the Human League to Adam and the Ants who tour the arenas knocking out the hits and they are taking their audiences with them.
It’s not just sixty somethings who are queueing in their million hordes, from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads, in order to catch up on the soundtrack of their twenties and thirties. Younger people want a slice of the action, too, people who were very young or weren’t even born during Oasis’s creative run of music are happy to shell out many hundreds of pounds to hear Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger because Noel Gallagher has, or maybe had, an ear for a tune and in the case of the two songs I mentioned a talent for implanting a permanent ear worm.
I used to say that I didn’t understand why Oasis were so popular. I do now. Much of their music is derivative, leaning heavy on the songs of others, particularly the Beatles, and Gallagher’s gobbledegook lyrics appear to be the work of someone who has access to a rhyming dictionary rather than being a great poet, but frankly who cares? This is not an intellectual night out: it’s a rock concert, a few beers with mates, a mass singalong with thousands of like-minded men and, these days, some women and it’s a bucket list item.
Oasis is not a great band. They are decent musicians and while Liam Gallagher is not exactly a legendary crooner he is a great performer. Put very simply, what Oasis do is to give their fans what they want. This is why stadia and big fields will be rammed next May and June and you know what? Good luck to them. There’s enough hate in the world as it is. We’re not going to live forever, so we’d best do our living now.
