The music world is a-chatter with news that Oasis could be getting back together for the first time since splitting acrimoniously in 2009. Not coincidentally, the rumours coincide with the imminent 30th anniversary of the band’s debut album, on August 30. As always, they know how to grab attention.
Heritage acts reunite all the time – usually, as the Sex Pistols put it with brutal honesty in 1996, for the filthy lucre (the name of their reunion tour, launched 20 years after their debut and 18 after their disintegration). But to many, this comeback is a big deal indeed. So, as (or otherwise), let’s ponder why Oasis matter.
Formed in Manchester, England in 1991, Oasis were a five-piece guitar-based rock’n’roll band. Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs played guitar, Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan bass, and Tony McCarroll drums (replaced in 1995 by Alan White), but it was always primarily about the Gallagher brothers, Liam on vocals and Noel on lead guitar and songwriting duties. With their shaggy haircuts, baggy clothes and aggressive sibling rivalry, they gave Oasis its rock’n’roll energy, and their love-hate dynamic – at times milked for publicity, at others exploding into genuine enmity – gave the band presence well beyond the music, part pantomime, part family tragedy.
Not since Cain slew Abel has brotherly love felt so dangerous. That festering tension between Liam and Noel, who used to share a bedroom in their single mother’s council house, was always part of what.