Definitely Mayhem: How Oasis Mania Conquered the U.K. All Over Again

Mark Sutherland
·11-min read

In the minutes before Liam Gallagher headlined Reading Festival on Sunday August 25, a clock on the big screen counted backwards from 2024 to 1994.

Gallagher’s “Definitely Maybe” anniversary tour was designed to transport the audience — composed largely of 16-year-olds either celebrating or commiserating their recent GCSE exam results — back to the days of Oasis’ debut album, with the set comprised entirely of songs from that era.

More from Variety

But what was happening behind the scenes is what would really send Great Britain – and to a lesser extent, the world – back to the days of Britpop mania.

As Gallagher exited following a final, raucous version of The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus”, a date and time — 27.08.24, 8am — flickered on the screen, sending a crackle of excitement through the crowd and adding rocket fuel to the rumors that had been swirling backstage all weekend: 15 years after the band split following an almighty brotherly bust-up at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris, Oasis was back in business. With a Great British Bank Holiday Monday ahead of the post-summer return to work, suddenly “stupid bloody Tuesday” couldn’t come soon enough.

When confirmation duly arrived — right on schedule — that Oasis would play a reunion tour in the summer of 2025, all hell broke loose.

New Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer found his big policy speech shunted down the news agenda, because there was only one story in town. Every single one of the next day’s U.K. newspapers featured Oasis on the front page, and they’ve pretty much stayed there ever since, that one new image of the Gallaghers rapidly becoming as familiar as any classic ‘90s snap. As predicted, the ticket on-sale was the biggest — and most controversial — since Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour.

It takes a village, and the reunited band and their small army of associates had pulled off an incredible coup. That team includes promoters SJM Concerts, Live Nation, DF Concerts & Events and MCD Productions; managers Marcus Russell and Alec McKinlay of Ignition (who stewarded Oasis back in the day and manage Noel) plus Debbie Gwyther of FEAR and Sam and Roy Eldridge of UROK (the trio who jointly look after Liam); agents Ben Winchester of Primary Talent International (Noel’s agent) and Alex Hardee and Adele Slater of Wasserman Music (who have overseen Liam’s return to stadium status), although the official line is there is “no appointed agent for the tour”; and James Windle and Dave Palmer of Dawbell and Katie Gwyther of FEAR on the PR front.

None of those teams are doing interviews at present, but Variety sources say the reunion was only finalized around six weeks before the announcement. The constant swirl of speculation around the band’s return over the last 15 years allowed the truth to hide in plain sight, meaning the few in the know could dismiss any inquiries with the response that it was just the same old rumors.

There has been intense speculation in the press about how and why the reunification is happening now, after 15 years of the brothers taking pot-shots at each other. Of course, money was a strong motivation: The group already has generated a reported d £200 million in ticket sales. But insiders say timing was the crucial factor. Liam Gallagher has just wrapped his hugely successful “Definitely Maybe” 30-year anniversary tour, after a sold-out arena run. Meanwhile, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, had similarly concluded the campaign for their hit album, “Council Skies”. With 2025 diaries looking clear, the moves were made.

The roads that led us here may have been winding, but what followed was definitely mayhem. Demand was so intense that three additional stadium/outdoor dates were added before the initial 14 in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin had even gone on sale. A pre-sale ballot broke the internet. There was rampant speculation about everything from which former band members might feature to which artists might bag a support slot.

When tickets finally went on sale, it wiped out Saturday August 31 for a significant chunk of Britain and Ireland’s population, as a reported 14 million people chased 1.4 million tickets. Unsurprisingly, servers at Ticketmaster, Gigs and Tours and See Tickets struggled to cope with demand, as celebrities, politicians and fans old and new took to social media to celebrate their success or complain about the queue.

As the process wore on, some fans were shocked to discover “dynamic pricing” — the controversial and unpopular process by which ticket prices rise with demand — had kicked in on some tickets, sending prices surging beyond their original, relatively reasonable level. Such was the furore, the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, said a forthcoming consultation into secondary ticketing will also cover dynamic pricing.

With excitement, speculation and recriminations still boiling over a week after the initial announcement, it’s tempting to describe all this as unprecedented. But in fact, the U.K. has been here before.

The last seven days have given anyone too young to remember the ‘90s a taste of the days when anything and everything the Gallagher brothers did was front page news; 1997’s “Be Here Now” became the fastest-selling album of all time; and 2.5 million people applied for tickets for the band’s 1996 Knebworth shows. And that’s why many of us that were there at the start weren’t so very shocked to see them back in action.

“I’m amazed, but not really surprised, which is probably a classic Oasis way of looking at things,” laughs writer Simon Williams.

Williams played his part in cementing the Oasis legend, joining the band on its debut tour for a riotous NME cover story, and later releasing another of the Gallaghers’ famously fractious interviews as the “Wibbling Rivalry” seven-inch single on his legendary Fierce Panda indie label, still going strong today. Although even Williams didn’t anticipate everything that followed…

“Did I think they’d become megastars?” he ponders. “That might have been pushing it, but there was definitely something in the air. There was nothing precious or precocious about them, just a supremely breezy confidence. These were people not remotely surprised their first-ever tour was selling out.”

Back then, Mike Smith was an A&R man at EMI Music Publishing. He first saw Oasis at Manchester’s In The City conference in 1993 and came perilously close to signing them before, he says, the band – who were already with Creation/Sony for records – were persuaded into joining Sony Music Publishing instead.

“At the time, they felt like part of this great renaissance of British bands that was coming through,” says Smith, who went on to run Columbia Records U.K., Warner Chappell U.K. and Downtown Music Publishing and is now semi-retired. “In a way, they were reinventing the Stone Roses, but they had an incredible sound and amazing songs – so they were able to sell it to a really mass audience.”

And Smith believes that combination made their return inevitable.

“There’s nothing better for selling tickets than a farewell tour or a reunion,” he says. “This wasn’t Morrissey and Marr [of the Smiths], it wasn’t the Jam – it was unfinished business.

“When Noel was completely in the ascendancy, it was unlikely they were going to get back together,” Smith adds. “But you could see [Noel’s] respect for his brother after Knebworth. And with Noel suddenly finding himself a single man in his 50s, I’m sure there have been nights of introspection, sitting there going, ‘It’s all well and good putting on my bomber jacket and playing with the High Flying Birds, but it would nice to play a stadium like my brother’s just done…”

If so, Smith will have played his part in the reunion. He signed Liam Gallagher as a songwriter in 2016 when MD of Warner Chappell U.K., after the star’s stint in post-Oasis band Beady Eye fizzled out.

“He was a bit on his uppers,” Smith recalls. “It was almost a case of sitting down and going, ‘You’re Liam fucking Gallagher! Get a band together and go out and reclaim what’s rightfully yours. These songs are yours as much as they’re your brother’s, because if you hadn’t sung them, they’d just be a bunch of songs that the roadie from the Inspiral Carpets [Noel’s pre-Oasis job] had got.’

“That’s why Liam was able to sell out Knebworth [in 2022] – people want to hear him sing those songs.”

And even more people want to hear him sing them while his brother plays guitar. The Night Time Industries Association put out a statement saying the tour will boost the U.K. economy, while Jo Twist, CEO of labels trade body the BPI, tells Variety the dates will help shore up Britain’s position as a music superpower.

“[The tour] will do amazing stuff for the UK economy and for our culture,” Twist says. “We’re still a major player, we’re still one of the top music markets and music export markets in the world and this can only boost that confidence.”

There is one voice of caution amidst the euphoria, however. Mark Davyd is CEO of the Music Venue Trust (MVT), which campaigns to protect Britain’s grassroots venues.

Davyd booked Oasis into Tunbridge Wells Forum in 1994 (“I paid them £125, some sandwiches, some hummus, and a few drinks,” he laughs), and is disappointed that reunion ticket sales did not include a levy to support such grassroots venues. With only 11 of the 34 venues Oasis played on its first tour still putting on gigs, MVT has been campaigning for that levy – and in May, the Culture, Media & Sport Committee called for a voluntary scheme “to be in place no later than September 2024”. The fact that the Oasis sale took place one day before that deadline is not lost on Davyd.

“There’s no way that MPs will interpret this as anything other than a direct snub,” he fumes. “They were very clear in that report; if nothing has happened by Sept 2024, the government should consider statutory regulation.”

Whether the government follows through remains to be seen, but Davyd is also concerned the huge scale of the gigs will take more money away from the venues that helped spawn acts like Oasis.

“There’s been a lot of debate about, ‘If people are going to see Taylor Swift, are they actually going to see the band down the road anyway?’” says Davyd. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt whatsoever that the audience that will pay to go and see Oasis are the type of people who will go and see new bands. There’s a direct competition for their dollars there.”

Nevertheless, Davyd says he’s in favor of the tour for the “level of joy it will create amongst the ticket-buying public,” even if he remains unconvinced it will have a positive impact on the wider scene.

“I don’t think we need much more inspiration for young people to make music,” he sighs. “They’re already making great music, we just need to be a lot more honest about the amount of money being made at the top of our industry and the amount of penury and poverty we’re pushing musicians into at the bottom of it.”

The days of the Gallaghers having to worry about such things are, of course, long gone. But, for many, their return is a timely reminder – at a time when U.K. artists are struggling to break through in their own country, let alone internationally – of what Great British bands can achieve if they put their minds to it.

“Liam and Noel were like two lads who won the lottery,” says Mike Smith. “They embraced it, they behaved how you want your rock stars to behave. People said you’d never have a band that had the cultural impact the Beatles had. But fuck me, Oasis gave it a good shot.”

And that’s why, despite the first Oasis reunion gig still being more than nine months away, you shouldn’t expect anyone in Britain to re-enter the 21 st century just yet. Because, maybe, this tour is going to be the one that saves us.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Latest stories