Jeff Jarrett traveled from his home in St. Louis to see the tournament begin. Oasis Live Tour '25 CardiffWales, in July, then in Chicago Soldier's Field in August. But for him, no Oasis concert will ever compare to that early September evening in Pasadena, California, where he saw his favorite band for the first time with his six-year-old son Wolf.
“It was an evening that was as wonderful — and as loud — as I had hoped,” says Jarrett, 44, a booking agent and artist manager who proudly recalls watching his son receive congratulations and high-fives from those sitting around them. “When Wolf sang “Acquiesce” I laughed like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons: “My son loves Oasis. The plan is working.”
Fathers and sons. Dads and daughters. Dads and their dads. Husbands, boyfriends, best friends. Former college roommates, current college roommates. And none of them behaved badly, at least not compared to what I saw over Labor Day weekend at the first of two MetLife Stadium shows in New Jersey. Dare I say, I was impressed, touched and, yes, surprised by all this positive masculinity. It would seem that everywhere I went there were happy, sensitive, emotional and chivalrous men. At a stand with goods; at a tequila bar. Even in the parking lot, where one cheerful gentleman was handing out beer to passersby and inviting them to watch Sunday football on the big-screen TV he had mounted on a folding table.
“So many hugs, kisses, tears among the guys and not a single fight in the three shows I went to,” Bob Ferguson, a Gen Xer from New Jersey who heads musician outreach at Oxfam, wrote to me after a Labor Day performance at MetLife. (He also attended two reunion shows in Toronto, Oasis' first stop on this North American tour.) “I've never seen so many single dads with their kids at a concert. stone show, singing together as if it were the most natural family outing to be in a football stadium shouting, “I’m a rock and roll star!” I love that the quirky Oasis guys can be amazingly polite!”
Politeness has never been the Gallagher brothers' strong point. Rudeness was their reputation, and in the nineties and 2000s it was on full display in interviews (where they would walk out mid-conversation, say something offensive or make fun of journalists) and at their own concerts (where Liam was known to spit beer into the audience). Older brother Noel liked to throw barbs at fellow musicians: Phil Collins was “an average bald man”, Robbie Williams was “a fat dancer from Take That” and so on. When INXS frontman Michael Hutchence presented Oasis with the BRIT Award in 1996, Noel began his acceptance speech by saying: “Ex-people shouldn't be presenting awards…”
The Gallaghers also shamefully and publicly insulted each other. After the band broke up in 2009, Liam spent years poking Noel on Twitter, calling him a “potato” and a “sad little midget”, with Noel describing Liam as “the angriest man you'll ever meet. He's like the fork man in the soup world.”
Now, 16 years after Noel left Oasis in Paris – reportedly after a backstage row during which Liam wielded his guitar like an ax – the brothers have made it a point to start every show by going on stage with their arms around each other. Hugs and kisses abound.
Does time heal old wounds and soften even the most violent and unruly rock stars? Some might say it's worth organizing a return tour, which is reported to be beneficial $1.6 billion helps. But Paul Adams, 54, born and raised in Manchester, England, like Noel and Liam, offers a bit of armchair psychology about the dynamic between the Gallaghers. “You have to understand that northern men are as passionate as they come,” he says. “When you fight with someone in the north of England, it becomes part of your personality. It's the clothes you wear… But it's all bravado. Once their audience was removed, both of these men were filled with regret for this relationship that had seemingly ended, to the point that they probably don't even remember why, but there was always a desire for reconciliation. So we can be cynical about brothers walking out hand in hand, but in reality they are necessary.”
Jason Singer—a.k.a. Nashville singer-songwriter Michigander who calls Oasis “one of the reasons I make music”—believes their fans need reconciliation, too. “These shows take people back to a time when we weren't so polarized as a society,” says Singer, 33, who saw one of the shows in Chicago.
You and me we will live forever
At my job at MetLife, I got to know the people around me. They included two longtime friends who usually ignored the band on stage, preferring to sing almost all the words to each other. There was a guy nearby who was there with his fiancee and her parents. He had specifically chosen this evening, this concert, to be his first meeting with his future in-laws (a brilliant move, as the grey-haired elderly couple appeared to be Oasis superfans).
To my right were two brothers from the Bronx, Frank, 34, and Joseph, 27. I met the first one when he asked if we could join hands to do Poznan, the fan favorite moment during “Cigarettes and Alcohol” when Liam asks the audience to turn their backs to the stage and jump.
Like many of the fans I met that night, this was not their first Oasis concert. Frank, a builder like his brother, said he had never been abroad before, but when the announcement came that the band would reunite and begin a UK tour, Joseph “texted me like crazy: 'We've got to go!' When we were kids, my brother was into them because I liked them. Their music brought us closer together. They are brothers, we are brothers.”
When tickets for the UK shows went on sale, the two stayed up all night in New York and ended up scoring a pair for one of seven sold-out London shows in July and August at Wembley Stadium.
“We get there and see everyone in Oasis gear and I can already feel the emotion,” Frank says. “Then the lights go down and the first notes of the intro play, and I'm hand in hand with my brother, taking it all in. I look around and see that everyone was there with their families, their friends. Everyone feels the same feeling: togetherness, community. Then they walk out, Liam and Noel holding hands… I just lost it. I mean, tears!»
“I cried about four times,” Singer says, recalling his experience at the Soldier Field show. “It was the best night of my life. I got to see some crazy, cool shows, but this topped everything. I honestly can't stop thinking about it. I've never experienced anything like it. I've seen a lot of people say it's the best Eras Tour for white guys. I don’t know how anyone can replicate that.”
Impossible, snorts Adams: “There's no one right now who can reform and ever top him. This is almost certainly the most successful reunion tour ever at this point. And the band sound better than ever. This is working-class music backed by ambition and a vision of the beauty in the ordinary. We need Noel's songs of hope, friendship and joy, combined with his ability to write gorgeously sad chord progressions and hymns sung by his brother.” now more than ever. Everything is crap, so go drink beer, hug the people around you, sing songs you know like the back of your hand, and trust that everything will work out.”
