With seven legs and 118 shows Oasis set out on what would be their final world tour, starting in Seattle on August 28, 2008. It was planned to end in Milan a year later.
Despite the tour selling out there were frustrations, as Noel Gallagher explains: “There was an undercurrent of, ‘Well, they should really call it a day.’ Now, of course, we’re seen as up there with all the greats. Oasis back in 2009 were not lauded. I felt that people had stopped listening to the new records and were coming to see us trot out the hits. It’s a position I never wanted the band to be in.”
Behind the scenes there was tension. “We did the record and that was great,” says Noel. “Then about three weeks before the tour started Liam didn’t want to do it. We both knew he would do it but it just felt like the band was coming to its logical conclusion. Liam didn’t seem happy. And I was done with it.”
“We were mixing the album in America, and I was bored of sitting around, so me and Gem [the band’s guitarist] bought a four-track and set it up in the corridor and I recorded demos for “The Death of You and Me,” “(Stranded On) The Wrong Beach” and “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks.” I listened to them and I thought, I don’t hear Liam singing any of these. And the more I listened to “The Death of You and Me” the more I thought, how are we gonna play that in a stadium? And it started to dawn on me that I’ve got to move on and I don’t think I can do the loud guitar thing any more.”
As the tour progressed the brothers started traveling to the gigs separately. In an interview with Q magazine Noel had said, “I don’t like Liam, he’s rude, arrogant, intimidating and lazy. He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.” Liam had hit back in the NME. “It takes more than blood to be my brother … he doesn’t like me and I don’t like him.”
There had been disagreements over whether Liam’s new clothing line Pretty Green could have an ad in the tour program, which Noel had put a stop to. The brothers’ relationship had completely deteriorated, as Noel later explained to Esquire. “The last six months were awful, it was excruciating. Me and Liam had a massive fistfight three weeks before the world tour started. Fights like that in the past would always be easy to rectify but for some reason I wasn’t going to let it go this time.”
As the tour rolled on into 2009, they played the first of three concerts at Manchester’s Heaton Park on June 4. The power went off in the middle of the set due to a generator failure. The packed field of 80,000 fans in the biggest municipal park in Europe stood in awkward silence as the band left the stage twice before wandering back on, stating that it was now a free concert with ticket refunds.
The next month the band played three huge Wembley gigs with Reverend and the Makers as support. Their frontman, Jon McClure, remembers great shows but lots of tension: “Things were obviously very tense between the brothers. They had separate dressing rooms and you were either Noel’s mate or Liam’s mate. There were not many people who went between the camps. On the last night they had this party in the England football team home dressing room and Liam burst in. He said, ‘I want to ask you what’s your favorite type of pea?’
“I said, ‘I like garden peas actually with a bit of gravy and mint jelly … ’ And he looks me up and down and says, ‘You don’t like mushy peas?’ I thought this is a trick so I said, ‘I just told you, I like garden peas with gravy and mint … ’ He poked me in the chest and went, ‘You’re all right you!’ Apparently he uses little devices like that to check whether people are all right and if you know your own mind.”
After Wembley the band flew out to Japan and South Korea, before returning in late August to the U.K. to Bridlington Spa Pavilion, readying themselves for two big headline shows at the V Festival. The first one near Stafford on August 20 went OK, but a couple of nights later in Chelmsford things started to fall apart when Liam pulled out, claiming he had laryngitis, and they were replaced as headliners by Snow Patrol. An angry Noel later told the press that his brother was hungover and the tension cranked up.
There were just three big festivals to play: August 28 in Paris, August 29 in Konstanz and August 30 in Milan. Could they limp over the finishing line and then take a few years out and recover? On August 27 they flew out to Paris.
The next day they rocked up to play the 40,000-capacity Rock en Seine festival. In the build-up to showtime there was an awkward brooding atmosphere backstage. The final bust-up between the brothers took place in the small pre-gig communal area in front of the rest of the band. A backstage witness said: “Liam was goading Noel constantly and then the two just snapped.”
“He [Liam] was quite violent,” remembers Noel. “It was a bit like WWE wrestling and he thought he was Randy Savage. Liam storms out of the dressing room. On the way out he picked up a plum and he threw it across the dressing room and it smashed against the wall. For whatever reason he went to his own dressing room and he came back with a guitar and he started wielding it like an axe—he nearly took my face off with it. It ended up on the floor and I put it out of its misery. There were people who were in the band, not saying anything. People were looking the other way and it wasn’t even a big dressing room. We were all involved in it and nobody was saying anything. So I thought, ‘I’m out of here.’”
Another witness remembers: “Liam was like a man possessed. He was swearing constantly and really angry. Medical staff were called along with security. This was a truly vicious fight—quite horrible.”
Oasis had been on the brink before. They had cancelled gigs and tours, but this time, minutes before stage time, was different. It was going to the wire as Noel sat outside in the car brooding for ten minutes. Forty thousand people were waiting for the band to arrive on stage in five minutes’ time. The tour manager looked over—Noel had had enough and said, “F*** it, I can’t do it any more.” He had decided to quit.
For the second time in a week Oasis pulled out of a headline festival slot. Madness were installed as the headliners and the audience, waiting out front, had no idea what was happening until the news was broken to them by Kele Okereke from Bloc Party, who were the band on stage before Oasis. Initially the audience thought he was joking, until the screens at the side of the stage confirmed that Oasis’s performance had been canceled due to “an altercation within the band”.
Noel then released a statement: “It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. Apologies to all the people who bought tickets to the shows in Paris, Konstanz and Milan.”
A couple of weeks later Noel said on his occasional tour blog, Tales from the Middle of Nowhere: “The details are not important and of too great a number to list. But I feel you have the right to know that the level of verbal and violent intimidation towards me, my family, friends and comrades has become intolerable. And the lack of support and understanding from my management and band mates has left me with no other option than to get me cape and seek pastures new.” He went on to thank fans, saying the rock group’s success had been a “dream come true”, adding: “I take with me glorious memories.”
He also apologized to fans in Paris and to fans who’d hoped to see them at the V Festival. “Again, I can only apologise — although I don’t know why, it was nothing to do with me. I was match fit and ready to be brilliant. Alas, other people in the group weren’t up to it,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family and a football team to indulge.”
Six years later he added some interesting hindsight on the split: “We had two gigs left and I reckon if I’d had got to the end of that tour and I had six months off I would have just forgotten about it. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the night in Paris … I’m glad it ended that way and I think if you asked anyone and they were being honest, they would say it ended at the right time. I don’t think I could have gone on and written another Oasis record … If I’d thought there was anything left to achieve I wouldn’t have left Oasis … You name it, we did it all.”
The rest of the band briefly pondered continuing and then quit. A few years later Liam said: “Listen, we had an argument. We always have arguments. That’s the way it was. I just think that it was not about an argument, though, our kid just wanted out. He had done his time with the band and that’s fair play, but all he had to do was talk about it and leave. I was disappointed but you have to move on.”
“The band came to its logical conclusion at exactly the right time,” Noel says. “Then I had two years off, and I started a family with Sara.”
For Liam, the writing had been on the wall, as he explained a few years later: “Our kid had distanced himself from us anyway. Noel just wanted out. It was like putting down a pet when it’s in agony. You got to do the right thing and let it go.”
For Liam, though, there could be no retirement. “Retire? What and just sit around? I don’t think so. There’s lots to do. I got music in me. It’s coming from somewhere. I don’t think they will let me retire ‘til my time is up. People say it’s not work being in a band but it is. But it’s also the best f***ing job in the world.”
John Robb is an English musician, author, and journalist
