Feud chain
From Liam urinating on Noel’s stereo to insulting his wife Sara, the stories are legion. Barry Egan charts the rise, fall and redemption of the Oasis brothers who defined the 1990s
The midday sunshine is streaming through the windows of an office in Marylebone in London in November 2017 as Noel Gallagher ponders the imponderable: his brother Liam’s anger at him and the world.
“I don’t know where that comes from,” he tells me, “because we had exactly the same upbringing. Who knows what’s inside the mind of a village idiot...”
In September of that year, when Noel performed at the We Are Manchester benefit at the Manchester Arena — in memory of the 22 people killed and the hundreds injured in the terrorist attack in May at the Ariana Grande concert at the venue — Liam said on social media that it was “a PR stunt” and that his brother “doesn’t give a f**k”.
“I will say this — and this is all I will say about it,” Noel told People & Culture that day in London, “I don’t think that he [Liam] is well. I think it says more about him than it does about anything else. I honestly don’t think he is well.”
In the 2016 Oasis documentary Supersonic, there is a story that Liam was hit on the head with a hammer when he was 14 and ended up in hospital, only to emerge hearing music “differently”.
The documentary also includes Liam claiming he was the genesis of the fraternal feuding. “One night,” he said, “I come in pissed and I couldn’t find the light switch, so I pissed all over [Noel’s] new stereo. I think it basically boils down to that.”
Noel added that the fighting always originated with his younger brother. “I never fought with Liam at all,” he told me. “Liam was fighting with himself. Right now he is picking a fight with himself somewhere.
“I don’t suffer fools in any f**king sense at all, but I suffered him more than maybe I should have done. I felt maybe, looking back on it, that the stadium rock thing wasn’t me anymore. At the time, it wasn’t a musical decision. It was literally a case of, ‘I can’t bear the fighting and the shouting and the firing people for no reason.’”
Oasis are finally back together. No one is silly enough to think that all wounds are healed. There have been things said between them – mostly from Liam – that will never be put to bed. These unresolved issues could re-emerge onstage on the forthcoming tour.
My mind goes back to Wembley Stadium in 2000 when an indifferent and clearly unhappy Liam ranted at 80,000 fans who had paid to see him perform with Oasis: “If you think I’m over the moon to be here, then you must be trippin’. This is for Bob Geldof, this is for Simple Minds, this is for all the other f**king idiots. Glad you made it. This isn’t f**king Live Aid, and I bet you wish it was f**king free. Patsy’s gone and taken the furniture, with the solicitors. I don’t even have a f**king teabag to my name.”
Before he played Shakermaker, he said: “This is for all the knobheads out there, just f**k off.”
After playing Supersonic, he said: “That was f**king rubbish. Listen, I’m in and out of here after, I ain’t no celebrity, I ain’t no f**king Fran Healy, I ain’t no dickhead, ain’t no arsing about... That bloke down the front’s a pillock.”
This was before Noel interjected to tell him: “Be nice.”
It took Metallica years of counselling to patch up their differences. Liam and Noel’s issues go deeper because they are family – a family with trauma going back to their dad walking out and a host of other problems that have deepened through a social media spat.
In 2018, on Twitter, Liam’s animus was focused on Noel’s then wife Sara MacDonald. He posted that she was “up there with Putin”, was “a witch” and the reason why Oasis broke up on August 28, 2009 in Paris, backstage before a show. In July 2019, when MacDonald called Liam a “fat twat doing his tribute act” at Glastonbury, he sent a message to Noel’s daughter Anais: “Tell your step mam to be very careful.”
“So you’re sending threatening messages via my teenage daughter now are you?” Noel replied on Twitter, sharing a screenshot of the message.
No one is sure what they are going to get when Liam and Noel walk on stage without the core original members, Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs (guitar), Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan (bass guitar) and Alan White (drums) – who replaced original drummer Tony McCarroll after he was sacked follow
I think even if we worked in the local fishmongers, we’d still be slapping each other in the face with the trout
ing a row with Liam in 1995. The pair could even be backed by Noel’s house-band High Flying Birds.
It won’t be vintage Oasis because it can’t be. It is two grown men who, recently at least, hated each other singing songs about being young, songs that defined the youths of millions of middle-aged people.
No one has time to ponder the irony that many of the fans, closer to retirement than school leaving, singing: “Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?”
Like us, Oasis are past their prime. This is not a criticism. Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? are untouchable masterpieces of their time – the other albums weren’t great – and it will be from these records that the bulk of the songs will be drawn presumably. So that is a win for their die-hard fans.
In a 2021 documentary about Oasis playing at Knebworth in 1996, Noel said: “If this is Oasis at its peak – which it is – it is because Liam was at his peak. You’re only as good as your frontman. He was at his zenith with his voice and the way he looked.”
On the night after the second of the two historic shows where Oasis had played in total to over 250,000 fans, Alan McGee (who discovered the band in Glasgow in 1993 and signed them to his Creation label) met with Noel.
“He was looking a little bit perplexed about where they should take it from there,” McGee said. “We discussed it. He said he couldn’t go any bigger.”
There was discussion of doing a pay-per-view Oasis gig in Antarctica. With a big TV extravaganza from the ice-capped South Pole not being an option, playing Wembley Stadium and Croke Park seemed more sensible. As did, in the end, giving their fans what they wanted.
I went to see Liam in Kilmainham two summers ago and stood up the front, bursting out of my Fred Perry.
The first three songs he played were from his old band: Morning Glory, Hello and Rock ‘n’ Roll Star. The reaction from 25,000 fans was a mixture of pure joy and pandemonium. That euphoria changed to indifference when he then performed four of his own songs: Wall of Glass, C’mon You
Know, World’s in Need and Better Days. The dancing and the hugging stopped.
“Are you bored over there?” Liam asked a section of the audience.
Sad to say this, but I can’t think of one song from Liam’s albums that really stands out. Yet he draws far bigger crowds to his shows than Noel.
Noel isn’t as charismatic a performer, though his solo work is infinitely better than Liam’s. This isn’t surprising because Noel wrote all the Oasis songs we know and love – and hug strangers to.
So no shock that Noel’s solo albums have routinely included Oasis-grade classics like Dead in the Water from the 2017 psychedelic Who Built the Moon? album, to IfIHada Gun... and Everybody’s on the Run from the first, self-titled, High Flying Birds album in 2011. With his solo work, Noel has left his brother for dead.
But watching Noel live you sometimes can’t help thinking that the show would be enhanced immeasurably by the presence of his brother on vocals. You also miss a bit of the lunacy that only Liam can provide. In 1995 he said would like to “play golf on George Harrison’s head” after the Beatle said something relatively inoffensive about him. In 1996 he told a police officer in London who asked him how he was: “What’s it to do with you, c**ty bollocks?”
Equally, watching Liam live there is no doubt that his shows would be enhanced by the presence of Noel. They were simply better together than apart.
No doubt there will be killings backstage between them. And possibly not just because they are rock stars.
As Liam once said: “I think even if we worked in the local fishmongers, we’d still be slapping each other with the trout.”
Back to Marylebone in London in late 2017. I asked Noel how often he gets asked about Oasis reforming.
“Every day,” he said. “By everyone.”
And it’s not going to happen?
“No. A wise man once said... or it is a truism in life that you can never predict the future. And the future will make a fool of you.”
Oasis will play Croke Park, Dublin on August 16 and 17, 2025