Mark Brown

What’s the next story, Morning Glory? : The power of the press, The Strokes, and the curious case of Oasis Well, the second coming of the second coming of Oasis sold out in a weekend, so I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to call them the biggest band in the world right now. It’s not just the locations: Parkhead, the Etihad, Europe, America, the return to Knebworth. It’s not the number of shows or the scale of ticket sales. It’s the hype around it all, the reaction. I just don’t realistically see anyone else pulling this off, or if they did, it being something so many people cared about, for good or for bad. But this return has got me thinking about the end of Oasis. Not the end of the group, when one too many arguments and one final bust-up brought it all, finally, to a crashing close. No, I’m talking about the end of Oasis as the band of the moment, a focal point for the culture around them. And that happened somewhere around August 1997. For many young people, an understandable image of Oasis exists in their minds. You’ve got the massive scale of their return, the myth around them; you check Wikipedia and see the repeated number-one albums, the hit singles, the songs woven into everyday life in this country. I imagine it must seem to a lot of younger fans that this band ruled from Definitely Maybe until they called it a day, influencing all around them. But it really wasn’t like that at all. Oasis’ moment as a cultural juggernaut lasted exactly three years. A surprisingly short time really, given the magnitude of the band. Definitely Maybe arrived in August 1994. By August 1997, Be Here Now was released to the most extraordinary anticipation British popular music had seen for years. In between, Oasis had gone from a gang of scallies Alan McGee signed after seeing in a Glasgow club, to the mightiest musical force in the country, and perhaps the biggest band in the world. There was the fastest-selling debut of all time, its massive follow-up Morning Glory, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger, 4% of the entire country applying for Knebworth tickets, fans camping round the block overnight to buy a record. It was music as cultural detonation on a scale that is difficult to really fathom now. I’m sure there’s people reading this thinking, “I wasn’t into them. I thought they were shite”, and that’s fair enough. Batter in. But they were a phenomenon, and most importantly, they were the people’s band. For a huge chunk of music lovers, they were the band making the music that mattered. And then, just as quickly, they weren’t. By late 1997, it was all over. Not Oasis themselves. The band still had another twelve years in the tank. And good years. They kept having number one albums and singles, played stadiums around the world, and remained one of the most recognisable bands in Britain, held in the hearts of millions of fans. But their time as a musical focal point in this country, not merely a hugely successful band but the one that represented what was happening, was gone. And what I’ve always found so interesting about their descent in relevance is the part that the people who helped place them at the centre of the culture played in pulling them out of it. 🧵