As you observe tens of thousands of Oasis fans make their way loudly down from Wembley Park tube station towards England's national stadium, dads and lads from the Home Counties giving it their best biblical swagger, all bants and bravado, beers and bugle, it's difficult not to feel a warm glow of affection for the resilience of the human spirit.
Doubtless hundreds of those sporting retro Brother-sponsored Manchester City shirts today were also inside Wembley in May for the FA Cup Final, when Pep Guardiola's team surrendered meekly to south London's Crystal Palace, or were at the Emirates in February when the former Premier League champions were creamed 5-1 by north London's Arsenal, and exited the stadium with the Erling Haaland-inspired terrace anthem "Stay humble you cunt" ringing in their ears. And yet, as a former England captain once memorably urged, we go again, full of new hope and dreams, battered but unbroken, mad for it once more. For this is the attitude that the people's champions, Britpop overlords Oasis, instilled within us from day one. It also meant that fans old and new always held on to the hope of estranged brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher one day settling their differences, and reuniting their group.
After years of speculation, that long-wished-for reunion was announced last August with the sort of gravity one might expect in the wake of puffs of white smoke emerging from the Sistine Chapel chimney.
"The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see."
Epic stuff.
Millions and millions of us duly tried to "come see". But even with 19 stadium shows booked in the UK and Ireland - Wembley alone hosting 630,000 fans across seven nights - demand for Live '25 tour tickets was always going to outstrip availability. And as such, for all the lairyness on display on Wembley Way, it's underpinned by an intangible but undeniable shared sense that we are all privileged to be here for The Second Coming (Wembley V).
Obviously, some of us were present first time around too. I first saw Oasis at The Limelight club in Belfast on Sunday, September 4, 1994, with the price of admission just £6.75. That night, before they went on stage, the band learned that Definitely Maybe, their debut album - and also their best album, fyi - had entered the UK chart at number one. And what a wild, mad, out-of-control ride it has been from there to here.
For the record, whatever you might read in revisionist histories, not every Oasis gig was a transcendent communion of artist and audience. Those legendary, era-defining Knebworth shows in 1996 were, in reality, overly-populated by curious new recruits who greeted any selection from Definitely Maybe with blank stares and indifference, while the atmosphere at their three-night-stand in London's Finsbury Park in July 2002 was soured by, if memory serves, the largest assembly of obnoxious, drunken cunts outside of a Conservative Party Conference.
