In the end, there was just too much money on the table. Managers, promoters, festivals and streamers have been attempting to get Oasis back together since they imploded 15 years ago.
Acrimony, insults, brotherly duality and spousal attrition all played a part in the estrangement, but as long as Liam and Noel Gallagher remained compos mentis, there was always the possibility of a professional rapprochement. The same remains true of Pink Floyd, The Smiths and the Sex Pistols, although with the Gallagher brothers the assumption was that a reunion was always going to be about the cash. Which is why their long-term promoters SJM and Live Nation knew that if they kept putting moolah on the mahogany, they would eventually get their way. They have. The negotiations started simply and effectively. Noel and Liam were told they could keep most of the money, allowing the promoters to pick up their percentages around the edges. There is so much money involved — one industry insider says that “this is bigger than anyone expected, it’s huge, globally huge” — that those percentages will be worth their weight in gold. The scale of the deal is enormous, and if things go according to plan — and Liam and Noel can keep their hands off each other and their mouths in check — the reunion tour will extend to the rest of the world for sure. This is truly a global comeback, with global remuneration. This tour could easily generate half a billion dollars before anyone has really started doing the maths.
Over the weekend, as rumours started to swirl, the enormity of the project began to take shape. While Live Nation knew they had orchestrated an extraordinary coup, even they were surprised by the effect the news was having in the music industry. The intense media interest was exacerbated by a series of tweets that did nothing to dampen the anticipation, creating a major global news story.
By Sunday, a rumour that had started the weekend as the result of what still felt like indeed gossip, looked as though it was going to be confirmed by both artist and promoter. Suddenly, to Londoners who love the band as much as any Mancunian, Notting Hill Carnival was but a sideshow. Apparently, there won’t be any new product, and no new single or album to kickstart the campaign, but of course this is dependent on how relationships develop over the next 12 months. If Liam and Noel can properly embrace cordiality then anything is possible. Don’t forget that, when they were at their best, Oasis were one of the best live acts in the world. Both Noel and Liam understood that the noise they made on stage was compounded by the fact they were a brand. “When you’re writing for a band that’s become a brand and a huge f*****g business — and this is only with hindsight, as I didn’t realise this at the time — you’re kind of writing with the weight of the brand hanging over you,” Noel said to me the last time I interviewed him. “The songs have to sound a certain way to sell 70 million records and you’re not going to just throw it all up in the air on a whim.
“When you’re Oasis, Metallica, or Red Hot Chili Peppers, the masses expect a certain kind of thing from you. Most big bands never stray from the path and Oasis had got like that. But don’t get me wrong, we were good it. You know, this is what we do: there’s a certain sound and there’s a certain venue that we play and the music has to fill that venue. No one ever sounded like Oasis because nobody could do what we did. There were loads of bands who tried, but there was only ever one Oasis.”
And they’re about to do it all again. When I interviewed Noel he was promoting a compilation of songs by his band High Flying Birds, but he spoke about Oasis with the fondness of someone talking about a child; he knows how important they were, both creatively and commercially, and no amount of social media disagreements with his brother was going to change that.
Right now, the Oasis reunion is all anyone in the entertainment industry can talk about. There will obviously be a tsunami of requests for tickets, but I wouldn’t worry so much about missing out. They’ll be playing a lot of concerts.
