Lhe memory of the seventh edition of the Rock en Seine festival is still vivid in the minds of spectators who were impatiently awaiting the arrival of the group Oasis on August 26, 2009. At the foot of the main stage, in the Saint-Cloud park area where the concerts are played, the impatience is palpable. The public is neck and neck, the atmosphere is festive, electric. But why doesn’t the band go on stage?
Rumors soon swirl around the audience. Accident, illness, argument… hypotheses circulate, concern rises. At 9:30 p.m., thunder. A member of the festival organization goes on stage and reads a press release signed Noel Gallagher. This announces the unthinkable: the Oasis group simply no longer exists. Without another word, the man left the stage, giving way to the group Madness, who took over at short notice. But why did the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, take such a drastic decision to disband what was one of the most famous English pop bands of all time?
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A violent childhood
“It is with sadness and great relief that I announce that I left Oasis tonight. People will say and write what they want, but I just can’t work with Liam another day. My apologies to the people who bought tickets for the concerts in Paris, Milan and Constance,” wrote the next day, in a press release published on the band’s official website, Noel Gallagher.
Liam remains silent. The real causes of the clash are nebulous. “Liam Gallagher allegedly told his brother Noel that his daughter, Anais, 9 at the time, was not his. It is said that the blows would have rained. It is also said that a guitar dear to Christmas would have been used as a projectile ”, advance the journalists Benjamin Durand and Nico Prat, authors of the test Oasis or the revenge of the rednecks (Playlist Society).
READ ALSOLiam Gallagher: ‘I know how awesome I am’
To understand the origin of this final dispute, we must go back in the biography of the Gallagher brothers, to their childhood in the working-class neighborhoods of Manchester. The first years of the two boys, born in 1967 for Noel and 1972 for Liam, after a first brother, Paul, who arrived for his part in 1966, were tough. In question, their father, Thomas, said Tommy, tradesman, alcoholic and violent to the point of causing a stutter in his two eldest.
The family lives in Burnage, a poor suburb of Manchester. Liam is seven years old when his mother, Peggy, finally manages to leave her husband. The two boys will keep from this father without ambition the common desire to get out of their working condition, but also deep traumas and a complex relationship with violence, in particular for Liam, who shows from childhood an excessive, turbulent temperament. , even aggressive towards his brothers and classmates.
Oasis, for better or for worse
The musical adventure of the two brothers began in the early 1990s. Noel Gallagher has always been crazy about music. Between 1989 and 1991, he was a roadie (or itinerant machinist) of the rock group from Manchester Inspiral Carpets, after having unsuccessfully applied to be the new singer. « Back from a tour in Japan […]at barely 20 years old, Noel Gallagher is convinced of this: he wants his own group”, write Benjamin Durand and Nico Prat.
Noel then takes an interest in the activities of his little brother Liam, who has just joined, out of opportunism, a local group, The Rain, which was looking for a new singer. Unlike his older brother, Liam became interested in music late. His thing was football, drugs and petty crime. Only, here it is: the youngest of the Gallaghers is both naturally gifted for singing and eminently charismatic.
Seeing his brother sing, Noel notices that Liam has a certain talent and decides to take matters into his own hands. He established himself within the group – renamed Oasis by Liam and composed of Paul Arthurs on guitar, Paul McGuigan on bass, Tony McCarroll on drums and Liam on vocals – as a leader and composer. Noel is naturally gifted to federate, organize, boost. In a few months, he dug up dates for them in concert halls, and had them spotted by the music press and record companies.
The career of Oasis was launched in concert halls during the year 1992. In 1993, the group released a first demo, Live Demonstration, which is a hit. After some turmoil with various labels, Oasis signs a worldwide contract with Sony Music. He released a first single, “Supersonic”, then a second “Live Forever”, composed two years earlier by Noel Gallagher. The single is a hit, to the point of entering the top 10 of the British charts. Oasis’ first album, Definitely Maybereleased on August 29, 1994 and was a resounding success.
The needy and the troublemaker
The following year, the group’s cult album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, featuring the must-have singles ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’. Several of these singles would become popular anthems in Britain’s biggest stadiums. Particularly that of Manchester, establishing the first ambition of the Gallagher brothers: to achieve phenomenal success and access to the highest spheres of celebrity without ever denying their popular DNA, pleasing both trendy London teenagers and working-class fathers in the disadvantaged suburbs, who empty beers at the stadium or in the pub while shouting at the top of their lungs their support for Manchester United or the England team.
But despite the success of the group, the relationship between the two brothers will never be good. A “difference in age and background [entre les deux frères] generates a difference of points of view, crucial in understanding the history of Oasis”, can we read in Oasis or the revenge of the rednecks. When the group was created, Noel was 24 years old. His brother, 18. Noel had to interrupt his schooling in college to work on construction sites where he rubs shoulders with the father who beat him throughout his childhood. Liam was able to continue (without much passion) his schooling. The gap between the eldest, needy, serious and worried, and the youngest, troublemaker, carefree and provocative, will only widen over the years.
READ ALSONoel Gallagher: ‘The members of Oasis didn’t deserve the glory’
“For Noel Gallagher, guitar rock is a ticket to a better life […]. Whereas for Liam, the group is fun”, write Benjamin Durand and Nico Prat. If they are fundamentally interdependent, the talent of composer and manager of one being magnified by the punk song and the recognizable voice among all of Liam, the Gallagher brothers will never know cordial agreement, separated by a way of being to the world and to radically different music.
As Oasis’ success grows, the relationship between the brothers sours. Their hyper-celebrity does nothing to ease tensions. The troublemaker and the perfectionist confront each other in private and in public, on stage, in front of journalists and in private. In the documentary Supersonic, released in 2016 and retracing the group’s odyssey, Liam seems to remember that their tensions date back to adolescence: “One day, I came home drunk and I couldn’t find the switch. I pissed on his new stereo: I think it came from there…”
Fight everywhere, all the time
Liam is the king of provocation. His older brother reframes him. During an interview they give together to the British magazine NME, Liam prides himself on being untenable on board a ferry in the Netherlands, fighting with other travellers, to the point that staff banned them from staying on board any longer. The event led to the cancellation of several concerts. “Rock’n’roll”, believes Liam. “Painful,” replies Noel. The interview turns into a fight. The brothers insult each other, bordering on the ridiculous. They will avoid, in the future, to answer together to the press.
In 1994, during a concert in Los Angeles, the boys fought on stage, with tambourines. The reason ? Liam played on meth: not serious, according to his brother. In 1995, Noel hit his brother with a cricket stick. Pattern ? He showed up drunk in the studio. The brothers tear each other apart and humiliate each other, regularly, on stage. Sulks, mockery, fights: their fans witness multiple altercations.
READ ALSOLiam Gallagher: “I will always be Oasis”
Liam likes to nag his brother with his doubts about the real paternity of his daughter Anais. He laughs at his manners, which he considers “stuck.” Noel belittles his younger brother for his addiction to drugs, alcohol, his assumed lack of culture, his bad boy attitudes. Noel and Liam don’t have words, gestures or attitudes harsh enough to show their lack of mutual affection. In Munich, in 2002, when Liam had his face smashed in a pub to the point of leaving his teeth, Noel declared to the press, laconic: “The only thing that interests me is when he can sing at new… “
After the ultimate clash at Rock en Seine, relations between the brothers remain catastrophic. Disputes are now played out on Twitter, by interposed punchlines. “I could sing any of the songs (by Noel Gallagher) better than him, even if I was kicked in the testicles”, tweeted, very classy, Liam Gallagher, at the announcement of the launch of the the latter’s new group, the High Flying Birds – one example among a multitude of verbal aggressions testifying to the permanence of the relations of hatred between the two most famous brothers of British pop.
We must therefore face the facts: if they succeeded in bringing together, under the banner of their hits, entire stadiums of supporters from all sides, if they made fans of all countries vibrate in unison on melodies as unifying as they are memorable, Liam and Noel Gallagher have failed to find the key to brotherly harmony.