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Don't look back in anger: an Oasis timeline

Updated / Saturday, 31 Aug 2024 10:32
Oasis: like an out of control pram
Oasis: like an out of control pram

Bust-ups, smash hits, breakdowns and, finally, a reunion. Oasis are back for a tour, including dates at Croke Park next August. We take you back to the very start and chart the key moments in the rise and fall and rise again of the people's band

1991

Future Oasis rhythm guitarist Paul Arthurs aka Bonehead and future Oasis bassist Paul McGuigan aka Guigsy form a short-lived band called The Rain in Manchester. They only play a few shows and replace their original singer Chris Hutton with Liam Gallagher.

14 August

Named after a leisure centre in Swindon, southwest England, Oasis play their very first show at Manchester venue The Boardwalk, supporting Birmingham band Sweet Jesus, with a line-up of Liam, Bonehead, Paul Guigsy and drummer Tony McCarroll.

Fellow Manchester act The Inspiral Carpets attend the show along with their roadie, Liam's brother Noel, who has also been roadying for Cork hopefuls The Frank and Walters.

1992

14 January

Having completed their first studio recording session at Out of the Blue Studios, Manchester, late the previous year, Oasis are back in The Boardwalk to play their first gig with Noel.

Over a five-song set, the band play an instrumental jam which will later evolve into Columbia, which is named in honour of the notorious rock `n’ roll London hotel of the same name. Oasis would later be banned from said hotel.

Spring

Oasis complete a recording session at the home studio of Mark Coyle in Manchester, with some songs appearing on their debut album Definitely Maybe and anniversary releases of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now.

31 May

Alan McGee

Oasis talk their way onto the bill at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow and perform Rock 'n' Roll Star, Bring It On Down, Up in the Sky and a cover of The Beatles’ I Am the Walrus.

Having missed his train back to London, the head of Creation Records, Alan McGee, decides to take in a gig and sees the band for the first time.

22 October

Having agreed to be represented by music manager Marcus Russell earlier in the year, Oasis sign to Creation Records. They are given an advance of £40,000 and agree to release six studio albums with Creation via Sony Music.

1994

8 January

The band begin recording their debut album Definitely Maybe at Monnow Valley Residential Recording Studio in Rockfield, Wales.

The two-week session is not entirely successful and only Slide Away would later make it onto an Oasis album.

17 February

The legend of Oasis hard-living, hard-drinking reputation begins in earnest when Liam, Guigsy, Bonehead and Tony McCarroll are arrested on a ferry to Amsterdam where they are due to play Oasis's first foreign gig in support of The Verve.

The four are deported back to the UK when the ferry docks in The Netherlands.

18 March

Oasis make their debut TV appearance with a punky performance of soon to be debut single Supersonic on Channel 4’s late-night yoof show, The Word. Ears begin pricking up . . .

11 April

Oasis release debut single Supersonic. It hits 24 in Ireland and 31 in the UK.

29 August

Debut album Definitely Maybe is released in Ireland, a day before the UK due to a bank holiday. It peaks at No 3 here.

3 September

Oasis play their first gig in Ireland at the Tivoli Theatre on Francis Street, Dublin. It’s a sort of homecoming for Liam and Noel, whose parents, Peggy and Tommy, hail from Mayo and Meath, respectively. Noel and Liam have spent many summers in Charlestown as children. Evan Dando of The Lemonheads watches the show from the side of the stage.

4 September

Oasis play The Limelight in Belfast on the night they find out Definitely Maybe has hit No 1 in the UK.

1995

30 April

The band’s founding drummer Tony McCarroll leaves the band and Alan White becomes the new drummer. McCarroll will later settle out of court for £600,000.

8 May

The notorious recording sessions for the band's second album, (What's The Story) Morning Glory, begin at Rockfield Studios, Gwent, Wales.

Over the course of the following week, feuding between Liam and Noel results in the elder Gallagher striking Liam with a cricket bat after a brawl breaks out between Liam and members of the band Cable. The sessions are abandoned.

14 August

The Battle of Britpop begins when arch rivals Blur move the release date of their very ordinary new single Country House so that it will be in direct competition in the charts with Oasis’ even worse new song Roll With It.

The following week, Blur beat Oasis to No 1 in the UK.

22 August 1995

Oasis support R.E.M. at Slane Castle in Noel and Liam’s "home county" of Meath.

However, Liam is greeted with some unwelcome local hospitality when a sod of turf comes hurtling out of the crowd and hits him full in the face before he can even begin singing the first song of the band’s set.

Noel still laughs about it years later.

2 October

After fraught recording sessions, the band release second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory? It is a massive hit, selling 12 million copies and propelling the band to global fame.

23 March 1996

Oasis play The Point Depot in Dublin. Straight after the gig, Noel goes to RTÉ where he is interviewed by Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show.

However, the band’s after show at the Westbury Hotel turns sour when Noel and Liam’s estranged father Tommy turns up (at the bidding of The News of The World) offering an olive branch. Said olive branch is promptly snapped in two by the brothers.

August 10

Oasis play the first of two nights at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, UK.

They play to a total of 250,000 people and the support acts include The Bootleg Beatles, The Charlatans, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy, Kula Shaker, Cast and Dreadzone. 2.6 million people (5% of the British population) had applied for tickets. Food for thought for today's ticket scramble.

14 August

Oasis play the first of two nights at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork. Over 80,000 people attend the gigs.

1997

28 January

Noel has a Paul McCartney LSD moment when he says that taking drugs is "like getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning," leading to condemnation from British politicians.

7 April

Liam Gallagher marries his girlfriend, actress and former pop singer, Patsy Kensit, in the Marylebone Registry Office in London - the same venue where Paul and Linda McCartney wed in 1969.

21 August

Oasis release their third studio album Be Here Now.

The lead single is the near eight-minute long D'You Know What I Mean (helicopters!) and the album features Johnny Depp playing slide guitar on Fade In-Out.

The album’s cover art is a celebration of excess, featuring a (possibly photoshopped) white Rolls Royce half-submerged in a swimming pool at a country house. Grandiloquent bloat begins to set in (what? Like that sentence - Ed).

4, 5 and 6 December

Oasis play The Point in Dublin for three nights.

1998

5 June

During halftime of the World Cup match between Germany and Greece, Noel has an epiphany and decides that he is done with drugs.

He goes on to sell Supernova Heights, his house in London, get his head together in Thailand and move to the English countryside in order to kick drugs for good.

1999

9 August

Bonehead

There are further upheavals in the band when Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs announces that he is quitting, soon followed by Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan.

They are replaced by Gem Archer of Britrock also-rans Heavy Stereo and gentleman guitar ace Andy Bell of Ride and Hurricane #1.

2000

28 February

The band's fourth studio album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, is released.

The first Oasis album on their new label, Big Brother, it’s a departure from the Britpop sound, and is much more psychedelic.

Drum loops, samples, electric sitar, Mellotron, synthesisers and backward guitars dominate on tracks such as Go Let It Out, Who Feels Love?, and Gas Panic!

The massive sale continued but the album receives very mixed reviews.

23 May

In a sign of things to come, Noel quits the band’s world tour but says he will be back for the final eight sold-out dates in the UK that summer.

2002

29 and 30 June

The band are back in Ireland for two dates in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena.

1 July

New members Gem Archer and Andy Bell make their recording debut with the band on fifth album Heathen Chemistry.

The first Oasis album to have significant writing contributions from all members, Liam Gallagher contributed three songs, while Bell and Archer contribute one song each.

Tracks include the plaintive Stop Crying Your Heart Out, Little by Little and The Hindu Times. Reviews are less than favourable.

2004

16 January

Zak Starkey

Alan White is sacked as drummer, with Noel citing his lack of commitment to the band. He will be replaced by Ringo Starr's son, Zak Starkey.

2005

30 May

The band's sixth album Don't Believe The Truth features Kinks homage The Importance of Being Idle. however, it also features a song called Mucky Fingers.

16 July

Oasis play to 40,000 people in Marlay Park in Dublin.

2008

14 April

In one of his less enlightened observations, Noel tells BBC News that "Hip hop is wrong for Glastonbury", a reference to the fact that Jay-Z was headlining that year’s festival. That June, the rapper opened his set at Worthy Farm with a tongue in cheek cover of Wonderwall.

29 October

In 2008 Oasis return to Northern Ireland to play the Odyssey Arena

29 June

Although they didn't know it at the time, Oasis’s love affair with Ireland ends when they play what was then their last ever Irish gig at Slane Castle to over 80,000 fans.

2009

28 August

Following a vicious argument backstage involving a flying plum and Liam wielding Noel's favorite guitar like a battle axe, Noel finally quits Oasis just before the band are due on stage at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris.

2024

24 July

In what is believed to be there first meeting in over a decade, Noel and Liam Gallagher meet for a top-secret photo shoot with photographer Simon Emmett in London.

25 August

After years of will they/won't they and could they/should they, Noel and Liam seem to have finally buried the hatchet and tease the possibility of an Oasis reunion. Last Sunday, both Noel and Liam and the official Oasis twitter account tweeted the date "27.08.24" on a flickering video screen . . .

27 August

It’s on and it seems a lot of people are mad fer it all over again. Oasis announce a series of massive gigs for summer 2025, including two shows at Croke Park next August, and a total of five nights in Wembley Stadium.

Now, the scramble for tickets begins . . .

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