Oasis roll into Dublin this weekend for two gigs at Croke Park. The band have a long relationship with Ireland and have played here many times - we look back in languor at the band's key Irish gigs
14 gigs down and 27 to go: the Oasis reunion tour is continuing to make its way all around the world, before it culminates in São Paulo in November - and with ticket sales like that, there may well be more dates to come next year.
However, the biggie for Irish fans and (shucks!) even the band themselves is nigh. Oasis play Dublin’s Croke Park over two nights this weekend, their first Irish live show since they rocked the ramparts at Slane in June 2009 - just two months before they finally imploded in Paris after a barney between Noel and Liam Gallagher involving a flying plum and a "guitar being wielded like an axe".
All, it seems, is forgiven and the warring brothers are back singing from the same spreadsheet.
And these Croke Park shows will be a sort of homecoming for this band of second-generation Irish brothers. Along with their boozed-up anthems and knack for teary ballads, a large part of Oasis’ appeal to the Irish masses has also been their Hibernophilia. Noel and Liam have always known the importance of being Irish.
Everything you need to know about Oasis at Croke Park
As they evolved from cheeky young Beatlebums to meandering dad rockers, Irish audiences never seemed to get enough of the Oasis live experience.
Even as the hits dwindled and the music became increasingly stodgy and workmanlike, the fans always turned up because at their core, Oasis have a set of classic songs that move massive audiences.
Will anyone at Croker be there to hear, say, Love Like a Bomb or (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady?
The band made their Irish live debut in September 1994 at the Tivoli Theatre in Dublin and over the next 15 years, they played a diverse range of venues, including Belfast’s Limelight, Slane Castle in 1995, two nights at The Point in 1996, Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 1996, Lansdowne Road in 2000, Fairyhouse, the SECC in Belfast and Marley Park before bowing out in style by headlining Slane in 2009.
The Tivoli Theatre, Dublin, 3 September 1994
Sons of the old sod (all of the original Oasis line-up have Irish roots), Oasis made their Irish debut on a balmy Saturday night in 1994 in the Tivoli Theatre, a great venue in the heart of the Liberties, which had also played host to the immortal Jeff Buckley, Blur, Rage Against The Machine, Limerick dream weavers The Cranberries and English shoegaze princelings Ride.
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The Oasis show was a terrific punk rock racket and it was notable for being the first time Noel performed a solo acoustic song: the band's soon to be sacked drummer Tony McCarroll had burst his snare skin during a particularly energetic Bring it on Down so Gallagher Snr sang D'ya wanna be a Spaceman on acoustic guitar while repairs were made.
"We're here for the Tayto" - Oasis hit Dublin in 1994
Fun fact: Evan Dando of The Lemonheads was standing side of the stage, nodding along in appreciation. Tickets were - read it and weep - £6.75 and the reviews were effusive, with one hack remarking that it was "even worth missing Match of the Day for."
Here’s the 12-song set list: Columbia, Fade Away, Digsy's Dinner, Shakermaker, Live Forever, Bring It On Down, D'Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?, Up in the Sky, Slide Away, Cigarettes & Alcohol, Supersonic, I Am the Walrus.
Oasis played The Limelight in Belfast the following night and heard the news that their debut album, Definitely Maybe, had hit No 1 in the UK.
Slane Castle, 22 August, 1995
The next time Oasis darkened our shores was the following year supporting R.E.M., a band whose own commercial trajectory was heading downwards just as Oasis' was heading in the other direction.
Any notion that the Mancunian upstarts blew the American band off the stage that day are of course nonsense but they put in a rowdy, ragged and loud set in their "home county" of Meath just ten days after they had lost the Battle of Britpop to Blur. (Side bar: Doesn’t the central riff of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory bear an uncanny resemblance to R.E.M.’s 1987 hit The One I Love?).
However, Liam was greeted with some unwelcome local hospitality when a sod of turf came hurtling out of the crowd and hit him full in the face before he even began singing the first song of the band’s set. Years later, Noel told me it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
Oasis would be back in Slane 14 years later - this time as headliners.
Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork, 14/15 August, 1996
Just three days after they'd played to 250,000 people at Knebworth in the UK, a very busy and buzzing Oasis rocked into Cork for two shows at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
They were at the height of their pomp. Arriving as Britpop’s It couple, Liam alighted from the plane at Cork Airport hand in hand (it’s the only way to land) with Patsy Kensit, while Noel had the insouciant look of a man who knew that his band had arrived at the toppermost of the poppermost.
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At the Cork shows, they were supported by The Bootleg Beatles and The Prodigy and all for a ticket price of (again, read it and weep) £22.50.
Among the audience was Robbie Williams, Lenny Henry and Formula One driver Eddie Irvine but also present were members of the band’s extended Irish families from Meath and Mayo. On the second night, Noel played an acoustic version of Cast No Shadow on a guitar which had once belonged to Rory Gallagher, who’d passed away the previous year.
During their Cork sojourn, the Gallagher brothers even found time to pop into a Dunnes in Bishopstown to buy fresh socks - very important for a hard-touring band.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner back in 1996, the shop’s manager Declan Flanagan said, "Noel and Liam and their entourage walked into the shop. They went straight over to the men’s clothing section and started to admire our range of autumn shorts. When they came into the shop there was pandemonium among the staff."
The band stayed in the very swanky Liss Ard Estate outside Skibbereen in West Cork and downed a few pints in the Skibbereen Eagle pub.
Lansdowne Road, Dublin on 8 July 2000
As part of their Standing on the Shoulder of Giants tour, Oasis played what was then the concrete crater of Lansdowne Road stadium (now the glittering Aviva) in the summer of 2000.
More than 40,000 fans were there to witness the band just as they were going through another set of convulsions.
As well as a reshuffle that saw Gem Archer of Heavy Stereo and Ride axe man Andy Bell join the line-up, Noel had walked out on Oasis two months previously and there was much speculation about the future of Liam's marriage to Patsy Kensit. In fact, the singer announced from the stage at Lansdowne, "We're not f***ing splitting up, baby!" but nobody knew if he was talking about Oasis or Patsy.
For his part, Noel shared a tentative handshake with Liam at the end of a performance of Acquiesce.
This was the setlist on the night: Go Let It Out, Who Feels Love?, Supersonic, Shakermaker, Acquiesce, Gas Panic!, Roll With It, Stand by Me, Wonderwall, Cigarettes & Alcohol, Don't Look Back in Anger, Live Forever. Encore: Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black), (Neil Young & Crazy Horse cover), Champagne Supernova, Rock 'n' Roll Star.
Slane Castle, 20 June, 2009
Just two before the wheels flew off the out of control pram that Oasis had become, the band took to the stage at Slane for a second time in June 2009.
By then perhaps the People's Band had entered into the obsolescent afterlife of the legacy act. Their later albums had become a slow trudge of dwindling returns; signs of fatigue were evident and they had calcified into a self-congratulatory mess of dad rock acrimony and jaded tabloid infamy.
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By 2009, they had become a very good caricature of a burnt-out classic rock band at the fag-end of the seventies. Of course, that was never going to deter the 80,000 people who thronged the Boyne-side venue.
Speaking to RTÉ ahead of the gig, Noel said: "When we played Slane in 1995 with R.E.M., I guess we got a sense of what was possible after playing in front of so many people. It was the first big outdoor show we'd ever done."
Oasis kicked off their set with Rock 'N' Roll Star and over a 22-song show, they also played Lyla, The Shock of the Lightning, Cigarettes & Alcohol, The Masterplan, Wonderwall, Supersonic, Live Forever, Don't Look Back in Anger, and Champagne Supernova.
Liam dedicated his composition Songbird "to my missus, who’s probably in the bar".
On the day, support came from techno punks The Prodigy, the then inexplicably popular Kasabian, The Blizzards, and Glasvegas.
With talk of Slane taking place again following the sad passing of Lord Henry Mountcharles and Oasis in a position to sell out another world tour at the drop of a bucket hat, maybe they could be back in Slane next summer . . .
