Cliff Notes – The one huge change since 2009 that might break Oasis mid-tour
- The rise of smartphone usage means that an estimated 17.3 million minutes of the tour will be recorded, shifting the concert experience from live engagement to digital documentation.
- The Gallagher brothers’ historically fraught relationship may be exacerbated by the scrutiny of their interactions, with potential on-stage tensions amplified by the presence of cameras and social media.
The one huge change since 2009 that might break Oasis mid-tour
When Liam and Noel Gallagher last played together as Oasis in 2009, we were still in our BlackBerry phone era. The iPhone 3G was only just coming around. No one used phones as cameras, let alone videocameras.
Fast forward 16 years, and Oasis’ huge reunion tour – kicking off on July 4 in Cardiff – will be a sea of screens where greasy, bashing heads used to be.
Research from UK electronics website Compare and Recycle estimates 17.3million minutes of Oasis’ 33-gig tour will be recorded on phones. That’s the equivalent to 33 years of non-stop Oasis recordings.
What happened to living in the moment?
But while we’ve come to expect this behaviour from concert-goers – leading to artists like Sabrina Carpenter considering phone bans – Noel and Liam haven’t performed together under this heavily scrutinised environment yet, which could raise on-stage (and off-stage) tensions.
Indeed, just because there’s a reunion, it doesn’t necessarily mean Noel and Liam are skipping into the sunset together: there are reports of a ‘military-style operation’ to give the brothers distance from each other while on tour, with reported separate green rooms and after parties.
This is worrying enough for those with tickets for September – which feels a shakily long way away – without the brothers disliking this phone-obsessed trend, which could bubble on-stage frustrations further.
‘This day and age is f***ed now. Camera phones. People go to concerts and film. They’re not in the moment,’ Liam once said.
‘Whereas you know when you get out the old guard who sit there and say, “It isn’t as good as it was in my day.” We’ve got the f***ing right to say that. It will never be the same. Rock and roll. Forget Oasis. Forget whether you like the music or not. Going to a concert will never be the same as what it was back then in the 90s,’ he said.
Liam continued: ‘You look at Knebworth, no one’s got a f***ing phone. Everyone’s just buzzing. Now, whether it’s a small gig or a big gig, they’re all like that on their f***ing phones. I’m dead proud we got in there before it ended.’
In 2020 former band photographer Kevin Cummins told The Quietus of Noel’s similar concerns, expressed to him ‘the other day’ while the pair attended a football match together.
‘Noel was saying, “Well, [Oasis] wouldn’t be the same, because there would be 200,000 people watching it through their phones.”
‘He said, “We were the last band really where you could go to a gig and nobody was taking pictures, and that’s what made it exciting.”’
In short: if the only thing that could reconcile these feuding brothers is the promise of the magic of Oasis at Knebworth, they may be disappointed. So much has changed in gig environments that the magic may be harder to conjure in 2025.
If the brothers aren’t feeling it on stage – possibly the only time they will come together for hours at a time, if reports of the ‘military-style operation’ are true – and if tensions behind the scenes are sizzling, who’s to say they won’t just throw in the towel?
Plus, the Gallagher brothers have nothing if not egos – and a long history of trying to dent each other’s through public barbs.
In a 2020 interview with NME Liam said of his brother and bandmate: ‘The geezer’s ego’s out of control.’
And, well, you just have to look at Liam walk and speak to see this.
The best way to bruise an ego is public humiliation, which in the age of phones and concerts will be rewatched and relived forever. So if Noel or Liam decide to take a swipe at one another on stage, the impact will be amplified publicly, and in turn personally too.
Just look at Roger Daltrey’s tantrum at The Who’s recent Royal Albert Hall gig, when he blamed drummer Zak Starkey for not being able to hear over the music. Zak – son of Ringo Starr – was unceremoniously sacked after 30 years with the band, re-hired, seemingly sacked again and now honestly, we’re not sure what’s happening – and neither is Zak.
It seems unlikely Daltrey’s reaction to looking a bit silly on stage would have been quite so extreme if the moment wasn’t online forever. Rather than simply brushing the mistake off as they perhaps would have done 20 years ago, fingers were pointed.
With Oasis in particular, the Gallagher brothers’ feud is as famous as Wonderwall, so their relationship will be scrutinised to smithereens as soon as they step out for the first time together tomorrow.
What will follow is body language experts finding signs the brothers are still harbouring resentment, and even unintentional jibes that would usually go unnoticed will be dissected like a frog in a science class.
Unless the brothers go on a digital detox – which we cannot see happening for social media obsessed Liam – they will see all this play out online throughout their tour for months on end.
Gulp.
Everyone hold tight, because we’re in for a wild ride. Let’s just hope Noel and Liam will Roll With It like champs, even if videos from gigs will Live Forever.
