This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — The Oasis reunion explained’
Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. Today we are discussing the inescapable rock band Oasis. Last month, the band’s brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher, announced that they were reuniting after 15 years of feuding. And fans were so desperate for tickets to the reunion tour that ticket release day was a Taylor Swift-like train wreck of queues, glitches and inflated pricing. If you think you don’t know Oasis, you do. They were the most famous rock band in ‘90s Britain and their top three songs induce hugging and scream singing on karaoke and dance floors across the world. Those are “Champagne Supernova”, “Don’t look Back in Anger” and “Wonderwall”.
[“WONDERWALL” PLAYING]
Today, we’re going to explore why exactly this reunion is making people lose their minds and whether they deserve the love. I’ve invited two experts on. And to prepare, we have all watched the 2016 documentary Supersonic, which follows the Gallagher brothers through their biggest years. And let’s get into it.
I’m Lilah in New York and I’m putting my life in the hands of a rock and roll band who will throw it all away. Joining me from London, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t wish I could rock a parka like that, man. It’s our longtime music critic, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney. Hi, Ludo!
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Hello, Lilah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Also in London, she’s slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball. Where was she when we were getting high? It’s the FT’s London banking editor, Ortenca Aliaj. Ortenca, welcome.
Ortenca Aliaj
Thank you.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, we had trouble with these because so many of the Gallagher brothers’ quotes are very inappropriate. And I didn’t want to call any of you the C-word, even lovingly.
Ortenca Aliaj
Wouldn’t be the first time. (Laughter)
Lilah Raptopoulos
So to start, why don’t we paint a picture of Oasis for people who don’t know that much about them, which was me about four days ago. Ludo, I see this as you are our music expert, Ortenca, you are our Oasis superfan. Let’s start with Ludo. What’s their deal? Like, who are they? What’s their music like?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
So Oasis, I should, first of all, put a bit of background, which is that Oasis came from Manchester at the time that I was indeed at Manchester University. They played their first gig there in 1991, which, of course, I missed. Of course, I did. Probably too busy in the pub or something like that. And they emerged out of a time when Manchester was like the epicentre of music in Britain and, for a very brief period, you might even say the world. And then Oasis took that mantle and they turned it into something which was quite different to what came before. What came before was more like indie music. Oasis turned it into this huge, great big giant Britpop phenomenon of just like terrace anthems and this feeling of togetherness that you mentioned earlier, a sense of a country that was sort of on the cusp of some great change as we were about to go into Cool Britannia and a New Labour Britain of ’97. It was this time which Oasis absolutely captured. This sort of swaggered, slightly, frankly sort of lager-y and cocaine-y sense of just like . . .
Lilah Raptopoulos
Totally!
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
. . . of potentiality, which of course carries with it all sorts of ideas of a crash.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you a fan, Ludo?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
I am a fan, yes. So I’m a fan of the first two albums, you know, I mean to say that that’s Definitely Maybe. And (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? It’s like the two albums. And then every single one after that, they had quite a few after that, all of which were spoken up as being the best album ever by Noel, the chief songwriter. Each one of which turned out to be really actually a different shade of disaster.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. Ortenca, what about you? You are a fan. Tell me where that comes from. Why are you excited about this? Why do you love them?
Ortenca Aliaj
Well, I guess Ludo experienced them in their heyday, whereas I came to Oasis a lot later, in probably 2005 when I was 15. I remember hearing a busker in Canterbury where I grew up performing “Wonderwall”. And of course I was like, oh my God, this song is amazing. And I asked my friend who I was with and she said, it’s a band called Oasis. And there started my love affair with them. So I really had no prior context of their bad, unruly behaviour. I think by this point their popularity was probably starting to die out quite a bit. And so, you know, I was this child from quite a conservative Albanian household and I’m not sure my parents were aware that I was listening to two men who, yeah, mostly speak in profanities.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Can you both tell me a little bit about like, what are your favourite songs? Your least favourite? Like, what represents them do you think the best?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Well, I would go for the first album, Definitely Maybe, which came out in 1994. That has all of my favourite songs on this, like “Cigarettes and Alcohol”, “Shakermaker”.
[“SHAKERMAKER” PLAYING]
They’ve got like this big jumbo jet sound, Oasis. They’ve got these great, big giant riffs and stomping sound, and then you got Liam rasping away alongside it. And it’s a sort of slow-moving and really formidable, almost a sort of wall of sound, you could say. And I remember that in ’94 I went to see them in Glastonbury in ’94 and there was just like, when they came on and this great wall of sound rolled towards all the people who were watching, all the people sort of responded to it by moving towards it. It was like these two opposing forces being drawn together. So those are the songs which I find most attractive for myself.
Ortenca Aliaj
I love that Ludo is like speaking in actual music speaker as I’m like, I heard them play “Wonderwall” and I liked it. (Laughter) No, I agree. I think the first album is definitely my favourite album, but I’m also on the more basic side of things in that, you know, I associate a lot of this with being a teenager and also my first few years in university and listening to “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Champagne Supernova” and “Wonderwall” with my friends and that sort of, you know, being a defining period in my life. Despite those being relatively maybe sad or I guess, hopeful songs, I associate a lot of happy times with them. And I would say the first two albums are definitely, probably the only two that I know. I’m not sure I’m a . . . Am I a superfan? (Laughter)
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Yeah, I think the superfan in truth mounts are really some sort of powerful recidivist argument that later Oasis were the best Oasis, which is clearly sort of like a really precarious grounds to be on because you’re a fan of the first two albums.
Ortenca Aliaj
Yes, exactly. Which, you know, as we’ve determined they’re the only ones that matter.
Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, it’s funny, I lived in London for a few years, and when I first moved, one of like, the most seminal memories in my mind is going out on a night out. I think it was New Year’s at like the O2 in Shoreditch and towards the . . . at beginning of the night, you know, like very proper Brits we’re like, oh do I kiss you? And hello, nice to meet you. Do I hug? Do I not? How do I kiss? And then by the end of the night, they played “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and everyone was drunk and celebratory and suddenly wrapped around each other and, like, hugging and kissing and screaming. And mostly the men, although everybody. And it felt like I was a part of something that no one was explaining to me was like sort of embedded deep in the culture of Britain that I felt like an alien watching, but obviously meant something.
[“DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER” PLAYING]
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
I think that they have a sort of universal . . . they have a universal appeal, which actually still seems to be around now. I mean, they get, seem to be very much like the laddish band, which of course they were, the arch-laddish band, or are now, we can say again, can’t we? And that sense about as a very repressed country with the drinking culture in which feelings are sort of kept very well hidden, but then they do come out in these great and most huge sort of gouts of just like uncontrollable sort of bonhomie, I suppose, which their songs are just like perfect to trigger. It’s like a sort of Pavlovian call and one of those big Noel choruses which he’s written in which Liam is singing in his like totally inimitable fashion. It just like there is definitely something within a certain part of a certain type of British male psyche which just responds admittedly.
But as Ortenca shows, there’s a sort of universal appeal to this which transcends that, which goes beyond that, which actually I think has been quite surprising because at the time I thought they were so part of their time, so part of the ’90s. And these slow-moving songs seem to be so historically bound up in that Britpop moment that they wouldn’t actually last, that they would date. But in fact, I was completely wrong. It seems to me this is a band which really has burst the boundaries of the categories that we would like to place them into.
Ortenca Aliaj
Yeah, I was told something quite insane today, which I feel I need to share as I’m telling everyone upstairs in the office that I’m doing this podcast and they’re all mocking me because it’s not cool to like Oasis, apparently. One of my colleagues stands up and he says, well, my kids are singing Oasis at school in between hymns, which obviously makes it way more uncool. But I’m also wondering how old these kids are and why they’re being asked to sing Oasis songs during hymn time. So I guess that’s bringing in the new generation into the Oasis fold.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when Oasis’s tickets first got released, it was kind of a nightmare. And I’m wondering if that, like, why even that was such a big story, like how that kind of affects their brand or what it speaks to. Ludo, do you have any thoughts on that?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
I don’t think it’d done the grand Oasis any favours at all. They introduced dynamic pricing, a model which is very common in America, whereby tickets go up in price the more they become scarce, which we don’t really have here that much, at least not for concerts. And it was a big irony that the British band of their generation, the face of Britpop, should actually be at the vanguard of what is essentially an American sort of way of maximising revenue for a huge company like Ticketmaster.
Ortenca Aliaj
Yeah. I think the concept is that, you know, they represent the everyman, right, everywoman and it goes slightly against their brand to have dynamic pricing. Having said that, I guess everyone wants to make as much money as they can if I’m thinking about it that way. And I don’t begrudge them. I think being someone who covers finance at the FT, I am a full subscriber to the supply and demand model. And I think if people are gonna pay to watch them, I don’t think we can really complain about, you know, I drew a hard line, right? I was like, I’m not going to pay more than $150 for a ticket. And I don’t think it’s worth it for me to pay to go and see them for more than that. Other people disagree and I met people who paid 300 or £320 to go and see them. And so clearly, you know, there’s someone who does want to see them as much as or more than me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
So let’s get a little deeper into the mythology of Oasis and what it is that sort of pulls people into their story. As I mentioned, all of us watched the 2016 documentary Supersonic ahead of this to prepare. It’s directed by Asif Kapadia. It’s produced by the brothers, and it focuses on how they formed in those first four years until this historic performance that they did at Knebworth in 1996, which Noel has called the last great gathering before the birth of the internet. What do you think the film got out well, when it comes to how Oasis captured the British imagination?
Ortenca Aliaj
I think on the pre-Internet point, I actually think that is what touches at least on my nostalgia, but it’s that I don’t have all these videos, right, of like singing these songs with my friends or listening to them at parties or photos or anything like that. It was, it was sort of pre the age where we were all carrying around these recording machines in our pockets. And so there’s this real collectiveness of like getting together and giving yourself to the music. Like really, really being in it. And I’m quite militant about people bringing out their phones in concerts. And I’ve really . . . it’s my pet peeve and I really, really hate it. And you watch it. And that was the first thing I said. That was the first thing that struck me was there are no phones up in the air. I mean, it’s incredible.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And Ludo, you, you talked a little bit about how they, like, somehow transcended other Britpop artists at the time, like Blur and Pulp. And I asked you at the FT Weekend Festival this weekend if you were a fan of Oasis and you said yes. And then your wife said, very kindly, but we were Blur people. No, you were Blur people. So how do you think that happened? Why do you think young people, like, are into them?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Into them right now, I think because there hasn’t really been a replacement for them. Because there hasn’t been a replacement. There hasn’t been another band to come along, and another rock band like that,
which had the same sort of aura of sort of swagger, arrogance, volatility, all of these sorts of things that can be quite negative, but also actually have an attraction to them. And there’s been no subsequent bands. I mean, there were bands which were like The Libertines who sort of threatened to be something similar but were too chaotic and never big enough, never so big because Oasis was sort of gigantic. They were just huge. So it was like, you would have to think about bands like Coldplay as being ones who followed them. And it’s like chalk and cheese, you know? So I think that that’s one reason why people are sort of interested in that.
And maybe there’s an aspect about looking back to this period of Britishness and British music as well. I mean, you’re having like, lots of stuff, which is like rave stuff. The Charli XCX album draws on some rave culture. That was ’89, ’90. You have all of these different musics going on, and then out of that, you also have Britpop and this resurgence of British rock music. So I think that there’s the sense we’re looking back to this time, which was just like a really very exciting time. I mean, I’m bound to say that because that was a formative time for me. But it . . . I mean, it really was a very sort of formative time for a lot of the music which are being sort of listened to now.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And then some of them, as you were saying, some of it is about them, right? Like the two of them, their will-they won’t-they, you know, their love-hate relationship.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Yeah. I mean they . . . it’s . . . they’re biblical, aren’t they? In the Supersonic film, you have Liam talking about Cain and Abel. And it is. It’s a biblical tale. The brothers who really don’t get on at all. The brothers who are sort of bound together by some sort of bond and a loathing at the same time. This is the stuff of just, like, epic.
Lilah Raptopoulos
And they could never really make it apart. They both tried to have solo careers and they just can’t do it the way they can together.
Ortenca Aliaj
Yeah, I don’t know. I think, I mean, like Ludo said, I think Liam’s had a relatively successful solo career. I think there’s a sort of difference here between how the US views these guys, which is probably irrelevant or they think they are relevant, and it’s how the UK views them, which, you know, they’re still part of the sort of the cultural fabric. It’s easy to forget in all their chaos and obviously they had a very, as Supersonic touches on, a very horrible upbringing and a lot of difficulties with their father.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Abusive father.
Ortenca Aliaj
Exactly. I think both of them have this wit. But Liam in particular oozes charisma, right? He’s like, he’s so cool and he’s funny and people want to be around him. But it was also that, you know, I wasn’t a particularly rebellious teenager — something I hope my daughter inherits — and this was sort of my, this is my rebellion is that I would listen to them. And I had grown up, you know, I’d moved to the UK when I was nine. And so I’ve really had started listening to Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Both great artists who I still love. But, you know, listening to Oasis made me feel like I could reach some sort of other realm in music. And it was, like, gritty and it made me feel something. It wasn’t just listening to pop music, it was like I actually felt like, you know, I was sort of somehow being understood. So I just, yeah, I just think there’s the perception of them in the UK is just so different to how it is elsewhere. But I don’t know, Ludo, maybe you have a view on Noel’s career, but I think Liam’s . . .
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
I think that both of them have been pretty successful. Noel began as the more successful and then Liam overtook him and have . . . So they have done well, but nothing like the two together. The two together obviously, it catalyses into this huge event. But I just started picking up on what Ortenca tells us about their wittiness because they are, they’re both really clever. They’re that sort of unschooled clever. They’re like the at back of the school bus, but they’re smart, they’re clever. They’ve got like all of these . . . it’s very . . . it’s an attractive type in British culture, I think, of a sort of like the idea of a, this sort of person who’s cleverer than the posh lot, that kind of like doesn’t have all of those . . . I mean, they’re of the people. That sense about being of the people that they have.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They seem real. They speak in this sort of like working-class poetry, especially Liam. So I’m gonna play a clip of Liam doing an interview on the red carpet in 2016 at the release of this documentary.
Red Carpet interviewer voice clip
(Inaudible) Oasis, why is it, are they still one of the most important bands in the world?
Liam Gallagher voice clip
Because of yours truly, my friend. Nah, because we had good songs and we could sing and we had a good act. Actually, the meaning of (bleep). And we didn’t give a (bleep). And we looked cool. And we didn’t look cool. We told it how it was. We weren’t plastic and we weren’t afraid to, like, you know, have an opinion, I guess.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Yes, and the lyrics! Because Noel . . . a lot of people . . . you’ll have a lot of people who are really quite snobbish about their music and will say that it’s uncool. Like, Ortenca’s colleagues upstairs, you know, up on the, you know, the second floor of the FT is full of banking correspondents who are laughing at Ortenca for liking Oasis. This is just like repeated, you know, around all over the place, the (inaudible) critics who think Oasis know they’re terrible, they’re awful. They’re like, sort of everything, which is just like thuggish and laddish and they’re like hooligans. And it’s just like the worst part of British macho culture. And that Noel’s lyrics were always being mocked for being really dumb. But there is this sort of strange poetry to them. Like, Lilah, you were reading them off earlier, you know, you know them now. They’re a sort of strange British poetry.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, I do.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
They’re a weird British poetry, which just like really, when they get sung by Liam and you realise that in a song, it’s how things sound, which is actually just as important as what they mean. And they, at their best — and they’ve had a lot of at their worsts — at their best, they do manage to reach that level.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
My last question for both of you is just what you hope for the Oasis reunion? I’m sure part of the appeal is that you’ll be there when something memorable happens, whether that be like, you know, you see them and it is the sort of Knebworth. You’ll be there for the sort of pinnacle of some moment from the past. The other option is that you want to be there because like, you’ll see one of them punch the other one in the face. You’ll be there when they break up again. But what do you want? What do you hope will happen? What do you want to see?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Well, I think that if we think about that, the documentary Supersonic ends . . . they did, they which they executive produced, the Gallagher brothers, ends with Knebworth. And it’s just like . . . as if after that, after ’96, is as if they preferred that none of that had actually happened. What I hope for their return is that they can actually have that sort of full stop, which they failed to have back then because they continued with all of these lesser albums and these terrible gigs. And I would hope that they can actually sort of bring this sort of resonance, this sort of huge fanfare style ending to this career, which is what I think they deserve.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Great answer. Ortenca, what about you?
Ortenca Aliaj
I am hoping that Noel can pay off his divorce bills. (Lilah laughs)
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
20mn, I think.
Lilah Raptopoulos
I hope you all get the sort of, like, arms around, scream-sing catharsis moment that you clearly want and deserve.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
And do you think, Lilah, would you be going to see them if they turned up in New York? If they’re like sort of playing some mega gig at the Madison Square Gardens?
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I’d love to see them, but it’s sort of one of those fair weather-fan thing where, like, I’ll see them for the three songs, no, maybe the six songs, and I will hope they give the people what they want.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
But do you think would it work, say, for instance, Blur played in Coachella this year and it was a disaster? Like all of the influences at Coachella, which is like, utterly bemused by this bunch of middle-aged British people playing girls and boys. Do you think that would be the same? Oasis at Coachella, I could see that. I could see them being paid a very large amount of money to go and headline Coachella to a whole bunch of very unimpressed influencers.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I think that’s possible. You know what I hope from this tour and if it expands to America, that would be great. It’s just that they like really try to get people to — which I’m sure they will — to just actually, you know, they’ll give them a song to put their phones up for and then make them put their phones away and then sing the song again.
Ortenca and Ludo, thank you both so much. We will be back in just a moment for More or Less.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ADVERTISEMENT PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of in culture. Ortenca, What do you have?
Ortenca Aliaj
Since moving to the UK four months ago, I have discovered that every house has carpets laid down and it is the bane of my existence. I don’t know why Brits do this.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Wall-to-wall carpeting?
Ortenca Aliaj
Yes.
Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I know. It’s interesting.
Ortenca Aliaj
So I am on my second hoover (laughter) already and yeah, I would really, really, really like to see less wall-to-wall carpeting. And we should get more sort of Nordic on our decorations. Yeah.
Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. Less wall-to-wall carpeting. Ludo, what about you?
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
I will have a less as well, actually, Lilah. And it’s sort of culture. It’s like road culture, if I can bring that in. On my way here, pedalling furiously at a great pace through damp, slightly skidding in damp London, I came to a halt. I skidded to a halt all right, at a zebra crossing to let someone cross as you should do, you know, drivers-highway code, etc. And an e-bicyclist went slamming into my back wheel and then began shouting at me. And so I had an Oasis-style altercation. It was like Noel and Liam all over again in Hoban as we were swapping these whatevers, right? So I wanna see less e-cycles. In fact, I wanna see no e-cycles. I wanna see them taken out of circulation.
Ortenca Aliaj
I’d agree.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
He was way too close to me and he’s going too quickly and he didn’t have time to stop. I’ve pointed out to him in a slightly pedantic way, I might add, but still less e-bicycles.
Ortenca Aliaj
Less scooters.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Less scooters. Let’s go back to the ’90s!
Ortenca Aliaj
Let’s go back to the ’90s.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Pedal bicycles and then the motorised things.
Ortenca Aliaj
You know what? Let’s go back . . . let’s just take away cars as well. Let’s go back to like the 1800s. (Laughter)
Lilah Raptopoulos
I have a more this time. It’s . . . Now it feels sort of depressing next to both of yours but it’s more like action heroes that are ageing, playing the realities of ageing, acting like old people. I have been watching the show Shrinking on Apple Plus. I don’t know if either you’ve seen it. OK. It’s with Harrison Ford and Jason Segel and Jessica Williams, and it’s excellent. It’s just like very sweet. And Harrison Ford plays this ageing therapist who is dealing with an early-stage Parkinson’s diagnosis. And so he’s sort of like watching himself decline a little in depressing ways, and he plays it really well. And I just like really like watching one of the hottest action stars of the 20th century on screen dealing with the realities of ageing, which, you know, if we’re lucky, we all have to. So more cuddly Harrison Ford. That’s my more.
Ludo and Ortenca, thank you both so much for coming on the show. This was such a delight.
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Thank you, Lilah.
Ortenca Aliaj
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a look through our show notes, you will find links to all the pieces that we mentioned today. You will also find a discount to a Financial Times subscription and places to reach me on email and on Instagram, where I love chatting with you about culture.
I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s our incredible team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and Cheryl Brumley is our global head of audio. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.
