Oasis: A British Legend

08 June 2009

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Oasis brought their music home to Manchester’s Heaton Park this weekend, with over 200 thousand fans coming to the city to see their ‘homecoming’ over the past three days. Here, we think it’s time we salute one of the greatest British bands of all time.

Neighbours to Liverpool’s Beatles, the boys from Manchester, Oasis have proven themselves as one of the finest British bands of all time after raising around £3 million per night for their homecoming in the city.

In honour of Liam and Noel Gallagher, and just how much they have achieved since they created Oasis in 1991, we thought we should take a look at their rise to fame over the past 18 years.

Early Years

Oasis are an English rock band that formed in Manchester in 1991 who made a name for themselves performing on the Manchester club circuit whilst signed to independent record label Creation Records.

Evolved from an earlier band called The Rain, the initial line-up was composed of Paul McGuigan (bass guitar), Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs (guitar), Tony McCarroll (drums) and Chris Hutton (vocals) but, unsatisfied with Hutton, Arthurs auditioned acquaintance Liam Gallagher as a replacement.

Laim decided the band should change their name to Oasis after seeing a venue called Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon listed on one of the posters for the Inspiral Carpets, whom his brother noel was a roadie for.

Although when Noel came to watch his little brother’s first gig at the Boardwalk club in Manchester in August 1991, he didn‘t really thing the band sounded anything special, but he thought that Liam’s group could provide a possible outlet for a series of songs he'd been writing for several years.

Either way, Noel did something right and his initial impressions were proven wrong when he and the band released their debut single, Supersonic, in April 1994, which made it to a respectable number 31 in the pop charts, but it was their third single, Live Forever, which as their first to enter the Top 10 of the UK charts, followed by their debut album, Definitely Maybe, which was released in September 1994, and entered the charts at number one. Oasis was officially born.

Rise To The Top

Oasis scored their first number on in April of 1995 with the single, Some Might Say, which was the first single to be taken from their second album. However, it was during what should have been a happy time for the band, that a rivalry between Oasis and Blur begun to come to light.

It all began on August 14, 1995, when Blur and Oasis released new singles on the same day, setting up "The Battle of Britpop" that dominated the national news and saw Blur's Country House outsell  Oasis' Roll with It 274,000 copies to 216,000 during the week.

Rather than keeping a dignified silence, Oasis' management came up with several reasons for this, claiming "Country House" sold more because it was less expensive (£1.99 vs £3.99) and because there were two different versions of "Country House" with different B-sides forcing serious fans to buy two copies.

However, it was the fact that Noel Gallagher told The Observer in September that he hoped Damon Albarn and Alex James of Blur would "catch AIDS and die", which caused a media frenzy. Trust Noel Gallagher to say it how he sees it.

Anyway, moving on, their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Became the third largest selling album of all time in the UK with over four million copies sold and it spawned the festival anthems, Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger, which also reached numbers two and one respectively. Take that Blur.

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