Finally, on Tuesday morning at 8am, the guesswork was over: Oasis announced that they would be going on a 14-date tour of the UK and Ireland next summer. “The guns have fallen silent,” they said in a shared statement. “The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”
Delightfully, the announcement arrived in the sort of theatre we’ve come to expect from the Gallagher brothers. A secret meeting. A tantalising teaser – a surprise dedication to Noel, and a mysterious date – at the finale of Liam’s gig last week.
Plenty of coded tweets. Reports have already emerged suggesting that only 15 highly trusted – and tightly NDA’d – people were in the know about the tour.
Those closest to the deal have said that the atmosphere was “electric” on the set of a top-secret photoshoot for the poster which will be used in the comeback tour.
Even insiders on the project didn’t believe they’d ever “see the day the brothers would stand side by side again”. Insiders told The Sun: “It was a pinch me moment to have Noel and Liam together. It has taken a lot to get them to this point, but they’re thinking of the fans.”
Inevitably, when the official 8am announcement went live, the crowds went wild. The quintet dominated headlines once again. Ticketmaster announced they’ve had to double their IT and customer support staff to deal with the demand of sales expected to come on 31 August. Grown men on X invented fictional Gen Z women to chastise for wanting tickets, and the battle for the biggest fan began. We all got pretty nostalgic and asked, why now?
There is one obvious answer, and reports and chatterings about the £50m the pair are each set to make from the tour are already well underway, with one talent agency manager speculating that the comeback could generate up to £400m for the band.
But, despite reports of wrangling over money – and Noel’s 2021 comments that he would get the band back together for £100m – Liam has already refuted claims that money’s the motivating factor.
In hindsight, there had been plenty of other clues. After Noel announced his estimated £20m divorce from Sara MacDonald, who the rumour mill deemed “strongly opposed” to Oasis’ reformation due to her strained relationship with his brother, in January 2023, fans began to read into Liam’s tweets. “Hollies he ain’t heavy he’s my brother – Google search,” he posted along with the song.
More recently, in an interview just a few weeks ago, Liam Gallagher’s 23-year-old son Gene revealed that his dad was keen. “I mean, will they? I don’t know,” he told the interviewer. “I don’t know. I would love to but it’s so beyond my control … I get the feeling my dad wants it, too,” he added. “Let’s hope it happens.”
Feeling that Gene probably knew more than he was letting on, the Sunday Times Style writer tried again when they were two pints in.
Do you and Anaïs ever talk about Oasis getting back together, she pressed. To which he insisted: “No, we have jokes about it but we don’t go at it. She knows what her dad’s like and I know what my dad’s like. Hey, we’re a big happy family everyone.” He laughs. “It’s nothing to do with us.” But couldn’t you do an intervention? “They’re both [Liam and Noel] way too smart for that, it would never work.”
But as early as two months ago, eagle-eyed Redditors on the Oasis subreddit started posting hearsay about a reunion at Wembley Stadium, from someone who “works within the music industry alongside a well-known current band”.
A Parisian commenter heard the same first-hand from a roadie on Liam Gallagher’s 2024 tour, she said. In June, NME reported that, despite their very public estrangement, Liam “saves a seat for Noel at every solo show”.
It was for good reason that many thought this was little more than a power play – their history says it all. The band had arrived at a time in the 1990s that was loaded with potential. They sang about and for the working class, drawing the rule book on “us” – the young, the fearless, the estate kids – and “them” in the wake of a Conservative party election win with their first definitive album. But their disruptive nature wasn’t just saved for the fans they found in a politically pissed-off youth.
Off stage, the Gallaghers’ relationship dominated headlines. The rivalry that started in their shared childhood bedroom spilled into their new-found careers from the get-go. As early as 1994, during their first US tour, one gig ended with Liam hitting his brother over the head with a tambourine and walking offstage. Just a week into recording their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Noel famously hit Liam with a cricket bat when they got into a fight at a pub in Monmouth.
When they finally disbanded almost a decade later, it was Liam wielding a guitar “like an axe,” he told Associated Press in a later interview. “And he’s swinging this guitar around and he kind of you know, he took my face off with it, you know?”
Ultimately, the feud split the family in two. Noel declared he would “never forgive” his brother for leaving the band; at the 2018 NME awards, Liam claimed Noel was the “biggest liar and biggest faker in the business”. He once declared that he’d “rather eat my own shit than be in a band with [Noel] again.”
For their mum, Peggy Gallagher, the brothers have both acknowledged that it has been hard, with some speculating that she has been the driving force for the reunion.
In 2017, Liam told BBC Radio 2 that “the families have not seen each other, and my kids haven’t seen his kids. I haven’t seen his kids”, the Mirror reported. He added that it would be “lovely for my mum” for the pair to reconcile their differences. “And then maybe we could get the band back together or maybe not but that would be nice.”
And isn’t it just? For now, the family and the band are back together, with the only looming battle at the frontline for tickets on Saturday. The rumours have all been proven true – and, at least this week, Oasis have become one of the most sought-after bands in the UK almost to the day, that they burst on the scene as scrappy start-ups, fresh from Burnage council estate in Manchester.
Although no one knew it yet. Definitely Maybe, their debut, shot to number one after its release on 29 August 1994 and would become one of the most era-defining records of the last century. Brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher were suddenly two of the most lucrative names in music then and today they are still proving their worth, with their reunion tour predicted to smash all records.
But, lest we forget the legend of the band and musical success was always landlocked by jeopardy – feuds with the pretty boys of Britpop, Blur; the well-documented, explosive hatred passed between the two frontmen during and after their split in 2009.
Those closest to them point out that there’s an entire year between now and summer 2025, when the Gallagher brothers are promising to take to the stage for the first time in more than a decade. Will this unexpected ceasefire hold out? Maybe. Will it be worth the wait? Definitely. Until then? Watch this space.