'It was genuinely all anyone could talk about' - When Oasis rocked Páirc Uí Chaoimh

The Journal

14 hours ago

IN AUGUST 1996, Oasis played two gigs at Cork's Páirc Uí Chaoimh. The Gallagher brothers – Liam and Noel – were at the apex of their fame. The tabloids followed their every move – including Liam's arrival with his then-girlfriend Patsy Kensit at Cork Airport.
Thousands of fans travelled to Cork for the 40,000-capacity gigs on 14 and 15 August, which took place a few days after two combined 250,000-capacity gigs in
Knebworth
, England.
It was Oasis's world in 1996, and the rest of us were just living in it.
This coming August, the band – back together after a bitter split between the Gallaghers in 2009 – will play two gigs in Croke Park as part of a tour that kicked off last night in Cardiff.
So what was it really like to have a ringside seat to those famous 1996 gigs?
Oasis
/ YouTube
In December 1994, Neil Harrison from the Beatles tribute band the Bootleg Beatles was performing at a gig when he noticed a man sitting on the stage. The stranger was 'conducting the audience' during the song Hey Jude.
'I thought - who's that?' Harrison tells
The Journal
.
'And then he appeared in the dressing room, and of course, it was Liam.''
A few hours later, Harrison was eating a curry with the frontman of Oasis and the band's guitarist Bonehead (Paul Arthurs).
The Bootleg Beatles later got a call asking them to support Oasis, but turned it down because it was near Christmas. Two years later came another call: would they support the band at Earl's Court, London? In the intervening years, Oasis had become one of the biggest bands in the world.
'We went: 'let me just think about that for a millisecond',' laughs Harrison (who, in spite of his surname, played John Lennon in the tribute band lineup).
That led to the group them joining a tour which saw Oasis play two gigs in Cork's Páirc Uí Chaoimh, a massive event in the country's second city.
It was also a huge deal for the Bootleg Beatles, catapulting them out of small gigs and into stadiums. The band, which formed in 1980, are still going today – they will play two dates at the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin in September.
'We got a bit of a taste of Beatlemania,' says Harrison.
'God bless them, I'll say it forever: it was a very brave decision of theirs to do that and risk us, because it could have gone terribly wrong.'
'They were a phenomenon'
That Oasis chose the Bootleg Beatles as one of their 1996 tour support acts – alongside the Prodigy – spoke to two things: that they wanted to do things their own way, and that they wanted to pay tribute to their favourite band.
In 1996, just two years after the release of their debut album Definitely Maybe, they were so big they could do anything they wanted.
'Oasis were a phenomenon in the 1990s. At least one Gallagher was in the paper every single day,' says Sarah Breen, the co-author of the Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling series, who's still a massive fan to this day.
'It was front page news when Liam got a haircut – rightly so.'
'It was genuinely all anyone could talk about,' she says about the Cork gigs.
'They were ours'
Prince and Michael Jackson had played Páirc Uí Chaoimh in the years before Oasis. But there was no one quite like these two brothers with Irish heritage (their grandparents are from Mayo), who were, as their granny might say, bold as brass.
The Gallaghers' brazenness helped propel the Britpop 'Blur v Oasis' debates, and their sibling rivalry added another twist to their success. Plus, they had a certain frisky charm about them. Asked about their Irish roots
by RTÉ
in 1994, Noel said: 'I come over 'ere to indulge my love of Tayto, Silvermints and No. 6 cigarettes.'
Flor Mac Carthy was a young journalist in RTÉ Cork when she was tasked to cover the gigs for the Six One News.
We claimed them, the way we like to do. Really, between Oasis playing Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the really cool gigs [like Nick Cave] in Liss Ard Estate, it was as if the music spotlight had shifted to Cork. So we were a cool place.
The excitement was such that Mac Carthy nearly ended up in a near-death situation. 'We knew they were going to arrive shortly in the limo, and all the crowds were inside,' she recalls of her night reporting on their first gig.
'And we thought, okay, here's what we'll do: as they slow down to go in through the gates, I'll have my microphone ready, and I'll just jump in front of the car and they'll have to stop.'
'Then [the cameraman and I] looked at each other and thought – maybe not!' laughs Mac Carthy.
CR's Video Vaults
/ YouTube
Speculation abounded about the band's activities in Cork. 'There was a rumour that the Oasis chopper was seen flying from Skibbereen to Glandore,' says Mac Carthy.
She even ended up interviewing nuns who got into the gig for free. There was an attitude of 'anything goes' around.
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'There were hordes of teens with Beatles haircuts, because Cork really embraced the Beatlemania vibe of the Oasis haircuts,' she recalls. 'There was a fantastic atmosphere.'
'It was our Beatlemania'
Sarah Breen
Sarah Breen
Alan White, now a primary school teacher, was a 13-year-old Oasis fan living in Cork who happened to share a name with the band's drummer.
'I took up the drums because of it,' he laughs. He went to the gig with his older sister and their uncle, and the experience became a benchmark for all the gigs he'd attend afterwards.
He loved Oasis because 'they were like: 'We are the biggest band in the world, and we don't give a shite what anyone else thinks'. You don't really see that nowadays,' says White.
'It was basically our version of Beatlemania. Even though they probably whipped a lot of their melodies from the Beatles, but we didn't care,' jokes White.
Pre-internet, it just felt like everybody was obsessed with them, and they were to be fair.
He queued for hours to buy tickets: 'It was a Willy Wonka, golden ticket type job.'
'For years after, I was like, 'I was at that gig' – almost like 'where were you when JFK was shot?'.'
Getting into the event was 'absolutely bananas', but once he got into the crowd the security person at the soundstage let him stand behind the railings on a platform.
'Are we gonna get rotten tomatoes?'
White remembers, even at 13, noticing the disparity between the two support acts. 'It was a weird combination to be honest – Bootleg Beatles, the Prodigy and Oasis,' he says.
This was something that worried the Bootleg Beatles too. 'Are we just gonna get rotten tomatoes coming flying? I didn't honestly know what the reaction was going to be… we were putting these wigs on and dressing up as the Beatles,' says Neil Harrison.
But the audiences all seemed to take us to their hearts, which is great.
Keith Flint, the frontman of the Prodigy, who had a somewhat unfounded reputation as a 'hard man', was even seen grooving to their set backstage.
Oasis's reputation as rock n'roll hellraisers was well cemented by 1996. 'They were extremely respectful. They included us in everything,' says Harrison. 'Liam watched our whole set on the side of the stage. He loved it so much… I think they completely dug what we were doing.'
What does he remember about Cork? 'We had a few jars. I remember the family being there, and sitting down and talking to them. That was quite interesting. They were just regular people. There was no airs and graces about them.'
As for the Irish fans, he says: 'You know what the Irish are like. I mean, they go for it. The moment you start, they're up there, they're away.'
Says Alan White: 'I remember everybody seemed to be wearing Docs. And circle glasses, like the John Lennon, Liam Gallagher glasses, bucket hats…. Literally everybody that was there was dolled up in Oasis gear. It was just cans everywhere.'
'I just remember the whole place bouncing. Literally the minute they started playing, it was just 'jump'.'
'Completely obsessed'
Oasis
/ YouTube
Sarah Breen was 'absolutely and completely obsessed with Oasis', and felt like she had won the lottery when she got the chance to go to Cork for the gig with her two cousins.
'I don't know why a culchie from Carlow connected so strongly with a group of working class lads from Manchester, but it was like a lightning strike,' she says.
'It was cool to like them in the early 90s and I was fully in love with Liam. I bought every single. Cut every picture out of the tabloids every day. Forced my friends with MTV to record every music video.
I even wrote a letter to Peggy Gallagher explaining the situation. She was good enough to send me back a signed picture of her sons a few weeks later.
One of Breen's favourite Oasis songs was Whatever, which never appeared on an album but was released as a single, and she used to sing along to the violin part at home.
'I thought I was the only one who did that. But when the song started in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, 40,000 other people sang the strings out loud. It was the first time I'd ever felt part of a community… and why I still love going to concerts 20 years later.'
Breen's fandom hasn't waned, even if the band has gone through various trials over the years. 'When I was a teenager I spent a lot of time arguing with people about why Oasis were the best band in the world. Now that I'm a little bit older, I just say that they're the best band in my world,' says Breen.
Breen has dreamed of another Oasis gig since the band split up. 'The anticipation of these gigs has made me burst into tears more than once,' she says. 'I've seen people suggest they're just doing this tour 'for the money'. Isn't that why any of us get up and go to work?'
A year after the Cork gigs, the album Be Here Now was released. It marked the beginning of a downturn for Oasis, with critics feeling their musical gifts had started to wane. Eventually, after various ups and downs the band split amid fractious arguments between the Gallagher brothers.
Says Alan White: 'Because I had been to that gig in Cork, I was almost loyal to them. I was like, I have to keep listening to them. I went to see them again in 2001. They were just riding that crest of a wave, just in their pomp in 1995, 1996, could do no wrong. I suppose that was never gonna last forever.'
Breen says she was 'sort of in denial' about the band's issues – musical and personal. 'My love for Oasis didn't allow any room for criticism. I was too far gone. I can even feel myself getting defensive about it now,' she says.
She's going to both Croke Park dates. 'Part of me is dreading August coming around because I don't want it to be over. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, what will I have to live for then?'
This is a tour that fans have been waiting for for years. It's not just Oasis that people are waiting for – it's the reminder of a time that feels so different to today, a pre-social media time. It's a blast of nostalgia from a band that even today have a hold on the culture.
Says White: 'I'd say they could probably play Baa Baa Black Sheep and people would still go mental for it.'
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