Latest news with #Gallaghers
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Liam had been drinking all night. Noel was not in a great mood': photographers pick their best Oasis shot
I didn't really know the Gallaghers then. I had only shot Oasis at the Q awards and live shows. In 2001, I was commissioned by a US publication for a feature about The US tour of Brotherly Love, with Oasis, the Black Crowes and Spacehog. All the bands had two brothers in them, and I had been asked to photograph the Gallaghers and the Robinsons from the Black Crowes together. The shoot was at the Scala in King's Cross, London. It was peak Oasis, but there was no entourage, nobody watching over my shoulder. There was also literally nowhere to shoot in the venue. I ended up finding a corridor with a white wall and I thought: 'I'll try and make this look as much like a studio as possible.' I think Liam was holding a can of Red Stripe and they were smoking. I started taking shots of them all together and then, being a savvy photographer, made sure I did lots of the Gallaghers on their own. It is very rare that you see pictures of them laughing: Noel's almost rolling his eyes. I wasn't really tuned into what they were saying – and I might not have even been able to hear. I certainly wasn't the one making them laugh. I was chuffed to get the chance to shoot them, but I felt like Liam had quite a front, and I couldn't really connect with him. I remember thinking: 'The shots are OK.' Now they feel a lot more classic – black and white, very contrasty – but that's something that only happens with the passing of time. Back at the very start of my career, when I was 25, I knew an art director who was working on a new magazine called Loaded. In May 1994, he rang and said: 'I've got a job for you.' He gave me the address of a hotel somewhere in Manchester and told me to meet a guy called Noel Gallagher. I thought he was a tour manager, at first. Nobody said he was actually in the band. The hotel was like an Edwardian house: the place was so depressing. The receptionist had that Mancunian ambivalence, very downbeat. I said I'm here to see Noel Gallagher and she gesticulated with her thumb. So I go down this corridor, knock on the door. He answers and just goes: 'All right?' That's it, devoid of any warmth. He'd split up with his girlfriend and they'd shared a flat, so the record company were paying for him to live at the hotel. He had this little pocket address book and was making phone calls. Each one was the same: 'All right, seen our kid? OK, bye.' I was sitting there like a lemon thinking: 'What is 'our kid'?' So I thought: 'I'll just take some pictures.' Then he got up and said: 'Let's go.' As we were leaving, he stopped and said: 'What do you think of Blur?' And I went: 'I quite like them.' 'Second-best band in Britain,' he said. We walked to this street corner and then four guys came from the opposite direction. You could identify the leader from 200 yards away, because he had this unbelievable walk. It was mad experiencing that walk. I quickly gathered Noel and Liam were brothers. They spoke to each other in such a relentlessly passive aggressive way. Noel would tut and roll his eyes at everything Liam said. Liam asked me what football team I supported. I said Arsenal. He put his hand up to my face and went: 'I can't even look at you.' For the actual shoot, we went to Maine Road [then Manchester City's home]. I got on the ground and he made as if he was kicking a football at the camera. Before that day, I had been living a very precarious existence. Afterwards, I started to get a lot of well-paid work. My wife's best friend knows Noel and a couple of years ago we both went to a birthday dinner at her house. I said to Noel: 'I often think of that photo as the day my career started.' He goes: 'I'll tell you why that's the day your career began – because that's the day you met Oasis.' Bands – especially ones with a pretty boy singer or a female singer – can get really nervous that the singer gets all the attention. Noel was never like that. He said: 'You've got to use the assets you've got.' Liam was a really attractive young boy at the time. You put that on the cover of a paper, you're going to sell a lot. Early on, I was asked by Creation Records to get Oasis used to being photographed and work out what kind of image suited them – whether we wanted a modern look or a 1960s vibe. I was from Manchester originally and Noel, Liam and I supported Manchester City, so the label thought I was the person to ease them into it. Bands are normally a little bit cocky when they first start, but Oasis weren't. They were like: 'Oh, I love those pictures you did of Joy Division.' So they were kind of in awe of me initially. In July 1994, we went to Manchester to do a big session for the NME. A couple of people at the NME were obsessed with the Beatles and wanted Oasis to be a bit like that, but I didn't really see that in them. They weren't yobby – they were quite sensitive, I felt – but by the same token, they were lads who went to watch football. And those were the people who liked the band. We went to Maine Road to do some photographs. This picture was taken from the steps of the entrance to the stadium. I like it because it's very monotone. Liam's shirt is pretty much reflected in the painted brickwork around the ground. At the time, City were sponsored by Brother, a Japanese electronics company, and to have 'Brother' on the shirts was an absolute gift. We did a lot of pictures of the band in the Manchester City shirts that day. That was meant to be the cover of the NME, but my editor said: 'I don't want them to be associated with losers' – because City were about to get relegated. Even now, people associate that shirt with the band. It was interesting because football wasn't fashionable in the way it is now – and it wasn't glamorous at all. It was very difficult for people outside the UK to get football shirts from English clubs but in Tokyo, fans in the front four rows of their shows were wearing Man City shirts. They must have written to the club and had them imported. In 1994, I was chief photographer for Melody Maker and that July I flew to New York for the Maker's first Oasis cover. We were booked on the same flight, but the band were in club class and me and the hack were in goats-and-chickens. Liam came back to say hello. He was a garrulous guy, even pre-fame. He was standing at the back of the plane having a beer and this woman came by huffing and puffing with some kids and Liam offered to look after one of them. He pulled down one of those seats the flight attendants sit on and had the girl on his lap and chatted to her. After the tales I'd heard, I'd thought I was about to spend a few days with a nutcase. But he was sweet as a nut. We were out there for four days. They were shooting a video and doing a gig. This shoot was on the third day and we'd over-grooved the night before. It was punishingly hot. We got on the subway, we walked here, walked there, looking for a location, then this woman from the label said: 'I know this place.' She took us to a disused bridge. It was amazing: you can see one of the greatest cities in the world behind the band. I think Liam bought the top in homage to John Lennon. There's a picture that Bob Gruen took of Lennon wearing a similar shirt. They're really good people. They had a tremendous professionalism, but they always had a cheekiness, too – and such a bloody great sense of humour. Especially Liam. He's a good laugh, a tremendous piss-taker. I first met Oasis when I was finishing a book called The Moment. The book started with a picture of Paul McCartney taken on an Instamatic and I was looking for an up-and-coming band to end on. I sent Oasis all the live shots I'd taken of them at their gig at the Cambridge Corn Exchange and they really liked them. From then on, I started documenting them with their blessing. This was taken in Paris the first year I was working with them, at the end of 1995. We were supposed to meet them in Noel's room but my assistant found Liam in the bar. It appeared he'd been up all night and was still drinking. Obviously, Noel was not in the greatest mood, having been kept waiting and then seeing that Liam was somewhat inebriated. I had done several shoots with them already, but never experienced the tension between the brothers that other photographers had recorded. I used to say to them: 'How come you never fight when I'm around?' This wasn't a fight, but it was a chance to document in a subtle way the dynamics. The brothers, who are looking in opposite directions, somehow they're touching but they're also so separate from each other. We were pursued by paparazzi, probably British, as we were walking along the banks of the Seine, which is where this was taken. Liam was a bit merry and was saying hello to French people. He is an unpredictable soul. He's a joy to photograph, but a challenging person all round. I was very experienced – I'd worked with the punks – so wasn't particularly fazed. I was quite a bit older than them, like a mother figure. That was useful because all of them were more or less brought up by their mums, so they were perhaps more likely to be cooperative with an older female. My brief from Noel was to just record stuff. They knew already that they couldn't spend hours posing for shoots with fashion accessories and so on, but Noel had the intuition that whatever was happening to them should be documented. If it had been a band that were very protective of their public image, I think the shoot would have been cancelled that day. But Oasis weren't like that. They permitted that closeness. I felt like part of the crew. That was the great joy of photographing them. Oasis: The Masterplan by Kevin Cummins is published by Cassell. Roll With it by Tom Sheehan is published by Welbeck. Oasis: Trying to Find a Way Out of Nowhere by Jill Furmanovsky and Noel Gallagher is published by Thames & Hudson on 23 September and available to pre-order.
Daily Mirror
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Noel Gallagher breaks silence on Oasis rehearsals and gives verdict on band
Noel Gallagher has told his pal Bono he is 'shocked' at how the Oasis rehearsals are sounding. In the first revelation from the singer songwriter since the band reunited, US frontman Bono revealed Noel is confident the Oasis Live 25 reunion tour should sound great. Bono, an Oasis fan himself, teased fans by saying we were going to have a 'good Summer' and he would be at the Gallagher gigs too. On Oasis, Bono said in a new interview: "I love them. I just love them. And what I really love is this, the sort of preciousness that had gotten a part of what was called indie music. They just blew it out. "And there was just a swagger. The sound of getting out of the ghetto, not glamorising it. And they're both funny, funny, funny. "I'm still very close with Noel. And he got a message to me, and he says that he's kind of shocked by how great the band is. So I think we're going to have a good summer." Asked if he would be going to see Oasis himself, Bono told Zane Lowe: "Of course! And remember what they did as well. Those kind of big guitars, big Neil Young generous sounds. "They were against the law in the UK, and they're like, 'No, I have to do what I f**king want.' "And then they had this kind of rhythmic, beautiful quality. 'Today is gonna be the day...' So that's a kind of, that's an almost R&B rhythm. "But Manchester was very influenced by dance music, so they were groovier than anybody. They were rawer than anybody. "And Edge and myself met them in the first album. We went to Noel's flat. And they're like... it's literally a basement flat first album. "And it's like, 'Yeah, I'm into U2. Noel's like, 'Yeah, you're the Edge! Wow!' And Liam's whatever. "And I'm saying, you know, America's great, because at that time It didn't get through - till now. By the way, Oasis message didn't get through maybe to America, and America didn't get through to... so this is going to be, this would be like their first tour in the US. People that know how great they are.' Noel and Liam will walk on stage for the first time together in public, since the band split nearly two decades ago, on July 4 at Cardiff's Principality Stadium. There will also be dates in Manchester, London and Dublin as part of the tour. The legendary Manchester band are reuniting for their first tour in 16 years, dubbed Oasis Live '25, after finally burying the hatchet last year. Earlier this week frontman Liam admitted he was sad about the split. A user asked on X: "How does it feel singing songs with ur brother again? Like old times? (sic)" To which, Liam replied: "You know what it's spiritual but I can't help think about all those wasted years, what a waste of PRECIOUS time (sic)." Oasis split following a backstage bust-up between the Gallaghers at Rock en Seine festival in Paris in 2009. Their return to the stage has been one of the most anticipated music events of the decade, with rehearsals now well underway in London. * The full interview with Bono is on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1.
Irish Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Pulp: More review – Jarvis Cocker and co's great bait and switch
More Artist : Pulp Label : Rough Trade Britpop reunions have tended towards two extremes. There's the grubby cash grab, where a group who weren't all that great in the first place try to squeeze as much cold, hard currency as possible from their audience, regardless of the impact on their reputation. We leave it to the reader to conclude which artists fall into this category, though you can take it that we do not refer to The Boo Radleys or Echobelly. Then there's a comeback that casts an old band in a new light. Consider Suede, who have done their best work since re-forming. Or Blur, whose album The Ballad of Darren , from 2023, was a beautiful portrait of fiftysomething melancholy. Pulp 's first album for 24 years falls into neither category – because, though its intentions are noble, its execution is spotty. What's more, it makes the mistake of flooring the listener with a fantastic opening track, then peters out in a grim drizzle of indie plodders that showcase Jarvis Cocker 's way with a despondent couplet but don't achieve an awful lot else. More isn't entirely a disaster: it won't ruin your memories of Pulp's glory days, which is surely the risk with the Gallaghers ' imminent pension-top-up tour. But it achieves a feat beyond even Cocker's most despondent lyric in reminding the listener that some things are perhaps best left in the past, Pulp albums among them. READ MORE To their credit, there is never any sense of phoning it on the part of the musicians. (Cocker is joined by the drummer Nick Banks, the keyboardist Candida Doyle and the guitarist Mark Webber, but the record has been made without Russell Senior, Pulp's original guitarist, and, of course, Steve Mackey, its late bassist, who died in 2023.) The catalyst for the project was a run of gigs that year that included a stop at St Anne's Park in Dublin, the sort of unremarkable suburban backdrop that has been the fuel for Cocker's songwriting since his formative years as a skinny punk in Sheffield. [ Pulp at St Anne's Park review: Suddenly, a rather ordinary gig jumps to an extraordinary place Opens in new window ] It was while on tour that they trialled one of More's better tunes, the lush, string-drenched Hymn of the North. It's a beautiful moment, borne aloft by Cocker's ruminative, rumbling voice – if chocolate were a sound, and were also very sad, this is what it would sound like. But it is a rare pick-me-up across an LP that fails to reach either the bittersweet highs of His 'N' Hers and Different Class or plumb the melodramatic depths of This Is Hardcore, Cocker's 'Actually, I hate being famous' lament. More starts, however, with that bait and switch, in the form of the glorious Spike Island (written with Jason Buckle, Cocker's collaborator in Relaxed Muscle, his synth-pop duo). Tragically, this is not about the former prison camp in Cork Harbour – how great would it be if it were – but refers to The Stone Roses' disastrous gig in northwest England in the early 1990s, which has grown in the retelling to become a landmark in youth culture. The track is wonderful. Cocker's voice achieves a yelping majesty, and there's lots of dizzy, fizzy guitar going off in the background. Here the album dangles before us the illusion that you can go back and that everything will be the same. But it isn't 1995, and Pulp can no longer crank out bangers such as Do You Remember the First Time?, a point painfully illustrated as the LP unspools into a lustreless exploration of midlife ennui (not helped by James Ford's flat production). Cocker has a reputation as a scintillating observer of everyday life. But throughout More he risks stating the thumpingly obvious. Grown Ups, which plods along like a baroque Chas & Dave, finds him reflecting on how his peers have deserted their trendy neighbours of old and are more stressed about wrinkles than acne. Neither is an insight that will have you sitting bolt upright. A sort of blend of Serge Gainsbourg and Benny Hill, Cocker in his songwriting prime captured wonderfully the curtain-twitching prurience of the British middle classes. He comes back around to the theme of buttoned-down sexuality on Slow Jam, where he natters to Jesus about his sex exploits (Cocker's, that is), then proposes spicing up his love life with a threesome between 'you, me and my imagination'. More flickers to life now and then. An exhilarating disco groove propels Got to Have Love, which suggests Giorgio Moroder collaborating with Philip Larkin (an inspiration for all morose Yorkshire wordsmiths). And the project ends on a satisfying note with the comforting hush of A Sunset, written with Cocker's fellow Sheffield musician Richard Hawley. It's quite lovely. But, arriving at the end of an often listless, seemingly pointless record, lovely isn't enough.
North Wales Live
04-06-2025
- Business
- North Wales Live
‘Beer-proof parka' launched for Oasis fans to avoid a soaking at gigs this summer
Oasis fans will be drenched by a whopping 2,219,458 pints of beer this summer at the long-awaited reunion tour, enough to fill up a 25-metre swimming pool over one and a half times. The research found that fans are expected to buy 8,667,600 pints during the Oasis reunion tour in the UK, with a quarter (25%) of those to be thrown in the air in celebration. That means an equivalent of £16,587,187.61 worth of beer will be lost to enthusiastic fans at the Oasis sell-out gigs this year. The results were uncovered by statisticians who pored over new original consumer research of 2,000 British adults to determine just how many pints are expected to be spilt in excitement at the iconic reunion this year. To help protect fans from these celebratory beer spills, Radio X have launched a range of special 'beer-proof parkas' perfect for gig-goers this summer. A pint thrown in the air in celebration is a staple of British summertime, often seen during World Cups, European championships and gigs. Radio X Drive presenter Johnny Vaughan 'dry-tested' the packable- parkas outside a London pub, ensuring they are set to withstand any incoming liquids. Over three-quarters (77%) of fans polled said the Oasis reunion is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to them, with 37% saying the opportunity to see the band again would be just as, or more, memorable than their wedding day. Definitely Maybe is the nation's favourite Oasis album, taking 41% of the vote. Although Oasis are only performing their former hits this summer, 88% of fans would love to see the Gallaghers make new music. Not even the great British weather will put fans off, with 77% saying they'd watch Oasis perform come rain or shine. In fact, they'd be willing to stand in a downpour for an average of 9 hours just to see the Gallaghers reunite live. Matt Deverson, Managing Editor of Radio X said: 'We've created limited edition Radio X packable parkas to keep you beer-proofed and looking good during this summer of live music - including the biggest reunion gig in history! Because when pints start flying, we want to make sure you're not wearing them." The limited edition run of 250 beer-proof parkas from Radio X are on sale at the Radio X store for £28, with proceeds going to Radio X's charity Global's Make Some Noise.
Wales Online
04-06-2025
- Business
- Wales Online
‘Beer-Proof Parka' launched for Oasis fans to avoid a soaking at gigs this summer
'Beer-Proof Parka' launched for Oasis fans to avoid a soaking at gigs this summer Research found that fans are expected to buy 8,667,600 pints during the Oasis reunion tour in the UK, with a quarter (25%) of those to be thrown in the air in celebration To help protect fans from these celebratory beer spills, a range of special 'beer-proof parkas' have been launched this summer (Image: BenStevens ) Oasis fans will be drenched by a whopping 2,219,458 pints of beer this summer at the long-awaited reunion tour, enough to fill up a 25-metre swimming pool over one and a half times. The research found that fans are expected to buy 8,667,600 pints during the Oasis reunion tour in the UK, with a quarter (25%) of those to be thrown in the air in celebration. That means an equivalent of £16,587,187.61 worth of beer will be lost to enthusiastic fans at the Oasis sell-out gigs this year. The results were uncovered by statisticians who pored over new original consumer research of 2,000 British adults to determine just how many pints are expected to be spilt in excitement at the iconic reunion this year. A pint thrown in the air in celebration is a staple of British summertime (Image: BenStevens ) Article continues below To help protect fans from these celebratory beer spills, Radio X have launched a range of special 'beer-proof parkas' perfect for gig-goers this summer. A pint thrown in the air in celebration is a staple of British summertime, often seen during World Cups, European championships and gigs. Radio X Drive presenter Johnny Vaughan 'dry-tested' the packable- parkas outside a London pub, ensuring they are set to withstand any incoming liquids. Over three-quarters (77%) of fans polled said the Oasis reunion is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to them, with 37% saying the opportunity to see the band again would be just as, or more, memorable than their wedding day. Article continues below Definitely Maybe is the nation's favourite Oasis album, taking 41% of the vote. Although Oasis are only performing their former hits this summer, 88% of fans would love to see the Gallaghers make new music. Not even the great British weather will put fans off, with 77% saying they'd watch Oasis perform come rain or shine. In fact, they'd be willing to stand in a downpour for an average of 9 hours just to see the Gallaghers reunite live. Matt Deverson, Managing Editor of Radio X said: 'We've created limited edition Radio X packable parkas to keep you beer-proofed and looking good during this summer of live music - including the biggest reunion gig in history! Because when pints start flying, we want to make sure you're not wearing them." The limited edition run of 250 beer-proof parkas from Radio X are on sale at the Radio X store for £28, with proceeds going to Radio X's charity Global's Make Some Noise. Radio X Oasis plays non-stop supersonic anthems 24/7, available across the UK on DAB digital radio, and on Global Player, the official Radio X app, on your smart speaker ('play Radio X Oasis'), iOS or Android device.
