So that’s it. According to Big Noel, the stalwart honchos of Britpop have kicked the bucket, gone the way of the dodo, been taken out to pasture, parted ways and called it a long overdue day, citing tectonic frictions between Gallagher younger and elder as the impetus for their collapse, which comes agonisingly close to the curtain of a mammoth world tour in support of the generally critically favoured Dig Out Your Soul.

Over the past year a media paper trail documenting escalating tensions required no McNultys, Sloans or Monks to uncover, with both siblings publicly pooh-poohing their opposite number with thinly veiled diatribes whenever a Dictaphone happened to appear within a fifty foot radius. Noel’s entertaining Tales From The Middle Of Nowhere blog constantly hinted at trouble, stating Oasis were a “rudderless ship” and that they were “heading for a shitstorm pretty soon”, but remarks such as these were par for the course for a band whose gimmick, if it is not unfair to label it as such, was always the tempestuous nature of the balance of its two egos. 

"They've had fights before and got over it," says the eminent Peggy Gallagher, and since the wibbling rivalry days of the mid-nineties their seemingly endless petty fallouts have garnered them impressive column inches in publications whose thirst for celebrity gossip is never sated, arguably keeping the band in the public eye way past their creative peak. Yet while their nineties contemporaries acrimoniously split over their ‘creative differences’, only to lucratively reunite towards the arse-end of this decade, the difference in viscosity between blood and water kept Oasis trucking right through the Noughties and their declining penchant for four-day cocaine and Stella benders seemed to consign inter-eyebrow punch-ups to history, ever since the infamous “Anais probably isn’t even your daughter” (roughly translated as ‘Noel, please punch me in the face this instant’) fracas in 2000.  

Yet it was those poor saps who coughed up the best part of two hundred nicker to see Oasis at the Chelmsford leg of the V festival who bore the dubious honour of becoming the first wave of collateral damage, leaving them understandably furious with only one of the worst festival lineups in recent memory as scant consolation. Only the galactically idiotic would have believed Oasis cancelled due to a viral throat infection, with the rest deducing Liam was either completely pissed on something or other or completely pissed off about something or other. Then it was the turn of those cheese eating surrender monkeys to be left muttering ‘Merde! Ou ést le sange? Pour quoi, Oasis, pour quoi?!’ as Bloc Party informed the Parisian crowd there would be no main course this evening, risking revolutionary riots in the process. Then came Noel’s glum statements, followed by a few parting low jabs including "They say never work with children and animals. No one mentioned fucking morons though, did they?" and the rather brilliant "I think all the modelling malarkey has gone to his head. It's a pleasure to give him time and space to work on his autumn/winter collection." 

It’s almost a complete certainty that a reunion will obviously occur at some point in the future, and I certainly hope so as I have tentatively wagered a testicle on it, but this particular hiatus has the unmistakable aroma of the extended. Liam stated in April that “He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, that’s it”, following an argument in an airport during which the never-known-to-embellish Liam said “we had a fookin’ ding-dong in the airport and I think he started crying then. That was it - doesn't travel with me anymore...” And who could blame him? Liam is not a person who comes across as someone who’s easy to be around for extended periods of time, in that he’s clearly a first class tool-pocket, and the level-headed Noel has seemingly wearied of the punchy little pantomime. So assuming this split is on the semi-permanent side of the spatty spectrum, what will come next for the boisterous boys from Burnage?

The self-titled General Dread has never made any secret of the fact he eventually intended to make a solo album and in April of this year he said “I've got a lot of songs lying around and some of them are really great. But they're not Oasis songs. They're going to sit there and do nothing, so hopefully at the end of this tour I'm going to go and do something for myself." Almost as if he knew, isn’t it…? As well as the five-or-so new Oasis songs Noel claimed he had written during this tour, including the bootlegged and YouTubed ‘If I Had a Gun’, it would seem safe to assume that he already has plenty of material for a solo album. It would seem safer still however to assume that given the last week’s events, which came on the back of a new album and a frankly obese world tour, the last thing he wants to do is get straight back into the studio. A solo album won’t appear for a couple of years yet.

Noel is no stranger to the odd collaboration, with a couple of cracking Chemical Brothers tunes and impressive work with Paul Weller and Ian Brown to his name, but he will not be enjoying his revived paparazzi pulling power in the slightest so he’ll probably keep his head down for a few months at least, spending time with his missus and away from his gritty-knuckled brother. He has a habit of championing young bands, such as the cherubic and rather shit , and he also has his own record label ofcourse so he may even move into production for a while. Unconfirmed (i.e., made up, by me, just now) tittle-tattle and common sense states that even before Noel’s finger touched his phone to announce he was leaving Oasis, Tom and Serge from Kasabian were flirting round his ankles like horny little Pomeranian puppies, willies in hand, saying they could use another handsome guitarist.


So what will become of ‘That Talentless One’? Let’s assume for the moment that the ability to look at a drawing of a coat and grunt in the affirmative doesn’t produce the world’s most successful fashion designer since Liberace. Had this split occurred back in 2000 the answer to the question would have been simples (God I hate that meerkat…) and would probably involve him surreptitiously dancing to ‘Hot Stuff’ in a dole queue in Sheffield. Somehow though in this decade Liam worked out how to swear at music until it buckled, yielded and spat out some decent tunes. His writing efforts have steadily and markedly improved over time, arguably peaking with ‘I’m Outta Time’ from DOYS (although my ma still likes Songbird), to the extent where it is not completely sambucca-nipple-hammers-in-outer-space ridiculous to envisage the man eventually churning out a good solo album. Given the right producers a solo career with parallels to that of Ian Brown could feasibly be brilliant, and if Liam’s work with Death In Vegas (the superb 'Scorpio Rising') is any kind of yardstick this would be a wise move indeed. Liam is the one with something to prove here and he will be the one who wants to get something released as soon as possible, just to show the world he doesn’t need Noel as much as everyone thinks he does.   

Those scrupulous truth-hounds at the News of the World claim, in an article probably sandwiched between Kelly, 24, 32DD’s thoughts on the economy and some other ditsy cumjar’s kiss-and-tell exposé about a ‘not made up’ night of passion with a feckless footballer, that Liam has been writing songs in secret for some time and already has an album’s worth ready to go. A ‘source’ told the paper that Liam said “If Noel thinks he can just walk away from me and the band then I will obliterate him. He'll be begging to rejoin my band.” The Sun also claims Liam is talking of continuing and if there is any truth in these reports, and that’s the special vast ‘IF’ reserved for spurious tabloid exclusives, then it would seem Liam intends to lead the band on either under another name or with the Oasis moniker. Noel’s statement citing “a lack of support and understanding” from his “management and bandmates” as a reason for leaving suggests it wasn’t always Liam vs. The World, and reports that following the split Liam and his missus went with Andy Bell and his fairer half to Italy for a bit of sun don’t hint at irreconcilable differences between the singer and the mute bassist. 

When all’s said and done, Gem Archer, Andy Bell and…you know…wossname, the drummer, are essentially hired guns. As such, they will go wherever the money is. Noel, should he want to, could play every instrument on his eventual solo album but Liam, alas, could not, and as he already shares a couple of writing credits with Gem Archer, such as Love Like a Bomb, it seems likely he would stick to what he knows. So theoretically we could see a Noel-less Oasis album, like Think Tank minus the intelligence, but – let’s be honest – without anyone else in the band with enough clout to tell Liam what’s hot and what’s not, it would almost certainly be shit. It just might happen though, and the following tour with a big-nosed stand-in playing a Union Jack Epiphone Dot would be a lot more lucrative than sitting at home pulling willies until they’re sick into a sock.  

Liam's is the most intriguing position for sure and it will be interesting to see what he comes up with. Whatever does happen, love or loathe them Oasis have been an institution in this country for fifteen years and whether you think them splitting alters the musical landscape for better or for worse, it undoubtedly alters it for all of us. It could be time for them to pass the torch and let some young upstarts tell the kids or today how do dress, how to swear and how to culture a rich, thick pelt of a single eyebrow; topiary for the working classes. It’s undoubtedly the end of an era, for a while at least, when Oasis become simply another band to blaze the reunion trail. Whatever’s good enough for Blur, right?   

Posted In Comment, Sep 04 2009. Words - Luke