When I was a kiddo in the '90s Oasis seemed genuinely dangerous. Quite laughable now. A pack of roaming Mancunians with dodgy eyebrows, Ben Sherman shirts and parka jackets mincing around menacingly near some press photographers. Shouting "bollocks!" occasionally, dating supermodels and falling out of limousines. All ripping stuff to read about in the NME or various lowbrow 'lads mags' of the era.
In 1997 that felt like the height of danger, but a decade later your mate at school could send you a link to a website which automatically played a terrorist beheading video. For a laugh. The world moved quickly, and Oasis suddenly seemed quaint by comparison, with their brick wall'd Beatles sound and mushroom haircuts. Of another era! Britpop coincided with the last time (ever?) that there was any deep routed optimism within the British psyche. Tony Blair's labour government seemed fresh-faced and seemed to promise a lot of positive lousy, but represented a jerk to the centre-right in British politics that I don't ever see being reversed. Come 2007 we were in recession and we've been circling the drain ever since, asset-stripped and veering further and further right and getting constantly embroiled in gutter-tier identity politics. Oasis peaked at a time when there was still some sense within the general population of British exceptionalism (wrongly or otherwise) and the notion we had something to ship around the world.
Mark Lanegan documents a dispute he had with Liam Gallagher while Oasis and the Screaming Trees were on tour together. Mark was genuinely up for a fight with Liam, who had goaded him from the start of the tour. In return Liam hid behind security staff and eventually vanished off the tour. All talk!
