UK publication Female First takes a look at the Brit Rock legends' careers.

Oasis brought their music home to Manchester’s Heaton Park this weekend, with over 200 thousand fans coming to the city to see their ‘homecoming’ over the past three days. Here, we think it’s time we salute one of the greatest British bands of all time.

Neighbours to Liverpool’s Beatles, the boys from Manchester, Oasis have proven themselves as one of the finest British bands of all time after raising around £3 million per night for their homecoming in the city.

In honour of Liam and Noel Gallagher, and just how much they have achieved since they created Oasis in 1991, we thought we should take a look at their rise to fame over the past 18 years.

Early Years

Oasis are an English rock band that formed in Manchester in 1991 who made a name for themselves performing on the Manchester club circuit whilst signed to independent record label Creation Records.

Evolved from an earlier band called The Rain, the initial line-up was composed of Paul McGuigan (bass guitar), Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs (guitar), Tony McCarroll (drums) and Chris Hutton (vocals) but, unsatisfied with Hutton, Arthurs auditioned acquaintance Liam Gallagher as a replacement.

Laim decided the band should change their name to Oasis after seeing a venue called Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon listed on one of the posters for the Inspiral Carpets, whom his brother noel was a roadie for.

Although when Noel came to watch his little brother’s first gig at the Boardwalk club in Manchester in August 1991, he didn‘t really thing the band sounded anything special, but he thought that Liam’s group could provide a possible outlet for a series of songs he'd been writing for several years.


Either way, Noel did something right and his initial impressions were proven wrong when he and the band released their debut single, Supersonic, in April 1994, which made it to a respectable number 31 in the pop charts, but it was their third single, Live Forever, which as their first to enter the Top 10 of the UK charts, followed by their debut album, Definitely Maybe, which was released in September 1994, and entered the charts at number one. Oasis was officially born.

Rise To The Top

Oasis scored their first number on in April of 1995 with the single, Some Might Say, which was the first single to be taken from their second album. However, it was during what should have been a happy time for the band, that a rivalry between Oasis and Blur begun to come to light.

It all began on August 14, 1995, when Blur and Oasis released new singles on the same day, setting up "The Battle of Britpop" that dominated the national news and saw Blur's Country House outsell Oasis' Roll with It 274,000 copies to 216,000 during the week.

Rather than keeping a dignified silence, Oasis' management came up with several reasons for this, claiming "Country House" sold more because it was less expensive (£1.99 vs £3.99) and because there were two different versions of "Country House" with different B-sides forcing serious fans to buy two copies.



However, it was the fact that Noel Gallagher told The Observer in September that he hoped Damon Albarn and Alex James of Blur would "catch AIDS and die", which caused a media frenzy. Trust Noel Gallagher to say it how he sees it.

Anyway, moving on, their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Became the third largest selling album of all time in the UK with over four million copies sold and it spawned the festival anthems, Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger, which also reached numbers two and one respectively. Take that Blur.

As their career reached its peak, Oasis performed back-to-back concerts at Knebworth on 10 August and 11 August 1996 and sold out both shows within minutes; 250,000 people over two nights (2.5 million people applied for tickets, and 375,000 were actually sold, meaning the possibility of 53 sold out nights), at the time a record-breaking number for an outdoor concert held in the UK, and to this day the largest demand for a show in British history.

End of Britpop

As ‘Britpop’ started to lose momentum towards the end of the nineties, Oasis heading into Abbey Road Studios in London and Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey to record their third album Be Here Now.

Released in August of 1997, it was preceded by the number 1 single D'You Know What I Mean?, and, by the end of the first day of release, Be Here Now sold over 350,000 units and by the end of business on Saturday of that week sales had reached 696,000, making it the fastest-selling album in British history.

In early 1999, the band began work on their fourth studio album, but their progress was marred by the shock departure of founding member Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs which was followed a few weeks later by Paul McGuigan.

Now as a three-piece, Oasis chose to continue recording the album, with Noel Gallagher re-recording most of Arthurs' guitar and McGuigan's bass parts. It wasn’t until the album was finished that the band begun searching for replacement members, which ultimately secured, new lead/rhythm guitarist Colin "Gem" Archer, formerly of Heavy Stereo, and Andy Bell, former guitarist/songwriter of Ride and Hurricane #1 as their new bassist.

But with that hurdle passed, the band then had to contend with the folding of Creation Records, which caused them to form their own label, Big brother through which they released their fourth album, Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants which was followed up by a fifth, Heathen Chemistry, their first album with new members Andy Bell and Gem Archer, in July 2002.

Back To The Top

After a number of fall out’s between the Gallagher brothers, the band finally completed their sixth album, Don't Believe the Truth, and brought with it two number one singles, Lyla and The Importance of Being Idle, whilst Let There Be Love entered at number 2.

Proving they were still at the top of their game, the band received the BRIT Award for outstanding contribution to music in February 2007, and, in a poll to find the 50 greatest British albums of the last 50 years conducted by Q Magazine and HMV, two Oasis albums were voted first and second (Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory? Respectively, whilst a further two other Oasis albums appeared in the list - Don't Believe The Truth came in at 14, and Be Here Now, made the list at 22.



In 2008 the band released the highly anticipated album, The Shock of the Lightning written, in full, by Noel Gallagher, on 6 October and went to Number 1 in the UK and number 5 on the Billboard 200.

In support of this, they decided to embark on an 18-month long tour, with support from Kasabian, The Enemy and Twisted Wheel and on 4 June 2009, Oasis played the first of three concerts at Manchester's Heaton Park and, after abandoning the set twice due to generator failure, they came on the third time to declare the gig was now a free concert, much to the delight of the 70,000 ticket holders inside the venue.

So, that’s where we are now, and how the lads have become one of the most epic bands of all time; with over 50 million records sold worldwide, eight UK number-one singles and fifteen NME Awards, five BRIT Awards, nine Q Awards and four MTV Europe Music Awards, the real question is… can they get any better?

Ruth Harrison

via L4e / femalefirst.co.uk

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