The tension could be felt. The bursts of fury between Noel and Liam Gallagher marked the entire career of Oasis, which is why in 2009, during the promotional interviews for their then new album Dig Out Your Soul, no one was surprised that they exchanged barbs through the press pages and social networks.
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In a talk with Q Magazine, Noel was direct. “I don’t like Liam,” then added. “He’s rude, arrogant, intimidating, and lazy. He’s the most irascible man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a sea of soup.”
Liam, of course, held nothing back and replied through the pages of NME. “It takes more than blood to be my brother,” he stated. “He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him.” By then it seemed like just another one of the Gallagher fights.
But the tension between them was increasing. In August 2009, Oasis had two scheduled performances at the V Festival, at Weston Park in 2009. The first night they played as usual, but the second night was canceled after Liam left claiming viral laryngitis. Always sharp, Noel later told the press that, in his opinion, it was an excuse for his brother’s monumental hangover.
A few days later, the musicians crossed the English Channel to perform at Rock en Seine on August 28, 2009, in Paris. It was then that the tension escalated even more and it wasn’t even about the music; it was about the clothes.
Liam had just launched Pretty Green, his clothing line. Determined, he demanded free publicity for the brand in the Oasis tour programs. But Noel rejected it outright. “I didn’t think it was right that he was selling his merchandise to our fans,” he explained in 2011. “It caused a big mess… In the end, I said to him: ‘If you want to advertise in the program, how much does it cost?’ He didn’t get it. He flew into a rage and from there everything went downhill.”
And minutes before going on stage in Paris, the definitive break happened. The moment when the tension exploded and swept away everything in its path. “Liam got quite violent. It was like a WWE wrestling fight; he thought he was Randy Savage,” Noel recalled in 2011. “I’ll never forget seeing Andy [Bell, the bassist] constantly counting how many shoes he was wearing without saying a word.”
Then came the worst. “Liam stormed out of the dressing room and… grabbed a plum. He threw it across the dressing room and it smashed against the wall. I wish it had ended there, because that would have been a great headline: ‘A plum throws another plum and ends Oasis’,” Noel recalled. “Then he went to his own dressing room and grabbed a guitar. He came back and started throwing it like it was an axe.”
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Liam, brandishing the guitar like one of King Harold’s warriors at Hastings, threatened Noel. “I take it lightly because that’s what I usually do, but it was a totally unnecessary act of violence,” continued the older Gallagher. “He was swinging the guitar and almost tore my face off with it. It ended up on the floor and I turned it off. There were people in the band who said nothing. People looked the other way and it wasn’t even a big dressing room. We were all involved and no one said anything. So I thought: ‘I’m out of here’.”
Noel stayed in a car outside the venue. He waited a few minutes and left. Meanwhile, at the festival, a cold voiceover announced to the audience that Oasis would not perform. “The band no longer exists,” it stated. The moment is included in the new documentary Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger as a reminder of the break between the Gallaghers.
A couple of hours later Noel posted a statement on the Oasis website. “With some sadness and great relief I inform you that tonight I leave Oasis,” he wrote. “People will write and say whatever they want, but I simply couldn’t keep working with Liam for one more day. My apologies to everyone who bought tickets for the concerts in Paris, Constanza, and Milan.”
Over the years, Liam recalled that fateful night. “They threw me under the fucking bus. My whole life fell apart,” he told The Guardian. He also dismissed that excessive alcohol consumption was the cause of all the problems. “That was my behavior from day one, and Noel’s. That’s what made Oasis what it was. I wasn’t different, but suddenly he became Ronan Keating or some soft twat saying: ‘We can’t have that behavior’.”
On his side, Noel commented that that final tour had been marked by disagreements. “Liam and I had a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous fistfight three weeks before the world tour started, and fights like that in the past were always easily resolved, but for some reason this time I wasn’t going to let it go,” he said in 2015. “I thought: ‘Fuck this bastard.’ And there was an atmosphere of fury all over the world.”
Therefore, as detailed in the new documentary, the musician didn’t want to know anything about a possible Oasis reunion. The violence of the break and everything that had accumulated had dispelled any hint of reconciliation. Until it finally happened, but that’s another story.
