Key events
Laura Snapes
The encore begins, and with Liam still off stage, Noel comes on to perform The Masterplan with “our 14th drummer, Mr Joey Waronker, and this fucking uber legend here, Bonehead. This one is for all the people in their 20s who have never seen us before who have kept us shit hot for the last 20 years.”
Following Cast’s nod earlier on, there’s another tribute to the late Diogo Jota, at the close of Live Forever.
Laura Snapes
Whatever next, then Live Forever. Love the bite on “things they’ll never see” – the tension in Liam’s face makes it seem as if he’s still feeling every second of it. Meanwhile Noel has not shifted from a face that says: “It’s gonna be murder finding a parking space.”
Then Liam announces: “This is the last one: Rock’n’Roll Starrrrrrrr”. The woman behind me hasn’t heard of encores. “They haven’t done Wonderwall!”
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Alexis’s favourite Oasis song now: Slide Away. I can see why: there’s real desperation to that “let me be the one”. Amazing bridge, too. I’m back on a crap live stream but the Gallaghers’ twinned vocals still sound amazing on this, with Noel taking an unusual higher harmony. “I really wonder how different this feels to Liam doing the Definitely Maybe tour solo. He and Noel might as well be in different universes on this stage,” Laura tells me.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
“What’s happening? Everyone having a good time yeah? Is it worth the £4,000 you paid for a ticket?” A bold tack to take, Liam, after that whole dynamic pricing scandal. Having vampirically sucked up everyone’s recent disposable income, into Cast No Shadow they go. I never got why Liam always sings this differently live, with that high note at the end of each line. Takes a bit of the melancholy off I reckon.
Laura Snapes
Back to back Be Here Now numbers, with Stand By Me next. It’s so insanely loud, the outer reaches of sound crackling like setting lava.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
A couple more shots of the joyous and semi-disbelieving crowd.
Laura Snapes
Little By Little brings the first song outside of the 1990s. Even during this Noel still looks a bit like he’s here under duress, but he’s doing these numbers not acoustically as some had thought, but with a big rock production from his backline.
Then Liam comes back on for D’You Know What I Mean? I really like this one, thanks to a heavy rotation of Be Here Now in the car when I was eight. And I used to work with Hamish MacBain at NME – co-author of a new book about Oasis with Ted Kessler – who had a habit of standing up in the office and asking “d’ya know what I mean?” in a way that usually meant “what is this shit?” that I found very enjoyable.
Laura Snapes
Half the World Away. The moody, reflective tone is quite nice, though I prefer the heavier songs that contain these unexpected emotional shades within them, rather than Oasis’s more uniformly melancholy hits.
Sidenote: the closeups of Noel are really showing how both Gallaghers are blessed with a hairline that many men their age would kill for.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
The photographers have whacked on their telephoto lenses because we’re getting some more closeup shots coming in now.
Laura Snapes
I think it was Dave Stewart from Eurythmics who said that when they got incredibly successful, he got “paradise syndrome” – ie, he wasn’t able to enjoy it because the rewards were so relentless. The barrage of hits here so far feels a bit like that, almost enough to make you blase. Oh, Roll With It? Communal fervour off its nuts? Some primal howl emanating from inside that I didn’t know existed? Yeah, whatever.
Noel’s now doing Talk Tonight. Is it rude to say this is a built-in loo break? Liam has definitely taken one.
Laura Snapes
Roll With It now. For anyone hoping for a great fraternal reunion tonight, so far Noel and Liam haven’t even looked at each other, let alone been within two metres of each other. But Liam’s certainly chirpy enough: “How you getting on then, alright? You’re looking good. Especially you there. Stunning. Fucking stunning.”
