Oasis split - but is it twelve years too late?

Whilst the ‘Britpop’ party may have ended in 1997, for some it would have taken a single announcement on August 28th 2009, twelve years after the release of Oasis’ disappointing third album Be Here Now, to push the final nail into Britpop’s coffin. Whilst it was predicted and anticipated by many, and it followed years of sibling disputes and infighting, it was still no less dramatic to hear Noel Gallagher state “it’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer”.

In a week in which the Beatles’ sublime legacy is being celebrated through the release of their re-mastered back catalogue, Oasis’ end is symptomatic of the situation the band has found itself in since its glorious heyday in the mid-1990s. There can be no doubt that Oasis will be remembered as one of the front-runners of the ‘Britpop revolution’, and there will be few attempting to deny that both Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? are albums deserving of high critical acclaim. However much of the music produced by Oasis since has been of questionable quality when compared with their previous work. Somebody once said to me that if the Gallagher brothers were to have died in a car accident prior to releasing Be Here Now, it would have afforded them a far greater legacy as they would have been taken in their prime, having hit their creative peak and transformed Oasis into the biggest band in Britain.

Yet by the turn of the century, and the release of the inappropriately-titled Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Oasis were quite clearly a band that had run out of ideas. As Neil McCormick states “their moment came and went” and “musically they have been treading water ever since”. This is a fair summation of Oasis’ final years, in which they released four albums aiming to re-capture the energy, sound and essence of Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory. Unlike their contemporaries Blur, Oasis remained staunchly committed to producing the same type of music throughout their existence; McCormick describes Oasis as “nostalgic reactionaries” who “resisted change with a Luddite belligerence”, unlike the “musical revolutionaries” that Noel and Liam so revered. Perhaps if as they claimed, Oasis had been more like the Beatles, they would have embraced a new sound and regained the critical respect that seemed to go missing following the release of Be Here Now.

Yet this is not to say that the post-1997 years saw nothing of any value produced by the band, indeed they were able to release singles of a fairly high quality, with a number of these having been included on the 2006 greatest hits compilation Stop the Clocks, attesting to this view. It seems that the band transferred their ability to create consistent, fresh and vibrant albums to producing singles, as shown by the recent offering the Shock of the Lightning, which was very well received by critics and fans alike, and seen as a throwback to the sound and raw energy of Definitely Maybe. Indeed Heathen Chemistry, released in 2002, can be best thought of as a collection of singles, with Little by Little, The Hindu Times, Songbird and Stop Crying Your Heart Out worthy of Oasis’ reputation, and able to ‘cover up’ for the dearth of quality amongst songs such as (Probably) All in the Mind and Born on a Different Cloud. Yet on the subject of poor quality control, it is Standing on the Shoulder of Giants that will likely be forever thought of as the nadir. Little James, for example, Liam’s sole contribution to the album, is undoubtedly the worst Oasis song ever, due to it containing such lines as ‘live for your toys, even though they make noise’ and ‘have you ever played with plasticine, even tried a trampoline?’ However of all Oasis’ follow-ups to Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory, it has the most to gain from retrospective analysis, as it was so poorly received at the time of its release, and actually contains some worthy material.

Other efforts such as Love Like a Bomb from 2003’s Don’t Believe the Truth and recent To Be Where There’s Life only serve to demonstrate the malaise the band has suffered since Be Here Now. I had the pleasure to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium recently in what turned out to be one of their final gigs, and whilst it satisfied a life ambition for me, it left me longing to have been at Maine Road, to have witnessed the Glastonbury gig, and to have been around at a time when Oasis’ popularity was based on them producing great music, rather than past glories. I will personally remember Oasis as a band that outlived their ability and used up the majority of their creative energy on creating three brilliant musical works, the third of which being the 1998 b-side collection The Masterplan. It’s a sad indictment of Oasis’ inflated sense of self-importance after Morning Glory that if Be Here Now had been subjected to drastic reductions in song length and edited in places it would be regarded more favourably by both critics and fans. It remains to be seen how Oasis will be thought of in fifty years time; but it is likely that most of their work post-Morning Glory will be seen in a far less appreciative light. A shame, seeing that if they had been able to foresee what would eventually come to pass, all the material recorded for the final five albums could have perhaps been reduced to just three albums worth, which may have potentially ensured the band a greater legacy.