Friday Flashback, 4 July 2025

Why Oasis’ fatal flaw is the fire that draws its fans - and why I should’ve kept this T-shirt

No, I’m not in Cardiff. Imagine the horror. Hordes of anoraked yobs monkeying around the Welsh capital like it’s their Thatcherite right, jaws slack, limbs loose, tunelessly hollering through Chippy Alley, throwing pints of piss in the air, taking the coke-fuelled bravado of Oasis and missing the darkness, the sadness, the tension that’s within their best songs.

Maybe I’m being mean. I know Oasis have tons of other fans - lots younger and female these days, as this brilliant Quietus piece revealed - and God, I get the appeal. I saw them at Glastonbury at seventeen years and seven weeks old, breathlessly excited to see one of my favourite groups. They lolled onto stage - then came the crush, the arrogant stare and the stance, my body slammed around and groped by a thousand Noel and Liam believers to a soundtrack of outros that sludged on and on and on. The soul of this music felt frozen despite its heart racing, its nose full. The Beatles’ charm isolated and detonated, the warmth of Slade and T-Rex subjected to intense, chemical wipeout. Clean, cold, blank. I left bereft. Pulp the night after filled in the gaps in my heart with heat, humour, sex and l.o.v.e.