Oasis reunion: Why band are forever linked to Scotland

Well, there we were now here we are. The group confirmed on Tuesday they'll reunite for huge stadium shows in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester and London next summer, 30 years after the release of their second album (What's The Story?) Morning Glory and 15 after their acrimonious breakup.

Though Oasis went through various line-ups, at the heart of the band was always the tempestuous relationship between Noel and his brother, singer Liam Gallagher.

With the pair having buried the hatchet, will their long-awaited reunion be worth it? And can they hold it together for long enough to find out?

Read More:

• Inspiral Carpets on death, rebirth, Noel Gallagher and a deep love for Glasgow

• 10 songs that tell Noel Gallagher's story as Oasis chief gears up for solo return

• Noel and Liam back together? Oh brother, that's nothing

Noel and Liam Gallagher were raised in the Burnage area of Manchester, the sons of Irish immigrants Peggy and Tommy Gallagher.

Their father was a drunk, and quick with his fists. Noel developed a stutter in childhood in fear of the beatings he'd receive.

Eventually Peggy left and took the children with her, later saying: "I left him with a fork and a spoon, and I think I left him too much".

Oasis, originally named Rain, formed in 1991. Bassist Paul 'Guigsy' McGuigan, guitarist Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs, and drummer Tony McCarroll invited Liam to join, playing their first gig at the Boardwalk on August 14.

Noel, at this time a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, would join on the proviso that he become lead guitarist and sole songwriter. Fortunately for the rest of the group, he had a few tunes up his sleeve.

Oasis (Image: Getty Images)

The story of Oasis is inextricably linked to Glasgow.

The group shared a rehearsal space with an all-female group called Sister Lovers in Manchester, and when finding out they had a gig at King Tut's insisted on coming too.

Oasis weren't on the bill but were allowed to play after their fellow Mancs offered to give them half of their set time.

"We said we'd do a really short set," said Debbie Turner of the group in the documentary Supersonic. "Which wasn't hard because I think we only had five songs anyway."

Promoter Geoff Ellis recalled: "The first I knew about Oasis was when the gig manager Ali Murdoch phoned to say an extra band had turned up.

"He wanted to know what I thought about letting them play. I said no problem, as long as they didn't want money. So they agreed to play for a few free beers."

As fate would have it Alan McGee, the Glaswegian boss of Creation Records, was an ex-boyfriend of Turner and had, in his own words, shown up to "put her on edge".

Based solely on that four-song set he offered the group a record deal on the spot, Oasis piling back into the van they'd travelled up in and returning to Manchester.

Their debut album, Definitely Maybe, would go on to reshape the cultural zeitgeist but initial recording sessions did not prove fruitful.

Producer Dave Batchelor struggled to recreate their Beatles-meets-The Sex Pistols live sound, the £800 sessions producing music that was, in the words of Bonehead, "Thin. Weak. Too clean."

A relentless touring schedule - they played Glasgow on consecutive weekends in December 1993, Gleneagles in February of the next year and then Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in April - meant the cult of Oasis was growing but getting something on tape was proving more of a challenge.

Following an inauspicious end to the band's first European tour - every member but Noel was arrested for brawling on the ferry to Amsterdam - the group opted to re-record the album in Cornwall with their sound technician Mark Coyle.

Liam Gallagher on stage at Loch Lomond (Image: Runnacles/Gunion/Mirrorpix/Getty)

This time the mix was deemed too much, but after some TLC by another producer, Owen Morris, Definitely Maybe was deemed ready for release.

In a UK music scene dominated by shoegaze and grunge, Oasis' debut was a bolt from the blue and it's easy to see just why it resonated so heavily with a nation struggling through the latter years of Thatcherite Tory rule.

While Noel would steadfastly deny any political bent to his songwriting, the band's shared council estate upbringing screams through.

The opening line of first track 'Rock n Roll Star' finds Liam sneering his brother's words "I live my life in the city, and there's no easy way out" while 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' finds him wondering "is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?".

Crucially, however, Oasis were hopeful not nihilistic, Noel's words showing his determination to make it out.

Take the aforementioned opening track - "In my mind my dreams are real... tonight, I'm a rock n roll star" - the seminal 'Live Forever' - "maybe I just want to fly" - or b-side 'D'yer Wanna Be A Spaceman' - "all the dream stealers are lying in wait/but if you want to be a spaceman it's still not too late" - and it's clear to see why the record struck a chord with the young working classes up and down the country.

Allied to Noel's songwriting was the star power of his younger brother, his nasal, aggressive delivery which famously turned the word "sunshine" into "soon-shee-yiiine" instantly recognisable, instantly iconic.

As the guitarist would later reflect: "Liam was always cooler than me. He had a better walk, clothes looked better on him, he was taller, he had a better haircut and he was funnier.

"Liam, clearly, would have liked to have had my talent as a songwriter, and there's not a day goes by where I don't wish I could rock a parka like that man."

Definitely Maybe sold 100,000 copies in its first four days, catapulting Oasis to instant stardom - in the UK at least.

While the band would go on to play venues like the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden, they had something of a difficult relationship with America.

A first trip to the states just weeks after the release of their debut brought the first major ruction between the brothers Gallagher.

Ahead of a gig at LA's famous Whisky-A-Go-Go the band indulged heavily in what they assumed to be cocaine, but turned out to be crystal meth. "It kept us up for days," Liam would later recall.

The gig was a disaster - "everyone was appalling", according to Morris while Bonehead dubbed it "an absolute f*****g shambles" - culminating in the younger Gallagher throwing a tambourine at his brother's head. "It hit me on the shoulder and went tssssh," Noel recalled in Supersonic. "Out of time, I might add."

Noel Gallagher of Oasis performing on stage, Balloch Castle Country Park Balloch, Loch Lomond (Image: Runnacles/Gunion/Mirrorpix/Getty)

Noel left the group and shacked up with a girl he'd met previously in San Francisco, Melissa Lim, as he considered leaving the group a relationship detailed in the song 'Talk Tonight': "I landed, stranded, hardly even knew your name".

She eventually convinced him to return to Oasis and the pair continued to speak on the phone. Lim told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2016 she'd answer Gallagher's calls with a line from the film Bye Bye Birdie: "what's the story, morning glory?".

That would, of course, be the title of the second Oasis album, a record which found its songwriter in more reflective mood.

Contrast opener 'Hello' with the first track on their debut, its chorus warning "it's never gonna be the same/'cos the years are falling by like the rain". Later, on 'Hey Now', Noel writes "I took a walk with my fame down memory lane/I never did find my way back" while the closer, 'Champagne Supernova' opens with the lines: "how many special people change?/How many lives are living strange?/Where were you while we were getting high?".

Between albums the group had sacked drummer Tony McCarroll. Never very technically proficient, Noel had decided he'd be unable to play what he had in mind for the second LP and had a pretty low opinion of the craft anyway.

"Imagine having a job where you just sit around and bang things all day?" he said in one talk show appearance. "That's what orangutans do, innit?".

Lead single 'Some Might Say' scored the group their first number one, but initial reaction to (What's The Story?) Morning Glory was muted.

Melody Maker called it "laboured and lazy", NME said it had some "fairly hefty shortcomings" and Q said its lyrics "say nothing much about anything".

The public, it's fair to say, did not agree. Though Oasis would lose the 'Battle of Britpop' in which their single, 'Roll With It' went up against Blur's 'Country House', the Manchester band very much won the war.

Morning Glory would go on to sell more than 20 million copies, songs like 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and 'Wonderwall' becoming de facto national anthems.

Ahead of its release Oasis played two shows on Irvine's beach front, and close to 30 years later a local bakery called, of course, Roll With It, commemorates the moment.

Oasis at Irvine Beach (Image: Getty Images)

Two years later the group played a pair of legendary gigs on the shores of Loch Lomond, with 80,000 people in attendance across the weekend.

That served as a mere warm-up, though, for Oasis' highest high. In August 1996 the band played two nights at Knebworth House, with 125,000 in attendance each night. Over 2.5m people - 4% of the population - had applied for tickets, meaning they could have sold it out 20 times over had they wanted to - no British rock band since can lay claim to that kind of cultural ubiquity.

"This is history! Right here, right now, this is history!" Noel declared as the band strode onto the stage.

"I thought it was Knebworth, what are you on about?" came the rejoinder from his brother.

Less than three years earlier the members had been signing on, though Noel would later say he felt, even then, it was the end of something rather than the start of it.

Bonehead said: "Looking back, I think we should have said 'thanks every one of you for getting us here - we were Oasis. Goodnight'."

Noel concurred: "We should have disappeared into a puff of smoke - but it was my idea to keep going."

In Supersonic though Liam insisted: "Just because you can't get any bigger doesn't mean you can't keep doing it, just because you've kissed the sky - give it a f*****g love bite."

By any measure Oasis remained one of the world's biggest bands, but they never recaptured the zeitgeist.

Third LP Be Here Now was released to initial rave reviews and sold more than 400,000 copies on its first day but, with a few exceptions, is generally regarded contemporarily as a disappointment - overlong and over the top.

Bonehead and Guigsy quit ahead of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, with the rhythm guitarist admitting it just wasn't fun anymore.

Oasis continued to sell out stadiums and produced a number of latter-day classics - 'The Importance of Being Idle' being a clear example - but by the time 2008 and seventh album Dig Out Your Soul the brothers' strained relationship was ready to tear entirely.

Their final tour, which included two nights at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, was documented by Noel in his blog Tales from the Middle of Nowhere.

One missive from Argentina began: "We speak at bad times for the Oasis tour. Bad times. We are a rudderless ship at the minute and there's a f****n' s***storm on the horizon."

On his Twitter page Liam retorted: "Don't know what tour you're on RKID..."

In other blog posts Noel referred to his brother as Bruno - Sacha Baron Cohen's fashion designer character - after Liam launched a clothing range, Pretty Green, while after a gig at the Roundhouse in London he referred to the singer as a "strange cat".

Finally, ahead of a planned festival headline slot at Rock en Seine in Paris another row brought an end to Oasis, Noel walking out just minutes before the band were due on stage.

A statement on the Oasis website said: "People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer."

Noel went on to enjoy a successful solo career as, after an attempt to keep going with the remainder of the band as Beady Eye, did Liam.

In the meantime, the calls for a reunion never went away.

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters said: "To know that they’re out there somewhere, but they won’t come together to do the thing that everybody would love so much... I’m like ‘you assholes’, we're dying for it."

The 1975's Matty Healy mused: "Can you imagine being in potentially – right now, still – the coolest band in the world, and not doing it because you’re in a mard with your brother?”

Noel responded by asking what Healy would know about a cool band.

Following the announcement of their long-awaited rapprochement, the lingering question will be whether the bickering pair will be able to keep things on the rails until those summer mega shows.

Explaining their relationship Noel said: "He's a dog and I'm a cat. Cats are very independent creatures, they don’t give a f***. Right bastards. Dogs, it’s just f*****g, ‘Play with me, play with me, please f*****g throw that ball for me. I need some company.’ It’s as basic as that."

Liam quipped: "If we'd been a couple of fishmongers we'd have still slapped each other with a bit of trout every now and again."

It remains to be seen if they can avoid doing so long enough to give the world what it's been waiting for.