Are Gen-Z truly ready for an Oasis gig?

The piss-filled pint glasses were stacked carefully by the barrier down the front at Wembley Stadium. The crowd then parted, partly out of horror, partly out of awe. Ten feet away facing the pyramid of piss pints, a young man began spinning a plastic bag in his hand. It too was full of piss. The bag span faster and faster until at last, he let it go. It arc-ed foully through the air, spraying piss behind it, before it struck the pyramid dead-centre, denoting an A-bomb of urine into the early evening air.

It was July 10^th 2009, Saturday night, the second of three gigs Oasis were playing at Wembley. My mate from back home had managed to secure two ‘golden circle’ tickets, via a raffle at a fair in east Yorkshire (yes, really). The ‘golden circle’ is the bit right down the front for fans, although it soon had other connotations.

To be fair to the crowd, it had been a long day waiting for Oasis to come on and the main support Kasabian hadn’t even come on yet. What else was there to do but drink? And with the toilets so very far away in Wembley the suddenly empty pint glasses were going to come in useful to relieve those full bladders. It’s the Golden Circle of Life…

Many of us are familiar with the nauseating sensation of being in a pint-chucking crowd and then having warm liquid land on you. But probably we are from an older generation. The Gen Z audience who are heading to watch the reformed Oasis next year are surely not fully aware of what going to their gigs is all about. Taylor Swift it is not.

Nor even is it say, Foo Fighters or Arctic Monkeys, or even AC/DC who I saw at Wembley earlier this summer. No, the Oasis crowd is closer to the crowd at an England match – specifically the Euro 2020 final at Wembley, when thousands of extra fans stormed security to watch the game as only very coked-up people can. In the future, that Wembley crowd may well be seen as a mere dry run for the Wembley crowd at the Oasis shows. Flares up the bum and all…

Despite the ill feeling caused by the ticketing issues, which the band are now seeking to redress through an invite-only ballot system – whatever that means – there is still immense excitement around the reconciliation of the Gallaghers, which will build and build as the shows come closer next year.

One of the most surprising things about the scale of the public response to the news of the gigs, has been how it has crossed generations.

While the make-up of the Oasis crowd in the 00s was about 90% blokes of a certain age, now it seems your TikTok crowd are all over them. You can put this down to the nature of social media, and how well Oasis come across on it – the interview sound-bites and clips from the early Nineties.

@oasisliveforever

เมื่อป๋าเลียมเข้าพิธีรับรางวัลครั้งแรก #oasis #fyp #fypシ゚ #liamgallagher #noelgallagher

♬ Supersonic (2014 Remaster) – Oasis

The algorithms feed this gold to users daily, and completely swerve the creative decline of the band which we originally were witness to.

The documentary Supersonic helped too, giving a young Netflix audience a chance to see the band in their sudden burst of fame on the back of their greatest tunes and loving every minute of it (it ends at Knebworth).

But also, as seen in the documentary, the mouthy devil-may-care freedom of the group seems incredibly refreshing to a young generation who are brought up to be careful about what they say, and who are cowed and anxious about what the future may bring in a bruised and battered country. After the last few years, small wonder the young are finding the mad fer it, ultra-swaggering, fuck ‘em all and seize glory for yourself attitude of Oasis to be revelatory.

Worth also considering how the passage of time affects things – we’re 30 years since the Nineties, just as we were 30 years from the Sixties back then. Divorced from the messiness or crapness or bluster of the living through the times, our view back can be rose-tinted, envious and ultimately inspiring.

You do hope the excitement of the gigs does inspire a new wave of exciting young bands.

But before then, the young people need to make it through the shows in one piece.

Like, really.

I remember seeing them at Heaton Park earlier on that 2009 tour. After some technical issues halted their set for about an hour, fights started breaking out all over the crowd. I saw Jon McClure from Reverend and the Makers ushering his family away to safety as a full-on riot seemed to be brewing. Thankfully, the band eventually returned to the stage to finish the set, but it was a sketchy night.

I’m not suggesting that Oasis fans are hooligans, but they are one of the few bands to have that proper terrace appeal, and if you add a full day of drinking, plus a few powders and pills thrown into the mix, all stirred up by the rabble-rousing aggression of Liam, and well, things can get raucous.

Is that a bad thing? In rock n’ roll terms, decidedly not. From Elvis to Sex Pistols to Sleaford Mods, this kind of music is about dark and dangerous urges and stirring up excitement and destruction – and it can be glorious.

One of the other great things about rock n roll is that it isn’t class specific, it allows everyone to feel the raw power. So straight-up sneering at the Oasis crowd can verge on classist – really, this is music built on working class hope and rage, so expecting it to be a nice civilised affair would be to entirely miss the point.

The only point I’m trying to make is that Gen Z might not be ready for this. There have been many, many years of popular music in this country that is safe, sanitised, efficient, and a tad boring. The landscape is dominated by the likes of Swift, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, Drake, Coldplay, all of whom have their merits but they’re not ones who want to rip venues apart, are they?

So for some of these younger kids coming to see what happens when a band very much has that in mind, it may come as a shock. The crowds are going to be wild. It will be exciting, unpredictable and a bit dangerous. Bring your kids, do, but make sure they are wearing raincoats – and not because of the rain.