No, not because of their music, which pales in comparison with that of the Beatles, whose influence they’ve not so much merely stated as tattooed on their bodies. Nor is it their tiresome reputation for controversy, which can’t hold a candle to the shock and awe of the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen having to be kept off the number one spot in 1977’s Silver Jubilee Week by everyone from the BBC to MI5!

But what Oasis does have in megawatts is power. The power to wake up the bored, indifferent, disaffected and despairing, and change, however briefly or fleetingly, but in many cases, permanently, their lives and their aspirations. Because without Oasis, many of those lives would have remained dreary, despondent and unfulfilled. And isn’t that a real power? To change someone’s life for the better? The Beatles had it, of course, and so too, although in a much different vein, did the Sex Pistols. So, it’s no coincidence, of course, that those two earlier bands were the prime influences on Liam and Noel. 

But there’s more to Oasis than some mere karaoke tribute act or Stars in Their Eyes pastiche. Which is not to say The Brothers Grimm haven’t played up their influences, perhaps even over-egged their cultural puddings; in fact, very often, they wore their hearts on their sleeves so blatantly you’d fear for the patient’s wellbeing! 

So theirs is a very special power indeed, despite their musical limitations (yes, Noel is a very good guitarist as well as a capable songwriter, but whether he’s ‘great’ at either is debatable), and great indebtedness to their influences (and yes, Liam has a terrific voice, but he’s no Johnny Rotten in the revolutionary stakes), they survive and thrive beyond belief to this day. How? But, more to the point, why? 

Why them, and not Blur? Their Britpop nemesis, who may have won the battle back in 1995 to get to Number One, but were, as time and distance have so crushingly proved, thrashed in the long war of both sales and lasting influence, and of, indeed, true and everlasting love. 

Britpop couldn’t have existed without Oasis, because all the other supposed combatants in that war of domestic pop were merely cannon fodder caught in the unwitting crossfire between Blur (University attenders all) and Oasis (School leavers at age 16 to a boy). 

And most of that crop of bands who trailed in Oasis’ supernova slipstream were comprised of middle-class kids who not only looked different to Oasis, but, crucially, spoke and sounded as if they came from a Britain unrecognisable to the one in which Burnage, and its thousands of equivalents all over the country, resided. So, yes, we’re talking Class. That great instrument for identifying, labelling, and compartmentalising every aspect of life in Britain.

Different class. They were from a different class from the others. A class that hadn’t had a voice or a cypher or a light shone on them since the Sex Pistols. And the wait for such a voice to emerge had been a long one, so when it was finally heard, the resulting joy and exhilaration that erupted upon its arrival was unlike anything since the seemingly out of nowhere explosion of the Fabs more than thirty years earlier.

So, was it just class that marked them out as different to all the others who fell by the wayside? Definitely…well, maybe. Because, of course, the music matters, too, and though Oasis weren’t pretending to push any musical envelopes, they did what they did exceptionally well. And what they did was make music for people who needed a release from their everyday humdrum existence. For the people who love Oasis the most are those who needed them the most. 

And, yes, their music is melodic, if a little basic, but powerfully anthemic; like football terrace chants, it’s tailor-made for repetition and adoption as a sign of belonging to ‘something’. Anything. Other than being alone and feeling hopelessly lost. Oasis was an anchor for those adrift from the rest of society, and their songs were easy to cling to. And just as the Pistols did, Oasis made music that could be easily emulated, and so their followers went out and bought cheap guitars and learnt to play them, and perhaps even went and formed bands that bore more than a passing resemblance to Oasis. Just as they themselves had been influenced by the Beatles and the Sex Pistols to go out and form their band.

But, of course, the proof is in the pudding, and Oasis’s standing today, as they play to hundreds of thousands in their home city of Manchester and then many more thousands all around the world, provides compulsive proof of their power. Liam and Noel’s journey from Burnage to world domination is a reminder that salvation is still possible within the confines of a three and a half minute pop song. 

I guess we just needed a little time to wake up…

Words: Mark Kureishy // Thanks to SJM Concerts
Stage image: Josh Halling