Oasis x Young Crew
Even at 7:30 last night, after the support bands were done-&-dusted, it was a bit of a palaver getting into Murrayfield to see Oasis. Those of us lucky enough to have bagged pitch tickets were first directed on a stroll around three sides of the stadium.
It was here that I fell into conversation with a young man from Glasgow, or rather, he fell into conversation with me. When did I get my ticket? So, I’d been waiting a year to see them? When did I first get into Oasis? Had I seen them before?
To this last question I replied that I’d seen them at the Barrowlands. At this my new best friend momentarily stopped in his tracks with a "No way, Big Man, that must have been fantastic." I said that it hadn’t really, not the first time anyway, Liam stomping off in a huff, Noel struggling on for a few songs, then telling us all to hold on to our tickets - paper tickets - and they would come back. Which they did, shortly after Christmas. That was fucking phenomenal.
Not much of a story - and one I’ve told before - but the bit my NBF homed in on was the paper ticket. He’d never been to a concert that was ticketed by anything other than mobile phones. He was born in 2007, 13 years after the release of the band’s debut album Definitely Maybe, two years before the Gallagher brothers’ feuding finally caught up with them and brought the curtain down on Oasis for the final time.
At a safety briefing ahead of the three Murrayfield concerts, City of Edinburgh Councillors characterised fans of the group as "middle-aged men", "rowdy" and "intoxicated". Liam Gallagher (52) made his feelings about those comments abundantly clear last night.
But the one take away I have from the first of the Oasis three night Edinburgh residency is that there were, like the lad I was chatting to on the way in, loads - and I mean loads - of young crew there. Kids who weren’t there first time around enjoying it just as much, if not more, than those of us who were there to re-live the memories. From Hello to Champagne Supernova, two hours of undiluted joy.
Biblical? Not sure about that, but it was really rather wonderful. Wish I was going again tonight.
Where were you while we were getting high? 💙