Liam Gallagher, O2 Arena, London, June 6, 2024
From the stage set’s recreation of the album sleeve to the large digital clock ticking backwards to 1994 before he comes on stage, Liam Gallagher’s live staging of Definitely Maybe initially appears like a very literal attempt to roll back the years to the release of Oasis’ debut album.
Yet even the most wilful suspension of disbelief can’t mask the fact that only two of the ten people performing Definitely Maybe on stage this evening actually appeared on the album. Liam Gallagher, of course, and guitarist Bonehead, the latter wearing a fur-lined deerstalker and seemingly unruffled by playing within a giant recreation of his old living room.
While it’s clearly not the Oasis reunion many had hoped the 30th anniversary of their debut might have brokered, the band Gallagher has assembled alchemise fresh gold from the songs’ base materials: drilling down into Columbia to retrieve a hypnotic, almost Can-like groove, fleshing Shakermaker out into sprawling psychedelic swamp rock and hammering Bring It On Down with a ferocity Oasis were never going to achieve with Tony McCaroll on the drum stool.
Gallagher has said he didn’t want to play the album in order because he didn’t fancy wheeling out a showstopper like Live Forever only three songs in, but tonight’s set list reflects some genuine thought and care into how this particular time capsule was going to be unpacked, resurfacing and polishing up songs that, even at the time, Oasis often overlooked.
The throwaway Digsy’s Dinner is vamped up into a barrelling, glam music hall knees up, while Live Forever’s B-side Cloudburst is dusted off, its lolloping Stone Roses groove here transformed into a Led Zep behemoth. I Will Believe, a song that only appears as an 8-track demo on the flip side to the band’s debut single is finally dressed up properly alongside - most curiously - Lock All The Doors. A tune demoed by Noel in 1992 and – after cannibalising much of it for both The Chemical Brothers’ Setting Sun and Oasis’ My Sister Lover – only finished off for High Flying Birds’ second album Chasing Yesterday in 2014. Comparatively plodding sandwiched between Fade Away’s ferocious interpolation of Anarchy In The UK and I’m Your Man by Wham! and an excellent, Doors-y take on (It’s Good) To Be Free, it’s the night’s only real weak point.
They’re as close to deep cuts as you can get for a group as popular as Oasis, but aren’t received with quite the enthusiasm Gallagher would have liked. Irked, he brands the crowd “weirdos” and following their jubilant reaction to a lightening bolt version of Cigarettes & Alcohol lambasts them: “Where the fuck have you been for the last ten songs?”
As the old footage and photos flickering on the screens either side of the stage remind us, there is a large Noel-shaped elephant in the (living) room. In truth, though, it’s hard to see quite how the man who wrote all these songs would have fitted in tonight. Only two tracks performed this evening originally had the elder Gallagher on lead vocals, and Liam tackles both Shakermaker B-side D’Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman and Half The World Away just fine.
In Sheffield on Saturday night, Liam dedicated the latter to Noel. “This one’s for one of the greatest songwriters of all time…” he says tonight, “… Burt Bacharach.” It’s both a link to the late tunesmith whose face is emblazed on the keyboard rig behind him, à la the Definitely Maybe sleeve, and a cheeky dig at Noel for half-inching the song’s music from Bacharach and David’s This Guy’s In Love With You.
Liam’s frustrations with a proportion of the ‘LI-AM’ chanting audience might find him some common ground with his brother, but it doesn’t stop him delivering a crowd-pleasing motherload for the encore. A triple whammy of Supersonic, Slide Away and Live Forever is a reminder of just how magical Noel Gallagher’s songs can sound in the hands of his younger brother when he’s on as good form as this. Before he ducks out with a snarling version of The Beatles' I Am The Walrus, you get the sense that increasingly, no one appreciates that combination more than Liam himself. For all the ‘RKid’ bucket hats and Oasis t-shirts in the audience tonight, Oasis’ biggest fan is still Liam Gallagher.
Set List
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star
Columbia
Shakermaker
Up In The Sky
Digsy’s Dinner
Bring It On Down
Cloudburst
I Will Believe
Half The World Away
D’Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman?
Fade Away
Lock All The Doors
(It’s Good) To Be Free
Cigarettes & Alcohol
Married With Children
Encore:
Supersonic
Slide Away
Live Forever
Encore 2:
I Am The Walrus
Photos: Burak Cingi/Chiaki Nozu/Getty