How to get tickets for Oasis and why they reunited

Oasis reunion tickets go on sale on Saturday with most UK media outlets giving detailed advice on how to buy them (the secret is to have good wifi and hit the button fast). After Liam and Noel’s 15-year feud expired, this tour is UK Gen X’s Woodstock 1999. There’s a promise of no new material to bore the crowd and a barrage of singalong choruses filling stadia across the summer of 2025. The Gallagher brothers’ motives for burying the hatchet are unstated, but they’ll earn more from this one tour than the entire 1990s. Liam and Noel are unlikely to use the money to repay the debt they owe to Manchester for effectively shutting down its iconoclastic music scene, which was one of the most eclectic and creative in the world but stuttered to a halt as Oasis peaked.

Before 1996, Manchester produced eclectic working class bands including Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, Simply Red, the Fall, the Chemical Brothers, Buzzcocks, 808 State, the Verve, Thin Lizzy, Theatre of Hate, the inexplicable noise of Genesis P-Orridge, the cartoonish Frank Sidebottom, Lisa Stansfield and M People. It regularly fused black American music with that of white working-class kids, creating Northern Soul, Madchester and hot housing rave culture at the Hacienda. While it’s hard to blame Oasis entirely for the collapse – the Hacienda closing may have played a part – other Manchester bands were thoughtful, aspirational creatives playing with sounds, gender, image and politics without being overly self-referential. Only Oasis and Take That have reformed solely or mainly for the cash.