{"id":304036,"date":"2025-11-23T18:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/304036\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T18:58:08","slug":"oasis-reunion-tour-was-all-about-positive-masculinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/304036\/","title":{"rendered":"Oasis Reunion Tour Was All About Positive Masculinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJeff Jarrett traveled from his home in St. Louis to see the kickoff of the Oasis<\/a> Live \u201925 tour in Cardiff<\/a>, Wales, in July, then to Chicago\u2019s<\/a> Soldier Field in August. But, for him, no Oasis gig will ever match the early-September night in Pasadena, California, where he saw his favorite band alongside his six-year-old son, Wolf, for the first time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was an evening that was as lovely \u2014 and as loud \u2014 as I hoped it would be,\u201d says Jarrett, 44, a booking agent and artist manager, who proudly recalls watching his son receive first-bumps and high-fives from those seated around them. \u201cWhen Wolf was singing \u2018Acquiesce,\u2019 I laughed like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons: \u2018My son loves Oasis. The plan is working.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFathers and sons. Dads and daughters. Dads and their dads. Husbands, boyfriends, best buddies. Former college roommates, current college roommates. And none of them behaved badly \u2014 at least not from what I observed over Labor Day weekend at the first of two MetLife Stadium shows in New Jersey. Dare I say, I was impressed, moved, and, yes, surprised by all of the positive masculinity. Seemingly everywhere I went, there were happy, sensitive, emotional, and chivalrous men. At the merch stand; at the tequila bar. Even in the parking lot, where one jovial gentleman was handing out beers to passersby and inviting them to watch Sunday football on the big-screen TV he\u2019d positioned on a folding table.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo much hugging, kissing, weeping among dudes, and not one bro tussle in the three shows I\u2019ve been to,\u201d Bob Ferguson, a New Jersey Gen X\u2019er who heads up musician outreach for Oxfam, texted me after the Labor Day show at MetLife. (He also caught the two reunion shows in Toronto \u2014 Oasis\u2019 first stop on this tour in North America.) \u201cI\u2019ve never seen so many solo dads with kids at a rock<\/a> show, singing together like it\u2019s the most natural family outing to be on the floor of a football stadium shouting out \u2018I\u2019m a rock & roll star!\u2019 I love that the unlikely lads of Oasis might be causing some amazing social civility!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tCivility was never the Brothers Gallagher\u2019s strong suit. Rudeness was their reputation, and in the Nineties and 2000s, it was on full display in interviews (where they\u2019d walk out mid-conversation, say something offensive, or mock the journalists) and at their own concerts (where Liam was known to spit beer at the audience). Older brother Noel was fond of throwing barbs at fellow musicians: Phil Collins was \u201ca middle-of-the-road baldie,\u201d Robbie Williams \u201cthe fat dancer from Take That,\u201d and on and on. When INXS frontman Michael Hutchence presented Oasis a BRIT Award in 1996, Noel started his acceptance speech with \u201cHas-beens shouldn\u2019t be presenting awards\u2009\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Gallaghers infamously and very publicly insulted each other too. After the band broke up in 2009, Liam spent years poking Noel on Twitter, labeling him \u201ca potato\u201d and \u201ca sad little dwarf,\u201d while Noel described Liam as \u201cthe angriest man you\u2019ll ever meet. He\u2019s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, 16 years after Noel ended Oasis in Paris \u2014 reportedly following a physical altercation backstage, during which Liam wielded a guitar like an ax \u2014 the brothers have made a point of starting each show by walking out onstage with their arms around each other. Hugs and kisses abound.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoes time heal old wounds and soften even the hardest and naughtiest of rock stars? Some might say staging a comeback tour that stands to pull in a reported $1.6 billion<\/a> helps. But Paul Adams, 54 \u2014 born and raised in Manchester, England, just like Noel and Liam \u2014 offers a little armchair psychology on the dynamic between the Gallaghers. \u201cYou have to understand, northern men are about as passionate as they come,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you fall out with somebody in the north of England, it becomes part of your identity. It\u2019s the clothes that you wear.\u2026 But it\u2019s all bravado. The second their audience was removed, both of those men were filled with regret at this relationship that had seemingly ended, to the point where they probably don\u2019t even remember why, but there was always a longing for reconciliation. So we can be cynical about the brothers coming out arm in arm, but actually, they need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u00a0Jason Singer \u2014 a.k.a. Nashville-based singer-songwriter Michigander, who points to Oasis as \u201cone of the reasons I make music\u201d \u2014 thinks their fans need the reconciling too. \u201cThese shows are taking people back to a time when we weren\u2019t so polarized as a society,\u201d says Singer, 33, who saw one of the Chicago shows.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou and I, we\u2019re gonna live forever\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAt my seat at MetLife, I made the acquaintance of those around me. They included two lifelong mates who generally ignored the band onstage in favor of singing nearly every lyric to each other. Nearby was a guy who was there with his fianc\u00e9e and her parents. He\u2019d specially chosen this night, this concert, for his first meeting with his future in-laws \u00a0(a brilliant move, since the white-haired, older couple seemed to be Oasis superfans).<\/p>\n

\n\tTo my right were two brothers from the Bronx, Frank, 34, and Joseph, 27. I met the former when he asked if we could link arms to do the Pozna\u0144, a fan-favorite moment during \u201cCigarettes and Alcohol,\u201d when Liam asks the audience to turn their backs to the stage and jump up and down.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs with many of the fans I met that night, this wasn\u2019t their first Oasis concert. Frank, a construction tradesman like his brother, said he\u2019d never been overseas before, but when the announcement came that the group was reuniting and beginning the tour in the U.K., Joseph \u201ctexted me like crazy: \u2018We have to go!\u2019 When we were kids, my brother got into them because I was into them. Their music brought us a lot closer. They\u2019re brothers, we\u2019re brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0When tickets went on sale for the U.K. dates, the two stayed up all night in New York and eventually scored a pair for one of the seven sold-out London dates this past July and August at Wembley Stadium.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe get there and see everyone in Oasis gear, and I\u2019m already feeling emotional,\u201d says Frank. \u201cThen the lights go down and the first notes of the intro hit, and I\u2019m arm in arm with my brother, taking it all in. I look around and everyone was there with their families, their friends. Everyone\u2019s feeling the same sentiment: togetherness, community. Then they come on, Liam and Noel holding hands.\u2026 I just lost it. I mean, tears!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI cried, like, four times,\u201d Singer says, recalling his experience at the Soldier Field show. \u201cIt was the best night of my life. I\u2019ve gotten to see some crazy, cool shows, but this topped it. I genuinely cannot stop thinking about it. I\u2019ve never experienced anything like it. I\u2019ve seen a lot of people saying this is the Eras Tour<\/a> for white dudes. I don\u2019t know how anyone would go about replicating it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tImpossible, sniffs Adams: \u201cThere\u2019s nobody that can now re-form that\u2019s ever going to beat it. It\u2019s almost certainly the most successful reunion tour ever at this point. And the band sound better than they ever have. It\u2019s working-class music underpinned with ambition and seeing beauty in the ordinary. Noel\u2019s songs of hope, friendship, and joy, combined with his ability to write gorgeously sad chord progressions and hymns as sung by his brother, are needed now more than ever. Everything is shit, so go and drink a beer, hug the people around you, sing the songs you know like the back of your hand, and believe that it\u2019s all going to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Jarrett traveled from his home in St. Louis to see the kickoff of the Oasis Live \u201925…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,63533,4154,136,63532,45961,1771],"class_list":{"0":"post-304036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-liam-gallagher","12":"tag-live-music","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-noel-gallagher","15":"tag-oasis","16":"tag-rock"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}