(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 5 February 2026 9:00, UK
Whenever talking about the ups and downs of Oasis, it normally comes back to Liam and Noel Gallagher.
It’s no big secret that the brothers haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye throughout their history, and while it’s great to see them put their cares aside to give the people what they want, it’s hard to erase those days when they were at each other’s throats. But even when Liam was being an absolute nuisance to Noel every single time he went onstage, ‘The Chief’ could see the bigger picture when it came time to cut a few band members loose.
Because, really, the core of Oasis is always going to be the brothers and no one else. For the true fans, rhythm guitarist Bonehead deserves to be in that company as well, but throughout every facet of their career, the band would have never been able to function if they didn’t have the voice and the one who had written it all. But for a brief period, it looked like Noel wasn’t going to join the group at all.
He might not have been that impressed when he first heard the group, but what he did see was potential. His brother had a decent group of musicians on his hands when they formed out of the ashes of The Rain, but if Noel was going to come on, he was going to be the team captain. The songs were all going to be written by him, and if Definitely Maybe was any indication, he clearly had a sixth sense for getting the best out of every member of the band.
That said, there were always going to be a few obstacles standing in the way of them as well. Noel didn’t have a clear vision of what everything should sound like, so getting Owen Morris in the room was practically a godsend. His ear for production was what their debut album leapt out of the speakers when songs like ‘Live Forever’ came out, but before they moved an inch further, Noel figured that the band wasn’t going to be able to get off the ground if Tony McCarroll was still behind the kit.
There was a lot of attitude to McCarroll’s playing, but the simplistic side of his drumming was never going to work for the rest of the band. He had a punk rock sensibility to everything he played, but the thought of him trying to play along to the more demanding drum parts that would come on What’s the Story Morning Glory was never really going to happen, no matter how many drum lessons he took.
And by the time that he had started writing tunes like ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, Noel had practically made up his mind already, saying, “Knowing that ‘Champagne Supernova’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and ‘Wonderwall’ were coming up, he is not playing on them. And if he is playing them, he is fucking not playing them live because I have got bigger ideas for that. When most people in the band are a better drummer than your drummer, and you are about to become the biggest band in the world, then clearly someone’s got to make that call.”
Dropping McCarroll right after the release of ‘Some Might Say’ might have been a lot harder to take, but that also meant that we would have never got to hear what Alan White could do. A song like ‘Supersonic’ is pure swagger all the way through, but comparing that to the rolling drum part in ‘Wonderwall’ is like night and day, and that’s not even taking into account the drum fills that turned up on Be Here Now.
Oasis were already turning into a well-oiled machine, and while McCarroll wasn’t going to be able to stick around much longer, it’s not like his legacy is tarnished in any way. He’s still been on one of the greatest debuts in British rock history, and even if he made no other music for the rest of his life, no one’s ever going to take the performance of ‘Slide Away’ or ‘Bring It On Down’ away from him.
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