Oasis live review

Oasis| Richard Ashcroft |Cast
Manchester Heaton Park
July 11 2025

Manchester homecoming is a high-decibel, emotional and musical rollercoaster ride…LTW’s John Robb, who just wrote the best-selling book on Oasis ‘Live Forever’, goes to Heaton Park.

Wow!

Oasis are on stage. Liam Gallagher is owning it just like he knew he would before he was even in a band. They have never sounded better. 

Tight, loud and powerful. 

Anthem after anthem. 

Hand in hand, the brothers take the stage with their merry band of troubadours in tow and deliver a set that turns the 80,000 sold-out crowd into a sea of joy and tears. Breathing new life into old songs they break all the rules and make the old sound modern, the past into the future and turn pop culture on its head. The all-ages audience, with a good fifty per cent of them not old enough to have seen the band before, surf on the energy and can’t believe they are hearing these hallowed songs live.

It’s quite the spectacle.

A reaffirmation of rock n roll. 

Everything gets amplified with Oasis – the music, the opinions, the emotions, the arguments, the spectacle, the record sales, the ticket sales and all through the huge PA, of course.

Oasis is loud and brash and make no apologies, and that’s why they are the ultimate people’s band. They are the sound of the people who don’t get listened to, and they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Yet within that sonic tsunami that is bringing so much joy to so many people, there is a melancholy and introspection that adds layers to their juggernaut.  

The week after they played the two Cardiff shows that brought down the house ( a very big house), the band returned to Manchester, where it all started, for what was always going to be the special/spezial homecoming shows. 

Five nights playing to 80,000 people a night in the huge north Manchester Heaton Park creates an atmosphere across the whole city that has gone very cup final. The vibe is bordering on surreal, the heatwave has cranked the expectations and the party. Everywhere is a sea of bucket hats, good vibes, and mass sing-alongs. People are having fun in a world gone mad, and it’s a beautiful sight.

The night before the gig I bump into French film crews filming the Boardwalk, countless Korean youth thrilled to be in the Mancunia heartland for the most authentic Oasis gig possible, the sightseeing Germans who are falling in love with this city, the Italians sleeping outside Heaton park explaining how Oasis are the biggest band ever in mother Italy not just because of the tunes but also because the brothers represent the football, music, clothes equation beloved of Italy – the ultimate ultras with their own soundtrack. There is a confused 22-year-old who has flown in from Tasmania the day before solely for the gig before flying back the next day in a high-decibel whirlwind trip who asks if the weather is always like this, to much laughter…

All roads lead to Heaton Park with the huge audience walking it, turning the few miles into an endless sea of humanity singing the songs and drawn towards a pop culture nirvana.  Once inside, the party goes up another level with the other brother’s DJ set cranking the atmosphere, ready for the first band to hit the stage. 

Bouncing on are those loveable Liverpool ragamuffins Cast, who open the night with a melody laced set of very Merseyside drenched cosmic shanty songs. The La’s connection will always be their holy grail, with singer John Power being the bassist in that classic band who laid down the template and who came and saw and then fucked off before anyone else had arrived. Cast retain the melodic flourishes of the mother band and a disarming enthusiasm and joy at just being here. It’s infectious stuff from an infectious band. 

Next up can only be special guest Richard Ashcroft. One of the key northern souls, he is in great voice as his crooning sends shivers of emotion up your spine – like Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, he can sonically fill stadiums with his emotion drenched voice and has the killer tunes that crank up the atmosphere. I think back to those early Verve gigs at places like the Roadhouse, where the band were like a freak out jam band making sense of the cosmos in song. No one knew where to put them, and they got lumped in with shoegazing but were creating their own soundscapes literally and quite possibly on acid. These were amazing gigs as Richard Ashcroft seemed to pulsate the music from his wiry frame and went about as far out as you could before collapsing.

It was perhaps on that 1993 tour with Oasis that changed both bands’ trajectories and saw them become (northern) soulmates. After that, the Verve seemed to be able to compress their lysergic trips into song and for Oasis, it was about being empowered by fellow believers and an affirmation that saw a united front that carried both bands into the mainstream. Today, it’s about the hits – huge anthems like Bittersweet Symphony remain a huge anthem connecting across the sea of heads and making sense of the complexities of life in song.

Now for the main course. 

The intro music of Fucking In The Bushes creates a surge – the cut up compressed drum loop and interviews from the Isle of White documentary film about the sixes festival perfectly fitting in the vibe of tonight – ironically, the song is also one of the very few post the first two albums to get heard. 

The crowd surges with a euphoric joy. Far from the ocean of beery blokes hurling piss at each other, this is a much varied crowd of all shapes and sizes, genders and ages. It’s far from all blokes and perhaps the most women I’ve seen at a gig for a long time— if you want an all-male audience, you need to go to post-punk gigs. There is something universal about the band and their songs that cuts across the cliches, and when Liam and Noel enter the stage hand in hand, the reaction is massive. 

Finally, the mythical band kick in with ‘Hello’ and everything slides away through the generations. The older heads are misty eyed remembering their live forever mad head youth and the new youth can’t believe the band are in front of them and in the here and now – this is the next generation who in two years will provide a clutch of bands in all shapes and sizes inspired by these magic moments in a sun drenched park in Manchester.

They could have got away with a karaoke run through of the classics – the audience is so hyped they would have done the rest in a mass singalong, but the band want this to be bigger and better than ever before. Just like all those decades ago when they rehearsed endlessly on the Boardwalk, Oasis have high standards and they have nailed this set and then cranked it up really high and with the huge band of visuals on the screen behind them, they have gone over every detail to create an audio visual freak out. They totally utilise the three guitar line up with Bonehead’s wall of sound as ever the key core sonic constituent to Oasis sounding gloriously Pistolian, whilst Gem picks out notes and melody lines and Noel takes nearly all the leads.

Oasis 25 is a glorious reminder and reaffirmation of the power of rock n roll. They bring joy to the masses and anthems that people soundtrack their lives with. They melt cynicism, and they are a reminder of the simple joys of guitar and great tunes, and sometimes putting your lives into the hands of a rock n roll band. 

Heaton Park was a rock n roll celebration and a chance to go out on a high. 

10 thoughts from the gig…

1. Two sides to every story

There were always two sides to this brilliantly schizoid band, who could deliver anthems and also introspective acoustic pieces, which are underlined tonight. It’s like having two bands for the price of one or two projects running in parallel with Liam’s tequila swagger vocals bringing on mass singalongs and Noels stripped down acoustic piece and aching vocals like on Talk Tonight and Half The World Away (dedicated to the late Caroline Aherne whose pithy sitcom The Royal Family combined the humour and pathos of northern life just like Noel’s songs). The introspective beauty of the tunes weaves a hypnotic spell and entrances 80,000 people. Then there is Little By Little, one of the tiny clutch of later songs that brings a respectful silence and an intimacy rare in a huge field. 

2. This is the greatest greatest hits set of all time 

These are old songs that somehow have never dated and are so full of passion and intensity that they transcend the decades. Just like those greatest hits tapes Noel bought or borrowed from Sifters in his youth, every song is either a hit or feels like one. Even the deep cuts are greeted like old friends, and from the unapologetic intro of ‘Hello’ to the huge hits like ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and the much loved ‘Live Forever’, Oasis have songs that are deeply embedded in the national psyche. The encores are timeless standards like the mass singalong of ‘Wonderwall’ and the euphoric 80,000-strong choir joining for the chorus of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, which is introduced as the anthem of Manchester. The song is a massive emotional release with that gigantic chorus stretching from the terrace to the street. The set ending Champagne Supernova still somehow deeply connects with what Noel sometimes calls its nonsense lyrics, taking on a meaning to everybody in the field.  The climactic song still feels like the euphoric morning after the night before after a rave, and a new dawn unfolding, and its massive swirling psychedelic climax is a moment of sheer bliss. 

3. Wam bam thank you glam

In many ways, Oasis are a glam rock band without the mad outfits. They are proudly influenced by Slade/Bowie/Bolan/Mott and the rest, with their pounding huge songs instantly connecting with the people. The generation gap I remember from my youth was the snotty prog fans looking down their noses at the glam rock kids still gets played out to this day. There is an art in superyob anthems, and when they are twisted with an emotional undertow, there is a magic. 

4. High decibel populism

Oasis are populism in action – they are the sound of the people. They are beyond critics and poison pens. They are interwoven with the national psyche, with their personalities and the songs resonating with all ages. 

5. Songs that swagger and ooze

Some might say the songs are ‘plodding’ and ‘slow’, but it’s this very tempo that creates the innate tension that, like the Sex Pistols, is core to the sound. The Pistols were the only punk band who didn’t speed up after the Ramones played London in 1976, understanding the power of the mid tempo ooze, the building anthemic power of songs that don’t rush. 

6. Oasis 2.0

Of course, it’s a conceptually perfect greatest hits set, but I do miss songs from the later period of Oasis 2.0. Little By Little is the only song they play live from the later albums – I get that the set is a wam bam greatest hits party, but ” The Shock Of The Lightning would have been a cool curveball.

7. My generation

Oasis 2025 are more than a hit machine. They have gone into that rare space of being a generational defining band. A band that means much more to its audience. They are an affirmation, a confirmation and a reminder of teenage adventures for the older crowd members and a chance to finally see the mythical group whose songs pass through the generations to the huge younger crowd.

8. Liam

Born to front a band, Liam is back at home fronting the band he loves. There is a moment when he puts his tambourine in his mouth and tips his head back, eyes shut, lost in the noise and confusion, blissing out on the great rock n roll from the band and the surges of emotional intensity from the crowd and it’s a real ‘I am I, you are you and we are all together’ moment.

9. Gimme danger, little stranger

Noel stands to the side, the high decibel conductor, whilst Liam prowls the stage with an added level of intensity and innate passion that adds the frisson of danger to the band. All great rock n roll needs this element of danger and edge. 

10 And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make

Of course, the concept is perfect. Like Noel’s beloved The Beatles and the Jam, it is about leaving at the top and never become diminishing returns. Yet this story has now gone weird. Somehow, by returning, Oasis have become the biggest band in the world. They have become the Beatles by doing the one thing the Beatles never did. Reforming.

Where do we go from here…

The conundrum now is how do they stop this juggernaut…?