“I’ve waited 20 years for this,” the stranger said to me, post hug, about halfway through Oasis‘s classic Don’t Look Back in Anger.
In front of us, another duo – strangers or not – were having the exact same moment, together, arm in arm.
Over to the left, grown men in their 50s, adorned in Oasis live 25 bucket hats openly wept. For this, after so long and so much disappointment, this was their therapy.
This pure outpouring of emotion was no doubt replicated thousands of times during Oasis’s five Australian concerts, in Sydney and Melbourne, over the past week and a half.
[Image of Liam Gallagher on stage in Melbourne with caption: Liam Gallagher, on stage in Melbourne, was in fine form for the Australian leg of the world tour. (AAP: Joel Carrett)]
Playing to a combined audience of about 320,000 people,Liam and Noel Gallagher’s return to Australia for this much-hyped tour has been nothing short of a triumph.
It has taken over social media.Sparked singalongs on the street.[Instagram embed]
Given the manufacturers of bucket hats – the unofficial Oasis uniform – an early pathway to retirement.
And even given an economic boost to the two cities – a small bar in Melbourne personally thanked the Gallagher brothers for giving the city’s bar scene a much-needed shot in the arm, with fans drinking a week’s worth of takings in one day alone.Would they actually make it to Australia?
Aren’t they just doing it for the money?
From the first chords of Hello, the opener of Oasis’s beautifully curated 23-song set, it was obvious: this time things would be different.
Surrounded by gigantic LED screens,the brothers and their brilliant cohort of backing musicians were on song.
They sounded gigantic.
This was a different line-up from last time, when in 2009 the siblings’ bitter feud boiled over into a scuffle moments before arriving on stage to play the Rock en Seine festival in Paris.
This was a band that appreciated the past and did not feel squeamish about it, embracing it and making it soar.
Live Forever.Stand By Me.
champagne Supernova.
Wonderwall
Don’t Look Back in Anger.
They were all there – the last three in an encore that was utterly euphoric.