The UK and Ireland can be divided into two camps this morning: those who got Oasis tickets and those who didn’t. You can be sure that WhatsApp chats across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are ablaze with back and forths about who got lucky and bagged their pass to witness the return of the Gallagher brothers’ band, and those conversations are likely happening further afield too. There is a high chance that across the pond right now, in between two giant shows at Seattle’s Lumen Field, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich is shaking his fists at the sky and complaining to his bandmates about Ticketmaster’s queuing system.
That’s because the Metallica drummer is a self-confessed Oasis fanboy, as he explained to The Guardian for the 20th anniversary of their classic debut Definitely Maybe. He revealed how he got into the Britpop legends in their early days after reading an interview with the siblings and then stumbling across one of their tunes on the radio. “In 1994 I was browsing through an issue of a magazine called Select, and there was a story about a band from England, with some unusual looking fellows, that I’d never heard of,” he explained. “I skimmed across the article, and was quite amused by the fact that every other word was either “fuck” or “cunt”. There was a pretty detailed description of a conversation between one of the guys in the band, Noel Gallagher, and Paul Weller, that was particularly off-colour and very, very funny. It reeked of attitude and not giving a fuck, which at the time – at the height of the shoegazing-I-can’t-handle-being-a-rockstar attitudes that were becoming mainstream – was very refreshing.”
A few weeks later, Ulrich continued, he was driving around San Francisco listening to local alternative radio station Live 105 when one of their songs popped up on the airwaves. It was, he recalled, “unlike any I had ever heard before.” “The attitude, the aloofness, and the not-giving-a-fuck vibes were pouring out of the speakers, and by the time the first verse/bridge/chorus cycle was done, I was convinced that whatever I was listening to had to be that band that I had read about in Select a few weeks back. And sure enough I was right. It was Oasis and the Supersonic single. Thus began a long and very rewarding relationship with a sound, an approach and a way of looking at the world that has had a huge impact on me and helped shape who I am today … for whatever that’s worth.”
Ulrich ends his Oasis eulogy with an apt precursor to what’s going on around the announcement of their comeback shows this week, a reunion that everyone – both pro and anti – has had an opinion about. “The Oasis phenomenon cut across all shapes , sizes, boundaries and classes,” he said. “Everybody knew Oasis, and in some way were impacted by them. And if they didn’t love them, it was often the polarising opposite. But most importantly, nobody didn’t care. Everyone had an opinion. Everybody had a thought. Nobody ignored them. No one.”
Of course, maybe Ulrich has already snagged his place on what is sure to be a highly-competitive guestlist. He’s become pals with Noel Gallagher over the years, and even ended up as part of their crew at one point. “Doing the lights for them at a club show in the spring of ’95 at some God forsaken hole in the wall in Nowheresville, New Jersey, was a distinct highlight of my early encounters,” he reminisced. “They didn’t have a crew guy to run the light board, and I was the only one in the building that knew the songs.”
We don’t think his lighting skills will be required for next year’s run of shows, though. Judging by the ticket prices, there should be more than enough room in the budget for a pro.