Here's How A Clothing Line Broke Up Oasis
Brothers are awesome, but spending your professional life with one can be a balancing act between sibling bickering and getting things done. Case in point: Oasis, the magnificent brit-pop band that redefined music for a few short years in the nineties before slowly disintegrating from the internal pressures brought on by the even more magnificent fraternal animosity of Liam and Noel Gallagher. They fought in the media. They fought in front of their fans. They fought ... look, it'd probably be easier to count the ways they didn't fight.
With such animosity, it's a wonder the Gallagher brothers ever got around to being in the same band. It's a significantly smaller wonder that said band eventually came to an end. But what, out of their numerous clashes, was the one that finally spilled over the Oasis pot? Knowing these guys, you can probably expect that the answer is going to be strange, but how strange?
Well, here's a story about how a clothing line broke up Oasis.
Free ad space and fiery arguments
Breakups are always painful and difficult things, where all parties have their points of view, and the reason the kettle finally boils over might be any stupid thing. In a 2011 interview with Fiona Bailey of the BBC, Noel Gallagher stated that Oasis' breakup in 2009 was the result of ever-escalating tensions. Things took a turn for the worse when Liam Gallagher cancelled a festival slot, either because the singer was hung over (as Noel says) or because he had a bout of laryngitis (the official reason). Noel explained that things soon escalated further, as Liam started demanding free ad space from the Oasis tour program in order to promote his clothing label.
Noel disliked the idea, to say the least. "I didn't think it was right for him to be flogging his gear to our fans," he said. "There was a massive row about that." As Noel puts it, the argument escalated to the point that his brother started swinging a guitar at him "like an ax." Noel retaliated by walking away just minutes before their concert in Paris. That, as they say, was that.
Although Noel has expressed some regret about walking away, and speculated that the band might not have broken up if he hadn't, he ultimately seems to think that turning his back on Oasis was a positive thing. "There's no point in being in a band with people you fight with. I kind of did everybody a favor."