It’s 20 years since Oasis’ incredible gig at Knebworth in front of 125,000 fans
It was the memorable gig which defined the Brit Pop era of the 90s and its like may never be seen in this country again
Instagram covers a multitude of sins.
Holiday photos, Pictures of cute kittens and French bulldogs, and. obviously, reminders of the past.
Last night the former Oasis manager Alan McGee, my neighbour and friend, posted a backstage pass for Oasis’ generation-defining concert at Knebworth on August 11th 1986.
It wasn’t just a laminate, it was a badge of honour and one Alan obviously still wears with pride.
Twenty years ago, Oasis played the first of two massive concerts at Knebworth in Hertfordshire, in front of 125,000 people (which meant they played to a quarter of a million people over the space of two days).
They were the biggest gigs of their era.
This was the time of Britpop, a time when the celebration of Britain was a genuine tourist attraction, when Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair.
And when Tony Blair would soon invite Manchester’s noisiest, most boisterous band to Downing Street, for a spot of champagne and caviar.
Remarkably, one in twenty people in the country applied for tickets.
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A quarter of a million of the luckier ones eventually got to see Liam, Noel, Bonehead, Guigsy and Whitey as they confirmed their status as the biggest, swankiest British band since The Beatles or the Rolling Stones. (I was at the Rolling Stones concert at Knebworth twenty years earlier, in 1976, and it had nothing on this.)
This wasn’t just a concert, though, this was an event that even before it happened was being compared to a moon landing or a World Cup Final.
These were concerts that were always going to live up to expectations.
For the Britpop generation, the Oasis concerts at Knebworth were the Woodstock of the Nineties.
In the offices of The Face magazine, where I worked at the time, the week before the gig was loaded with expectation.
The questions we all asked each other were simple, but profound: “Are you going?” “Do you have any spare tickets?”
“Where are you staying?” “Can I get a lift?”
By the time of their Knebworth gigs, Oasis were already the biggest band in Britain.'
The previous summer, in 1995, there had been a genuine battle of the bands, as Oasis and Blue were due to release singles in the same week.
Blur won the battle “Country House” racing number one, Oasis' “Roll With It’ only making number two), but Oasis won the war when they released (What’s The Story) Morning Glory. This album, released on October 2, 1995, was one of those genuine game-changers.
We loved it. We all loved it, not just those in a trendy magazine office, but seemingly everyone in the country, too.
You heard it in pubs, in bars, in taxis. The album was on the radio, on the office turntable, on heavy rotation everywhere.
As for Knebworth, it’s easy to say that there hasn’t been a brace of concerts like them since, not in the UK.
There have been some extraordinary U2 concerts - most of which I have been to - and there have been some massively high profile gigs by Coldplay, Adele and the like. But nothing like the Oasis Knebworth gigs.
In all honesty there will probably never be a gig like these again.
Music doesn’t appear to have the same traction in did 20 years ago, while the industry certainly isn't producing the same talent it did back then, not in any great numbers, anyway.
Also, the way in which people buy and share music makes it a far more diffuse environment, making it difficult for a culture such as Britpop to ever happen again.
The day after the gig, on Monday August 12th, I was in the office when a couple of staff members turned up, having come directly from Knebworth.
“How was it for you?” I asked.
“Like a religious experience,” said one. “I’m not sure what religion it was, but I’m now a true believer.”
Oasis at Knebworth: By the numbers
250,000 – Total audience size over the two gigs
2.5million – number of Brits who applied for tickets to the gigs, enough to sell out 18 more shows.
3,000 – Number of crew members needed to stage the concerts
7,000 – Number of celebs said to have been on the guestlist, including Kate Moss, Jarvis Cocker, and Mick Hucknall
11 – Number of speaker towers erected so music could be heard right at the back of the crowd
10 – number of arrests over the two days
We are doing our own homage to the Knebworth extravaganza in the next issue of GQ, and as I was trawling through all the photographs of the concert with the picture editors the other day, something about the photographs made me stop and think.
In every picture people were smiling. Not just in most of them, but in all of them.
I don’t know if they were smiling because they were drunk, I don’t know if they were smiling because they were on drugs, or simply because they had suddenly realised that they were at one of the most important British concerts of the 1990s.
But they all had ear-to-ear grins, and they looked as though they were having the time of their lives.
And you know what? They were. Each and everyone one of them.
- Dylan Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of GQ and the author of Ziggy Played Guitar