Brit Forever: Liam’s Concert at Sziget Was a Triumph
The magazine coversThe clips from news reports about the phenomenon band that embodied the UK’s cultural renaissance after years of recession, the Concert footage pulled out of the archivesi clippings with newspaper articles. And the covericonic, of “Definitely maybe”. The beginning of the show is a leap back in time of thirty years. Yet Liam Gallagher in front of the 60 thousand of the Sziget Festival does not speak in the past: “It’s just rock’n’roll”, “It’s just rock’n’roll”he sings, like a mantra, on “Rock’n’roll star”, the song with which he appears on the main stage of the Hungarian festival, wearing an impeccable parka (despite the thermometer reading over 25 degrees centigrade), tambourine and chewing gum in his mouth.
On his head he has a few more white hairs than in the grainy images of the months following the release of “Definitely Maybe”, the album that kick-started Oasis’ rise to fame in 1994, and .even the voice is different than it was then: more rough, wrinkled, grainy. Maybe even better than thirty years ago. Yet Liam has remained the nice rude guy of the time, with the same stage presence and the same cheeky and arrogant attitude. He had already performed at Sziget twice: in 2000 with Oasis, during the “Standing on the should of giants” tour, and in 2018 as a soloist, to present his album “As you were”. This time the occasion is special: the one hosted yesterday evening on the main stage of the Budapest festival was the only continental European date of the 30th anniversary tour of “Definitely Maybe” itself, outside the UK. And it did not disappoint.
Between stadium chants and rivers of alcohol, in front of the multicultural audience that met under the Sziget stage, Liam Relives the Entire “Definitely Maybe” Epicthe months that starting from April 1994, when the very first single of the album, “Supersonic”, was released, marked the meteoric rise of the Gallagher brothers’ band. At his side there is someone who experienced that epic first hand. No, it is obviously not his brother Noel (by the way: on social media they chase each other uncontrolled and uncontrollable rumors about a possible reunion in 2025with fans interpreting seemingly insignificant details – Noel’s decision to scrap plans for an acoustic album, the fact that Liam has yet to announce 2025 commitments – as clues, but without concrete evidence).
But .Paul “Bonehead” Arthursthe guitarist who between the winter of 1993 and the spring of ’94 entered the studio with the Gallagher brothers, bassist Paul McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll to record an album that – they certainly could not have imagined, in those months – would mark a watershed in the history of rock. Completing the band are the musicians who have accompanied Liam Gallagher since his solo breakthrough in 2017 with “As you were”, Drew McConnell on bass and backing vocals (already seen and heard in Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles), Mike Moore on guitar and Dan McDougall on drums. With them Liam (re)plays all the songs contained in “Definitely maybe”, from “Shakemaker” to “Married with children”, from “Up in the sky” to “Cigarettes & Alcohol”, from “Digsy’s dinner” to “Bring it down”. Not only that: it also dusts off the b-sides of that album, which will be back in stores on August 30th on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary in the form of a deluxe edition reissue, also containing tracks recorded and then discarded during the sessions at Monnow Valley Studios and Sawmills Studios in Cornwall.
And so to further enhance the idea of the event – the highlight of the third day of Sziget, after Kylie Minogue’s performance on Wednesday night and Halsey’s on Thursday – and to get the most die-hard Oasis fans going, there are – among others – “Half the world away” (from the back of “Whatever”), “Do you wanna be a spaceman?” And “Fade away”, respectively the B-side of “Shakemaker” and that of “Cigarettes & Alcohol”. A way to monetize nostalgia? A little bit, yes, even if after the Beady Eye parenthesis, which lasted five years, from 2009 to 2014 (the time to record two mediocre albums, “Different gear, still speeding” in 2011 and “BE” in 2013), the hero of Manchester wrote three very inspired albums such as “As you were”, “Why me? Why not.
” and “C’mon you know”, with which he filled arenas, proving that he can live without an income. To those who accuse him of continuing to live thanks to the songs written by his brother, Liam, hands clasped behind his back and chin up (he said that the pose, which has become iconic, allows him to “give more power to his voice”), remember that probably .those songs would not have become generational anthems which, thirty years later, continue to be sung at the top of their lungs by those who experienced the Britpop scene first-hand (and today, at fifty, let loose in the audience, losing all dignity, perhaps wearing a City t-shirt, regretting their adolescence) as well as by those who weren’t even born when “Definitely Maybe” came out.
How “Supersonic”, with that very recognizable turn of electric guitar – Noel played it: “I need to be myself / I can’t be no one else / I’m feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic / you can have it all, but how much do you want it?”. On the romantic atmosphere of “Slide away” some fifty-year-olds get emotional, while the kids hug each other and sing with their fists pointing to the sky with all the breath they have in their lungs: “Now that you’re mine / I′ll find a way of chasing the sun / let me be the one that shines with you / in the morning when you don’t know what to do”.
.There are also those under the stage who keep their hands clasped in front of their mouths and their eyes closed, while Liam sings. As if it were a religion. There’s still one left. The most beautiful of all. The one that fills your eyes with tears every time. When the drum groove of “Live forever” those of the 60 thousand – plus one, Liam – crowded under the main stage of Sziget become a single, great voice: “Maybe I don’t really wanna know / how your garden grows / ’cause I just wanna fly”. No, it’s not a revival: it’s a glimmer of eternity. “You and I are gonna live forever…”, sings Liam. And who knows, maybe on stage, at the end, when he pulls up the hood of his parka and enjoys with open arms the ovation of the crowd in the center of the catwalk that divides the parterre in two, he won’t get a little emotional too.
