“Live Forever” and the birth of the Oasis myth

It is the summer of the Oasis: if we want to use these arbitrary categorizations that they like both to the press and to social media, that of 2024 was the Brat Summer, that of 2025 saw the Galagher brothers return triumphantly, becoming a social phenomenon of costume that goes far beyond concerts, as well as well telling those who saw them in one of the cities they have performed so far. One of the most awaited but also more announced reunions: because even before last year, Oasis have never really gone away. Also alone, Fratelli Gallagher have committed themselves to carrying out the repertoire and history of the band, both with music – regularly performing the songs with the new bands – and with a soap work made of jokes and crossed controversies. The happy ending came with the announcement of last year and this year’s tour had an echo that also went beyond expectations.

In Rockol we interviewed both Liam and Noel several times in recent years, when they passed (often) from Italy, to present their solo projects. The indications were almost always those not to mention the band. Then it happened were always the ones who did not hold back, joking, who spent more or less direct way about that elephant in the room: each interview provided titles at will.
In one of the most memorable moments I remember, I asked Noel to record one of those video games that every now and then are made, and he replied “Hi I’m Liam Gallagher and you’re watching rockol”, with a grin that alone is worth the video. You see it here.

A little over a year ago, at the end of 2023, we met Noel Gallagher, to talk about his album “Council Skies”, the best of his solo production – I also that time the indications for the press were not to ask questions about the band. He ended up doing it: “Yes, we will reformed for the 30 years of ‘Defintely Maybe’, we will play him entirely live” and the Beatles will also reform, with John Lennon revived, “he said.
But the real gem of that meeting was the story of the story of the song that changed his life and that of Liam: the moment in which he understood that the Oasis would become great.
“Live Forever”, of course: he was the third single forerunner for “Defintely Maybe”, he went out in the early August ’94, just before the album, which came out at the end of the month. In this summer of the Oasis, here is the video and the story of the song: “When I wrote Live Forever I was a gentleman nobody, without managers, without a record company. But people today spoke about it and still talk about those songs”. And how, if he was right:

“I remember well that I wrote it, in an apartment in Manchester on a Wednesday afternoon. A song like the one written on Wednesday afternoon, can you believe it? I remember when I took it to the rehearsals, that evening and I played it to the band: I remember that Bonehad said that I could not have written that song, it didn’t believe it was mine,” Remember Noel. “At that time I was listening to the Rolling Stones and the song came out of nowhere in 20 minutes.”

I knew it was a good song, I never imagined that he was still talking about 30 years later. I knew it would be great to sing live. But after that song things were never the same again: I already understood enough to know that that was a classic and that it would become a comparison for everything I would have written. Even today I think it is still the best thing I wrote “

“The fact is that when we started, in the 90s, it was all new. There were no band from the 70s that were really remarkable, to inspire themselves. My musical generation, that of the 90s is still on the track: they run out of the buildings, and this says it all. I should be at home watching TV while instead I am here to make press and interviews. The irony is that that song will really live”