Oasis: The Story of the Photo Taken to Announce the Reunion
“What am I doing today? A photoshoot.” On July 24th, Liam Gallagher, always very active on X, responded in this way to a fan who asked him what his plans were for the day. The photoshoot the Manchester singer was referring to was not just any photoshoot, but the one organized to take the photo to be distributed to the media to announce the reunion of Oasis: Noel and Liam, the two most quarrelsome brothers in rock, would have hugged each other that day after sixteen years of insults, barbs and curses. The news was, and had to remain, top secret until the official announcement. An anonymous Reddit user will ruin the surprise for the Gallagher brothers, who a few days after that photoshoot, on August 4, will publish a post on the platform through which he will say that he has learned of the imminent announcement by the greatest British rock band of the last forty years of a tour to celebrate a highly anticipated reunion.
But as of July 24, nothing had yet leaked out about that operation.
The historic appointment is in the photographer’s London studio Simon Emmetfor which both Liam and Noel have already posed as soloists: He has taken pictures of the likes of Adele, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pele, Jay-Z, Tony Bennett, Michael Caine, Manchester City star Phil Foden, Willem Dafoe. When the two brothers arrive at the office, many of Emmett’s collaborators are left speechless: “The shooting has stopped. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come and see it, because it will not be shown on TV”, Oasis will write a month later, on August 27, announcing their reunion. It is really happening and the collaborators see it with their own eyes.
Nothing can be shared about the photo shoot. Emmett’s staff members are, in turn, called upon by the Oasis entourage to sign non-disclosure agreements.: no one can say what they are witnessing until the day of the announcement of the reunion, set for August 27. More than a month later, an anonymous source present on the set that day says: “The session was top secret, almost no one knew about it. The atmosphere in the room was lively, electric.”.
When the black and white photo was released on Oasis’ official social media channels and on Liam and Noel’s individual channels on August 27, many suspected that the image was the result of some technological trickery, that the two were photographed separately and then photoshopped together. It’s not like that. Noel and Liam, fifteen years after that furious backstage fight at the Rock en Seine Festival in Paris on August 28, 2009, which had represented the unworthy ending to the story of the two brothers, sons of the working class of Manchester, who started from the council houses to get to the top of the world, after having said all sorts of things to each other, after having threatened, insulted and mocked each other, they found themselves in the same photography studio, on the same day, at the same time, to have a photo taken that has already become iconic.
“They were laughing and joking. It was nice to see them again after all these years of separation.”, adds the anonymous source, revealing other details of that historic day. Of the many photos taken of the two rock stars, the Gallagher brothers’ entourage finally chooses an image that portrays Noel and Liam, one with a denim jacket and the other with a leather jacket, with serious faces and hands in their pockets. Re-sharing the shot on social media, Simon Emmett, the author of the photo, writes: “It was a real privilege to have captured this moment.”.
