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Sitting in his Oasis-themed bar, surrounded by merchandise and memorabilia, Paul Gallagher ponders Manchester’s relationship with one of its most famous musical exports.
“There’s not actually that much to see in Manchester, Oasis-wise,” he muses, over the strains of the band’s third-album single “Stand By Me”. “You go to Liverpool and the whole city is moulded around the Beatles.”
He is, on one level, correct. Liverpool has an entire tourist trail devoted to the Fab Four. In the past, Manchester tended to be less sentimental. But this is 2025.
On Friday, Oasis will finally perform in their home city once again, 16 years after the band’s split and more than three decades after launching a swaggering, working-class caricature of Manchester into the national consciousness. Around 400,000 Adidas-clad, bucket-hatted fans will descend for five gigs, thirsty for nostalgia. And there is no shortage of people ready to sell it.
In Gallagher’s case it was a long-term dream. He set up the bar six months ago, well ahead of this week’s frenzy, with his sibling Mark — yes, they are coincidentally also the Gallagher brothers, just not those ones.
“I’ve been thinking about it since the 1990s,” he says of the bar, named Definitely Maybe after the band’s first album. “I can’t believe nobody did it then.”
Oasis themselves caught up a few weeks ago, launching an official pop-up shop in Spinningfields, a commercial district that didn’t exist in their heyday. Fans can buy £100 Oasis-branded Adidas anoraks, or be projected, via green screen, on to one of the band’s album covers.
Local artist Mark Kennedy, whose pop culture mosaics have long been city centre trademarks, recently unveiled a new image of Noel and his younger sibling Liam on the wall of the bar.
Although he was part of the city’s 1990s music scene, he admits that the current hoopla leaves him bemused. “I kind of get the feeling like with Barcelona, with those water guns,” he says of the coming fan deluge, drily referring to the anti-tourism protests in the Catalan city.
But Manchester, with its history of economic liberalism, knows how to make an opportunity its own.
At the start of the week I decided to do an audit of the mania. At one tram stop an advert had been plastered across the length of the shelter, repeating the band’s logo so many times it made my eyes ache.
Next door, a row of “Oasis Live 2025” flags adorned the Central Library’s frontage. Further afield, the Aldi supermarket closest to the gigs had temporarily renamed itself Aldeh (a knowing nod to the nasal accents synonymous with the band).
And one city centre bar is offering a 90-minute “Champagne Supernova” bottomless brunch (£35 per person, £60 if you actually want champagne). In Chinatown, one restaurant is touting a £19.80 “Oasis set menu” featuring salt-and-pepper prawns that it claims the band loves.
Seemingly every spare surface — the gable ends of pubs, arcade ceilings, public transport — is being used for sales. Some have the official stamp of the Gallaghers. Others, to use the Manc slang, are more snide: low-key fake. Chancing it.
I am secretly warmed by the hoopla. Oasis were my era. Definitely Maybe was among the five free CDs I got from Britannia Music Club, the 1990s mail-order outfit, after persuading my dad to sign up.
The band’s second album, bought with my own cash on cassette from Woolworths, can still conjure the unashamed excitement of being 15.
Woolies and Britannia are long gone, while the Manchester that Noel and Liam grew up in has been transformed by skyscrapers and professional services.
The city has also become so good at self-mythologising that it can now rival Liverpool, Kennedy muses. Testament to the way in which the two global music cities of north-west England define themselves against each other, while pretending not to care.
Kennedy won’t be going into the city centre over the coming days. But even he admits to being swept up by the spirit of the moment. “I’m glad some people are going to make some dough out of it,” he says. “And the money will sprinkle down the streets.”
jennifer.williams@ft.com
