Oasis are still connecting and still making history after all these years. Where were you?

Is there a moment? There are many moments, the entire thing has been moments since it was announced. But if there is one MOMENT, it’s this. Noel, looking taken aback by the scale of it all, says he’s delighted there are so many young people present. And there are, so many. And then he says, if you ever wondered what it’s like to sing this song with tens of thousands of your fellows, then here we go.

And the piano for “Don’t Look Back in Anger” hammers in on a clear, balmy Edinburgh night and then, well, it’s just about everything.

Everything about the Oasis comeback shows has been an exercise in scale. Some 14 million applications for 1.4 million tickets. A payday of £50-£100 million each for the Gallaghers, if they keep the wagon between the hedges. Oceans of booze sold – the Cardiff shows alone are said to have generated £4m for city centre venues – dynamic pricing chiselling millions out of eager fans. And bucket hats. So many bucket hats.

But what is the heart of it all? A band who split acrimoniously 16 years ago, to spend the intervening period publicly daggers drawn, who saw their latter concerts beset by toxic animosity, a frontman who frequently barely spat the words out and a sense of going through the motions. As soon as they finally announced the return, last August, everything changed. 

On this, the final night on the first leg of the UK part of 41 global shows, it all becomes clear.

It’s the songs, of course. Noel Gallagher, one of the great melodicists of the last 40 years, used to spin them effortlessly from a golden loom. They are embedded in the collective psyche. Imagine writing songs so well known, and so many of them, that a couple of opening chords will have millions of people immediately singing. Imagine knowing that is in you, but reconciling it with the knowledge that that whatever you channelled might not be easily called forth again. 

Read more:

• Cigarettes, alcohol and sunsheeeeeine: How the UK has changed since Oasis first hit the big time
• The history of Oasis, through five iconic Big Issue interviews: ‘Liam’s an idiot… But he’s my idiot’
• Oasis songs speak to people in a way other artists only dream of

You could pick any tonight: the brotherly call and response of “Acquiesce”, so loaded with all that has happened; the boom of “Bring It on Down”; “Supersonic”, when 70,000 people roar ‘selling the Big Issue’ (that got me, that’s for sure); the lovelorn thump of “Slide Away”. None fail the test.

It’s about Liam, too, of course. Reborn, forever one of the great frontmen, his voice as rich and biting as it was 30 years ago, clearly taking care now the years have marched on, but still with that old prize-fighter’s roll, feinting and glaring. 

The humour is more to the fore, like he doesn’t need to continually be so on, so Liam all the time – “Do we have any Susan Boyles, any Susan Boyles,” he asks, like an absurdist bingo caller. “This one’s for Susan Boyle” (it’s “Stand by Me”).

But that’s not what it is. When Noel and Liam rampaged with happy abandon back then, there was joy, there was a sense of being in a moment, that many thought would never end. But even in that moment, Noel knew. Liam may have been full frontal, but Noel was always in a minor key, after the party, half a world a way – where were you when we were getting high?

And that’s it. Now, in this communion of joy, and singing and nostalgia with so many, this, the British cultural moment of the summer, and beyond, it is the sense of uplift beyond the greyness and anchoring of reality that hits first. But when Noel looks down at all the young people, a generation who grew up hearing older relatives playing the songs and then falling into them, he sees that the moment, even as we’re in it, has already passed.

That’s Oasis. Capturing something that we’ll always be in and always slightly yearning for.

It’s why they mean so much. It is always being now, being here now.  This is history. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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