Oasis, The Beatles and bad faith arguments

I am currently writing a long-form piece (it’s at 6,000 words and counting) that is looking at the Summer of Oasis, mourning, middle age and recklessly driving country roads in 1988. It’s just something I need to write and until it is finished, I will likely have less to post on the blog.

In the meantime, here is an excerpt of the article. Enjoy.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Let’s get something straight. Oasis does not sound like The fucking Beatles. Not any more than about 400 other bands, anyway.

Yet, in the helicon days that followed the reunion announcement, there was a recurring theme on social media: Oasis was an overrated, The Beatles tribute band that would never even make the opening date of the tour anyway because they were going to kill each other. Also, they were only doing it for the money. You know, unlike all those other purely altruistic bands that put on multi-stop world tours.

Those who were excited by the announcement were painted as being naïve, knuckle-dragging, drunk, and uncultured. We were wrong to be excited by Oasis and no one really cared anyway.

It was exhausting. It was also predictable. In the 16 years since the boys tried to kill each other in Paris, it had become cool to hate Oasis. They and their fans had become shorthand for being boorish, a lad, obnoxious, and any other description of someone who you would not want to spend time with at the pub.

What it often boiled down to, just like it did in the 90s during that whole Blur thing, was class. Specifically, Oasis weren’t the right kind of band from the right kind of background. Therefore, it was ok to dismiss their success as being unworthy of praise and without artistic merit. They aren’t the only highly successful and popular band to deal with this attitude – it’s also the basis of Nickelback hate (although they might have it even worse), if we are being perfectly honest – and although on one hand it doesn’t really matter, on another it very much does. Not that you can’t dislike a band. No, It’s ok to not like a band – I wouldn’t call myself a Nickelback fan, even if I think some of the hate they get is because they are from an unfancied part of the world, for instance—but it’s not ok to suggest that liking that band makes you a bad person, or a person without taste and culture.

The Oasis-haters were very much saying just that. We were too dumb and uncultured to appreciate just how much they sucked, right?

And how much they sound like The Beatles. They added, with oh so much originality.

I’ve been trying to figure out what those The Beatles criticisms were about for years. Like, musically. Liam named his kid Lennon, so we understand he’s a fan, but sonically speaking, does Oasis really sound like The Beatles? And, if they did, would that be such a bad thing?

So, let’s take a moment in our journey here to examine this criticism, shall we?

The first thing we need to ask ourselves when considering this Oasis-are-just-store-brand-The-Beatles idea is, what The Beatles era are we talking about? The Beatles are famously known for being transfigurative. The mop top kids that sang I Saw Her Standing There in 1963 are barely recognizable to the bearded and grumpy bunch that strung together 37 different ideas into a never-ending song that ended with some kind of point about the Queen on Abbey Road.

The Beatles were a lot of different things in a short period of time, so you have to narrow it down here. Is Oasis trying to sound like the Boy Band that was Please Please Me through Beatles For Sale (I’m aware that calling The Beatles a Boy Band is akin to blasphemy here – and I recognize that at the time they released these albums, they were cutting edge. But, to modern ears…I stand by my assessment. Boy Band).

Or, are they the ambivalent sound that they were in Help!, where you can hear the creative forces starting to battle with the commercial interests, and when the weight of being capital T The capital B Beatles was starting to inform the writing? Or are they the playful, whimsical and, at times, profoundly soulful version of themselves that Rubber Soul and Revolver represented?

Oasis sings about cocaine, not LSD, so I don’t think we need to focus on Sgt. Peppers through Yellow Submarine too much. The White Album might be worth digging deeper on, but it’s essentially 2.5 solo albums and Ringo on the drums.

As for Abbey Road, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to any band to try and compare its sound to Abbey Road. That’s as close to fine art that rock music has ever gotten, in my opinion. It’s layered and even a bit meta. The Beatles commenting on being The Beatles. Truly one of the greatest records of all time, and I don’t think you need to be a The Beatles fan to appreciate it – it’s just a very good piece of art that perfectly encapsulates a time and place in a way that few records ever have. I love Oasis, but they haven’t created anything as artful as Abbey Road. As good? That’s subjective, and it comes down to what you are looking for in your rock music.

For instance, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory kind of represents the mid-90s in a similar way, but I don’t think any reasonable person would compare the importance of the two albums to the art form of rock music. They might be on an enjoyment level, however. On a turn it up to 11 level. Somewhere deep inside your soul kind of place. All of those comparisons are valid because rock music is as much about how you experience it as it is about the art of it.

We’re going to put that thought on a shelf for now, though. For now, we just want to focus on whether Oasis sounds like The Beatles.

Also, I forgot Let it Be. It’s a Wings album. No one compares Oasis to Wings.

I am listening to The Beatles catalogue in chronological order as I write this – Nowhere Man is currently playing – and it’s a handy reminder of just how much of a trip The Beatles are. There is a reason that they are many people’s formative musical experience, as they were with me when I was listening on the cassette player in my parents’ K-Car in high school.

Spoiler: The Beatles are pretty good. I know, right?

Here’s the thing about them, however. As much as they a lot of different things and how they can scratch many different musical itches, there’s one thing that really aren’t: The Beatles are not a big, bombastic arena-rock band.

How could they be? When they did play live, it was either in the ‘50s in The Cavern Club and the early ‘60s in Hamburg, which required a different approach to arenas and, also, was with a sound we’d more associate with ‘50s’ era Rock ‘n Roll than the ‘60s sound they more or less invented later.

They stopped playing live altogether in 1966, so during their most creative years, they were entirely a studio band. The Beatles are as much an art collective as they are a rock band, really.

Here’s a fun game to play. Imagine for a moment an alternative universe where The Beatles were all still alive and were able to announce a reunion tour – Beatlemania Live 2025. Also important for this exercise is to separate the “Beatle-ness” of their songs. Instead of considering a song as part of a catalogue that is universally accepted as being important try to think about it as if it was just a song from a good band that was thought of as being among several other bands of equal standing from their time.

Also a fact in this Zombie Beatles reality we are creating here is that these songs are known, but not part of the culture like a The Beatles song is now. They’re just songs, not something nearly every living person on earth can sing along to. You might not even know all the words.

In this world, I want you to do an exercise. I want you to create a set-list for Beatlemania Live 2025*. What would they walk out to? What’s the first encore? At what song do all the cell phones get held up as 50,000 people sing along to? The final song?

It’s not as easy as you’d think, is it? Well, maybe the sing along (Yesterday, likely), but the rest of their material is designed for late nights alone in the dark with the headphones on, or driving along country roads thinking about stuff, not shouting at the moon with 50,000 of your best friends. That’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation on what kind of band The Beatles were. I wouldn’t bring it up in any other context than the one we are examining: Does the best arena rock band of 2025 (that’s Oasis, to be clear) – and one of the best of all time -- sound like a band that in no way was ever an arena rock band?

He asks rhetorically.

Aside: *Fine, let’s try: Helter Skelter? They might walk out to Helter Skelter.

Then we go Help!, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Come Together and I am the Walrus.

Pause to take in the applause and then they take it down a little: Strawberry Fields, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Eleanor Rigby, Paperback Writer (bringing it up tempo again), Ticket To Ride, A Hard Day’s Night and Come Together.

An acoustic switch: In My Life, Yesterday, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Blackbird

Building to the first encore: I Saw Her Standing There, She Loves You (turned all the way up to 11)

While My Guitar Gently Weeps closes the set.

Encore No 1: (McCartney only) Why Don’t We do it in the Road, When I’m Sixty-Four (Acoustic version).

Rest of band joins him: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band, Lovely Rita, Tomorrow Never Knows, Let It Be

Encore No 2: Yellow Submarine, Hey Jude

Final Encore: Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End

Look, that’s a good night out. No doubt. Remember, though, that in Zombie Beatlesland, many of these songs are not the campfire staples that they are here. In that world, they are just songs, and they don’t have the advantage of universal awareness and love that turn them into arena belters.

There are people at this show that only know them from Hey Jude and they think they kinda remember Yesterday. They will need to win this crowd over.

Might be better suited for Massy Hall than Rogers Stadium, no? If you’re not from Toronto, that’s “small venue with seats and perfect acoustics” versus “a literal (former) airfield.”

Again, this is not a criticism. Although I don’t listen to The Beatles all that much as an adult, I would still consider myself a fan and I would absolutely tell you that listening to The Beatles as much as I did as a young teen has informed the music I am attracted to now.

Then again, so did listening to Queen, AC/DC, Guns n’ Roses, and Def Leppard. All bands that sound more like Oasis than the The Beatles.

As do many of the ‘70s glam and punk bands that I would discover later, and who clearly influence Oasis’ sound. T. Rex. Slade. A pedophile that shall not be named that they sample pretty overtly.

They were also influenced by the ‘70s and ‘80s Manchester scene – Joy Division, The Smiths, Buzzcocks and more, and by their contemporaries – The Stone Roses, most notably.

Like literally every band that has ever stood on a stage, Oasis has influences. Some obvious, some less obvious, and, yeah, The Beatles probably play a role here, even if subconsciously.

But does Oasis sound like The Beatles?

No. Not really.

Seriously, no.

NO, DUDE. THEY DON’T. Get a new “joke.”