Noel Gallagher let the crowd at Wembley know exactly where he stood on Manchester pride during Oasis’s third sold-out reunion show.
And he did it in true Noel fashion with a bit of bite and no apologies.
Midway through the set, the 58-year-old rocker paused to speak directly to the crowd, acoustic guitar slung low across his chest, and asked, “Do we have any Mancunians in the crowd?” Most of the 80,000-strong crowd roared in approval, but a few boos drifted up from the front rows. That was all it took to light the fuse.
“Don’t you be fucking booing Manchester,” Noel fired back. “Don’t you be booing Manchester. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the city of Manchester.”
The heckling might have been minor, but the response was classic Noel. Without missing a beat, he launched into the next song, which he made sure to dedicate to “all Mancunians,” turning away from the crowd as he played the first few chords.
The moment added a bit of spice to what was otherwise a euphoric and surprisingly smooth night in the band’s ‘Oasis 25’ tour, which has already been hailed as one of the biggest reunion tours in recent memory. The Gallagher brothers, once thought unlikely to even appear in the same postcode again, are back on stage together after sixteen years of feuding, lawsuits, Twitter insults and general chaos.
There have been no backstage punch-ups reported (yet) though sources say the peace may be more performative than personal. Apparently, Liam is spending more time with his dog than Noel, and staff have been told to keep phone cameras taped over to avoid capturing anything unplanned.
Still, when the lights go down and the guitars come out, it is the Oasis of old. The crowd sings every word like they mean it, the brothers hold it together just long enough to keep the fantasy alive, and Noel, for all his sharp edges, reminds everyone that Manchester made this band — and he is not about to let anyone forget it.
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