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Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Right then! Half an hour until Oasis, who start at 20.15. While we wait, let’s reflect on how the reunion tour isn’t the only reason 2025 is a big year for Oasis: it’s also when Noel Gallagher gets the rights to his songwriting catalogue back.
In 2021 he explained: “I get mine back, all of it, in 2025, because I’ve been knocking years off the deal as opposed to taking money advances. I was like, ‘I don’t need [the advances] anymore’. The way that I look at it is I’ll be approaching 60,” – Noel is 58 – “and it’s like, do I want to leave it to my kids, who’ll probably swap it for a fucking PlayStation game? Or do I get rid of it now and set everybody up for life?”
He said he fancied buying a superyacht. “You know, you see them in the sea, and it’s like Ocean Breeze. I want to call mine Mega Mega White Thing. Like, the biggest fucking superyacht of all time.”
Since 2021 there has been a huge vogue for major artists selling off their catalogues: everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to assorted members of Fleetwood Mac, Dr Dre and dozens more. Some artists such as Taylor Swift and Zara Larsson are going the other way and buying back their rights from the companies who own them – but these tend to be younger artists who are more engaged in how the catalogue is used and want control over it, and potentially stand to make more money in the long run through holding onto those rights. But if you’re an older artist, potentially worrying about how your rights and image might end up being mismanaged after you die, it makes sense to sell them to someone you’ve done the research on. And, of course, you get a vast cash windfall to make your retirement truly decadent. Superyacht included.
The value of the catalogue is predicated on how much money buyers think they can make from it, and over how many years, whether via royalties, advert or movie syncs, and more. So Noel will want to get out there and show just how timeless and well-loved this music is.
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Richard Ashcroft’s set ends with Bitter Sweet Symphony
Laura Snapes Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Even if you’re not into Ashcroft, there are a few songs of this era that can’t fail to blow your hair back live. Bitter Sweet Symphony is one of them and – at least from the one time I saw Liam Gallagher at Glastonbury – so are Oasis’s finest. If the National Grid haven’t figured out how to tap tonight’s show they’re missing a trick – it feels like a powder keg now, and Ashcroft is so much more animated now, with cosmic northerner street preacher energy in flow. There’s big cataclysmic noise and screeching guitar to end. A man behind me yells “fuck off!” in pure joy, overwhelmed.
ShareLaura Snapes Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA
“Oh yeah, what a crowd tonight!” Ashcroft says. “This thing couldn’t have started in a better place. It starts in 45 minutes – so I’m gonna leave you with a big one.” Predictably enough, it’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, and even me and Alexis are on our feet. “This one’s for Noel and Liam! This one’s for all of Oasis from start to finish.” He doesn’t even have to sing the first line, he lets the crowd do it for him, and lots of people are climbing on shoulders.
ShareLaura Snapes
The Drugs Don’t Work prompts the first proper singalong of the evening. Phone torches are on. Men are embracing. A pink flare has been set off in rear standing.
Photograph: Laura Snapes/The Guardian
Ashcroft’s face, shown in moody black and white on the screens, is eerily impassive – but the room feels almost full now and the energy is definitely crackling a lot more than it was for Cast.
By Lucky Man, everyone is properly singing along and starting to stand in their seats – it feels like a taste of what’s going to happen when Oasis come on. If I’d drunk five more beers I might be on my feet, too. I haven’t thought about this song in years but hearing it has reminded me of when we first got MTV2 and I discovered indie music – I was definitely partial to Lucky Man when I was about 12. Though the strings are on a backing track! Bit budget for such a momentous occasion?
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Updated at 19.36 BST
Laura Snapes
Alexis is sinking further into his chair with every Ashcroft track. “The thing about this stuff is that it actually makes you realise how good Oasis are,” he says. It’s better than Cast, though. A Song for the Lovers next, then Break the Night With Colour.
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Updated at 19.23 BST
Richard Ashcroft’s support set begins
Laura Snapes
Richard Ashcroft’s new single is being played as his own walk on music. Who needs a brother for a war of ego and id? He says he’s “so proud to be here on this historic night with the greatest rock’n’roll band”. He opens with the Verve’s Sonnet.
The crowd is much bigger than for Cast, and while the stadium is still not full, Sonnet gets a massive singalong. It’s loud but you get the sense Oasis is gonna be Eras-level loud. Speaking of which, I forgot to note the main difference between cities being overrun by Swifties and Oasis fans: a large contingent of the Swifties were not old enough to drink.
Ashcroft is a big fan of himself. Some chest beating “come onnnnn” body language after that one. Next up it’s another Verve number, Space and Time, from Urban Hymns. Let’s not forget quite how big that album was: it’s in the Top 20 biggest selling albums in the UK ever: 11 times platinum and it sold more than U2’s The Joshua Tree, Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and the Spice Girls’ debut.
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Updated at 19.18 BST
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
That leaked setlist from stadium rehearsals suggests that Hello will feature, but some unnamed sources told the Sun that it wouldn’t, because it features a snippet of Gary Glitter’s Hello, Hello I’m Back Again – Glitter has been convicted and jailed for various child sexual abuse crimes in recent years. Hello features Glitter and Hello, Hello I’m Back Again’s co-writer Mike Leander in the songwriting credits, meaning that were it to be performed, Glitter would technically be in line for royalties. Though after another Glitter song was used in the film Joker, the UK and US rights holders said he wouldn’t receive royalties from that.
Hello, which opens What’s the Story (Morning Glory), is a really, really good song – the way the chorus shifts through various shades of melancholy and nostalgia is top-tier songwriting from Noel – and the “it’s good to be back” makes it an obvious candidate here in some ways. But is it good enough to warrant a bit of potential bad press? Will the words of a convicted sex offender be sung in front of thousands each night? Probably not, given how many other songs they’ll want to fit in.
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Updated at 19.10 BST
Laura Snapes
We’ve deduced why the roof is closed: to stop drones filming it as there’s a documentary coming out next year.
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Updated at 19.00 BST
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Bono recently talked up the likely quality of the incoming Oasis set. “I’m still very close with Noel, and he sent a message to me saying he’s kind of shocked by how great the band is [sounding at rehearsals]. I think we’re going to have a good summer,” he said to Zane Lowe. I mean, you wouldn’t really expect Noel Gallagher to tell Bono that the band were sounding not very great, actually. But still.
The U2 frontman continued with some decent enough musicological analysis: “I remember what they did. Those big guitars, big Neil Young [inspired], generous sounds – they were against the law in the UK. But they were like: ‘No, I’ll do what I want.’ They had this rhythmic, beautiful quality to them … and Manchester was very influenced by dance music, so they were groovier than anybody, they were rawer than anybody.”
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Updated at 18.48 BST
Alexis Petridis reviews Cast
Alexis Petridis
It’s the binding agent of rock. It’s fine? They played the hits? How do you analyse a support set by Cast? It’s not as if Oasis had Two Shell supporting – Cast do the job a support act does. You don’t want to be overshadowed, you don’t want the crowd to burn out too soon, and Cast are definitely not at risk of doing either. It is slightly workmanlike. The other thing it demonstrates is that the sound is really booming around the venue, especially with the roof shut, which works for Oasis and their giant wall of guitars, but crushes everyone else. Maybe that’s why the tuneless space-prog song cut through, even though it didn’t work.
John Power of Cast on stage at Principality Stadium. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PAShare
Updated at 18.51 BST
Laura Snapes
Far be it from me to cast (no pun intended) aspersions on the support acts, but instead of watching this bunch and Richard Ashcroft warming the stage for Oasis on Saturday, night two, you could be watching Wales make their debut in the Women’s European Championship. They may be the lowest-ranked team at the tournament, but the Guardian’s Louise Taylor reckons their performance might be surprising thanks to coach Rhian Wilkinson turning the team into tricksy opponents, with the “incomparable” Jess Fishlock and Sophie Ingle in midfield. I wish them luck – so that unlike the men’s Euro 96 team, they don’t have their defeat soundtracked by Walkaway.
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Updated at 18.38 BST
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
First pic of Cast has dropped in. They look as if a doom metaller, a Madchester refugee and a white reggae artist have collaborated. That would go some way towards explaining the strange genre-mash Laura mentioned.
Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PAShare
Updated at 18.33 BST
Laura Snapes
Cast have just played Flying. Even for a something of a landfill indie band, they’re a bit incoherent – tuneful whimsy; tuneless space-prog; this is a bit Americana lite.
But wait, now it’s Guiding Star – I actually do know this one! It provokes what I would call the first sign of life among the crowd. “So good to be here on a momentous occasion”, says frontman John Power.
ShareBen Beaumont-Thomas
In an example of opportunistic branding so brazen that we simply must applaud it and post it on the live blog, we turn briefly to Graham Conway, managing director of Select Car Leasing. “How can we crowbar our motoring company into the Oasis conversation, despite it having absolutely nothing to do with Oasis?” Graham beseeches his marketing corps in a break-out huddle-pod. “Erm, paint our EV fleet pink and dub it She’s Electric?”, someone suggests, but Graham senses the wokerati won’t like it.
Instead, he does some truly cerulean sky thinking and comes up with this, reported entirely straight by the Manchester Evening News.
“While it’s not illegal to wear a hat while you’re driving, there are rules around fashion items obstructing you while behind the wheel. Rule 97 of the Highway Code states you must have ‘footwear and clothing which does not prevent you using the controls in the correct manner’, while the Road Traffic Act says that anything obstructing a driver’s view is considered a hazard – including hats. And because bucket hats are generally pulled down low over the eyes to complete the look, that could be a serious problem when it comes to getting a full view of the road.”
Perhaps it was Graham’s influence that has so dented the aforementioned bucket hat sales trajectory. Your move, Adidas.
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Updated at 18.28 BST
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Thank you to X user Miss S, who posted this clip of sound emanating from the Principality Stadium on Monday. We must presume from this that Oasis are going in a bold industrial/musique concrete direction for a live album to be released on Black Truffle or the resurrected Table of the Elements.
Oasis Mania had this rather better quality recording:
Though Liam scotched the idea that he was actually doing the singing:
It’s Monday you nutter nobody rehearses on a Monday
— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) June 30, 2025Share
Updated at 18.23 BST
Laura Snapes
Just now there was some fretboard tapping going on, creating absolutely horrible, squelchy spacey zapping sounds. Awful. From Alexis: “That response to that song indicates a crowd determined to enjoy themselves.”
But then there’s a really touching moment when they dedicate Walkaway to Diogo Jota, the Portuguese footballer who died in a car crash yesterday, aged 28. Jota had a storied career at Liverpool, in Cast’s home city, winning the Premier League and FA Cup with them.
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Updated at 18.20 BST
Laura Snapes
I love watching Top of the Pops reruns on iPlayer, and especially discovering the megahits of the time that have no lasting cultural footprint – such as 80s megastar Howard Jones: who he? Etc.
Cast seem like a classic example of this. I was born in 1989 and grew up familiar with Oasis, Pulp etc, and have been a music journalist my entire adult life, but until I listened to them as homework for seeing Oasis, I’d never knowingly heard a note of Cast. And as Alexis reminds me, they had two platinum albums! The 90s: a hell of a drug.
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Updated at 18.17 BST