Of course, concert films behave at concerts in the same way that masturbation behaves to sexual intercourse – but sometimes there is no other way.
For example, if you were so preoccupied with the downsides of not-in-Latin-failure in the summer of 1996 that you couldn’t do it Oasis-Concert made it to Knebworth, it is a shame in retrospect, and you can at least enjoy the film version of the performance now. Because the band was at least something like the new for a short time Beatles. She played two legendary concerts in the village of Knebworth in Hertfordshire, England. The park of a country estate there has been used as an open-air venue for decades. the Rolling Stones performed there Pink Floyd, the Beach boys and Paul McCartney – but nobody in front of so many people as Oasis on August 10 and 11, 1996. 125,000 fans came each evening, a quarter of a million in total, the BBC broadcast live.
Tickets were £ 22 and 50 pence – roughly the same as a beer at a concert today
The concert documentary “Oasis: Knebworth 1996” by Jake Scott commemorates this climax of Britpop. who comes to the cinema for a short time (and which will be followed by a live album in November). The film is a nice thing for every Oasis fan. A fan is, for example, if you once bought not one, not two, but three editions of the book “Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis” in a one-pound bookstore in Greenwich.
Even if only five percent of the backstage excesses described in this book are true, it must have been very wild when the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher went through their Sturm und Drang phase. The two haven’t spoken to each other for more than a decade since they broke up Oasis in 2009 (as is common with adult men, because one broke the other’s guitar). But they both co-produced the film and can also be heard in original tones.
Why for God’s sake, Noel Gallagher recounts, he did not play his most obvious hit at this monster concert of all places – “Rock’n’Roll Star” – is still a mystery to him today. Maybe it was the drugs. Both of them have discussed often enough that they remember the nineties rather vaguely. Some time ago, director Danny Boyle reported in an interview that he had asked Noel Gallagher to contribute to the soundtrack of his film “Trainspotting”, which was released in 1996 in Knebworth. But he had annoyed canceled because he thought it was a documentary about people looking at trains. This anecdote only to classify the state of mind of the brothers at the time. But where else can you end up in madness when, like Noel Gallagher, you’ve written the songs “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” within a single week?
In just a week, Noel Gallagher had written Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger.
(Photo: Jill Furmanovsky / Black Dog Films)
The film portrays the time when these songs were new anthems. A time when concert tickets weren’t advertised and sold on the internet. Fans in the film remembered Knebworth from teletext. The tickets cost 22 pounds and 50 pence – about as much as a lukewarm beer in a plastic cup at a stadium concert today.
Why Oasis before the ColdplayThe concert shows impressively that Britpop was the most important band in the kingdom, perhaps also in the world. There was no shortage of competition in the 1990s. The other heroes of those years – Richard Ashcroft, Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker and whatever they were called – also wrote their hits. But somehow they stood up to the claim to want to be not only rock stars, but also artists, always a little in the way of becoming a superstar.
After getting hit with a hammer, Liam Gallagher really wanted to become a singer
Art wasn’t the problem for Oasis, there were other motivations. Liam Gallagher likes to tell the anecdote that as a young lad he was standing in front of school and smoking a cigarette when a couple of thugs came by and hit him on the head with a hammer – this blow made him realize that he had to become a singer. It doesn’t really matter if that’s true, he liked to claim later that the spirit of John Lennon had struck him – and because of this nonsense, the band was loved even more.
When asked about Knebworth, Liam Gallagher said at a meeting in Berlin a few years ago: “Less than two years before that, we had played in pubs and clubs for a maximum of two dozen drunks who didn’t give a shit about us comes fast and so hard, that’s a bloody pressure. If you’ve played in front of a bloody 125,000 people, you won’t go to bed at ten. “
No, then of course you don’t go to bed at ten. The commitment to simply become a rock star for the sake of being a rock star (and not because of some art nonsense!) Dictated the songs with which the band lured the masses to Knebworth: “Cigarettes & Alcohol” https: //www.sueddeutsche. de / culture /. “Champagne Supernova” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/. “Live Forever”.
Of course, decline was already included in this hedonistic recipe for success. In Knebworth the band was “tight as fuck” as Noel Gallagher sums it up in the film – but not too much later everything frayed apart. Drug-related. Sibling conflict. When trying to grow to Knebworth size in the United States, the brothers were so close that they started playing at one concert at the same time – but unfortunately different songs. Oh well.
In any case, H&M recently actually had Oasis T-shirts. Of course you feel very old when your favorite band from the past is next to you in terms of merchandising Ramones queues. You could have walked on, shaking your head, cursing, as you do as a man who has just grown old. But because just before this shocking discovery you had seen the beautiful Knebworth concert film from the distant summer of 1996 (that was even before the Tamagotchis!), You had to hit it. The own youth, distilled in a T-shirt for 9.99 euros, Made in India. But at least 100% cotton.