Older, perhaps wiser, but still every inch the rock ’n’ roll star
Liam Gallagher Finsbury Park, London ★★★★☆
Liam Gallagher once claimed that he would never go solo. Twelve months ago, he announced that he was going to do just that. Or, at least, he was planning to release a solo album; it wasn’t, he insisted, the start of a solo career. But whatever plans the younger Gallagher brother had in mind must surely be on hold now.
This huge celebration of the former Oasis frontman suggested that his fans were only waiting for this moment to arise. A sun-baked crowd went bonkers for Gallagher’s swaggering presence as he performed tracks from the platinum-selling As You Were, alongside Oasis’s greatest hits.
On Friday, they filled Finsbury Park, in north London, bringing goodhumoured mayhem to this World Cup summer, larking in the sunshine and braving M25-length queues for the bars. Gaps between the support acts were filled with “Football’s coming home” chants, and there was a surprise guest slot from a louche Richard Ashcroft, during which he played four songs from his old band the Verve, including Lucky Man, The Drugs Don’t Work and Bittersweet Symphony, that were met with deep affection.
Already, one of the most surprising elements of the evening was in evidence – the crowd that had come to see Gallagher, the most consistently cantankerous of British rock stars, was a young one. There was the odd grizzled believer who had made it all the way through Oasis’s Noughties decline and Gallagher’s years with the less-than-supersonic Beady Eye, but a significant proportion of the fans there weren’t even born when Oasis began their flawless three-year run of singles in 1994 – yet they knew all the words.
The energy spiked upwards from the moment that Gallagher began his long cocksure bowl towards the stage, before launching into Rock ’n’ Roll Star. Sibling enmity between Liam and his brother Noel hasn’t stopped the former from playing songs written by the guitarist, but the irony is that they sound a lot more like Oasis with their original singer. Or they did when you could hear Gallagher above the deafening singalong to Morning Glory.
You could hear him well enough during the songs from his debut album As You Were to judge that his voice is, if anything, getting better with age. He’s still channelling that plaintive John Lennon whine on anthemic ballads such as For What It’s Worth and I’ve All I Need, but there’s a warmer, softer edge, and more than enough power to drive stompers such as Wall of Glass.
The hard-rocking mid-section of the set, which began with a bassy Bring It On, showed just how tight the band’s playing was, even if the sound wasn’t all it could have been. “This don’t sound that clever, mate,” complained Gallagher at one point. And there was the usual water-bottle-hurling downside to the laddish atmosphere. But a half-hour encore that included epic blasts of Cigarettes and Alcohol and Some Might Say, before Live Forever and Wonderwall echoed through the darkening sky, sent the crowd home buzzed and happy.