Gallagher, Ashcroft show their star power
Liam Gallagher made his way onto the stage at the Masonic in San Francisco on Thursday, May 10, with an impressive swagger. He briefly stepped up to the microphone and belched out the title of a vintage Oasis song, “Rock ’n’ Roll Star.”
As the crowd roared its approval and his touring band struck up the unholy guitar racket that opens the track by his former band, the
scruffy 46-year-old singer was all menace and poise, padding around like a gorilla in heat.
But once Gallagher stopped roaming and made his way to the microphone stand, he settled in and didn’t move from his post for the next 60 minutes.
More than two decades after conquering stadiums around the world with chest-thumping British pop classics like “Wonderwall” and “Supersonic” (both penned by his estranged brother Noel), the art of performance continues to elude Gallagher.
From the bare stage set to the rudimentary swirl of lights, the show was devoid of frills. He didn’t even bother removing his orange windbreaker. It didn’t matter.
On the opening night of a six-date U.S. tour with fellow ’90s rock star Richard Ashcroft, Gallagher managed to keep the nearly sold-out room captivated at every turn, scowling and sneering his way through an even mix of songs from Oasis’ 1990s glory years and his recent solo debut, 2017’s “As You Were” (he mercifully ignored the middling output from his interim outfit Beady Eye).
Gallagher attacked classics like “Some Might Say” and “Slide Away” with fresh vigor, while salvaging bloodless new songs like “Wall of Glass” and “For What It’s Worth” with a dose of heavy attitude.
With just a few unintelligible words between songs, Gallagher disappeared in similarly striking fashion, as chants of “Liam! Liam!” filled the venue long after the anthemic chorus of “Live Forever” rang out in the encore.
Unlike Gallagher, the evening’s co-star inhabited his material with body and soul.
Americans might remember Ashcroft as the inconsiderate pedestrian swaggering down London’s Hoxton Street in the video for the Verve’s 1997 hit, “Bittersweet Symphony.” Playing acoustic at the Masonic, the man introduced by Coldplay’s Chris Martin at Live 8 as “the best singer in the world” reimagined that song as a cosmic blues jam, somehow managing to put even more conviction into its performance than he did the first time around.
Songs like “Lucky Man” and “Sonnet,” which also appeared on the Verve’s breakthrough album, “Urban Hymns,” retained every inch of their sublime power, even in strippeddown form.
Ashcroft has released a slew of solo albums since the Verve imploded, reunited and imploded again. A few of those songs were thrown into the mix too. While public interest has diminished, his talent — and ego — has only grown.
“No wonder they didn’t want me in the industry,” Ashcroft said, after performing a devastatingly emotional version of “The Drugs Don’t Work.” “Death sells ... not love.”