Oasis represent a self-confidence that is all but extinct in Britain today

Telegraph

07-07-2025

Nostalgia, as they say, is a helluva drug. It is also freely available and widely consumed, especially now, as the Oasis concerts refill the air with an irresistible 1990s snarl.
Who would begrudge anyone living their high old times at the moment? Certainly not me. There is no point, for instance, in arguing about whether Oasis are as good as they were 'back in the day' (as every hanger-on puts it). The Oasis reunion is selling a vibe that people clearly want to buy, even at ridiculous prices. The vibe is about something direct and uncomplicated, music from a simpler age. Or that is how many view the 1990s.
Mass singalongs, blokey swagger, working-class lads on the rampage. Those, apparently, were the days. 'Please don't put your life in the hands/Of a rock'n'roll band/Who'll throw it all away' as the lyrics of Don't Look Back in Anger go. But they didn't throw it all away, did they? They cashed it in.
Accompanying this tour are ads for sportswear. But no one minds about that kind of shameless commercialism when it comes to Oasis. In fact, it seems ridiculously purist to even think about it – even though so many working-class kids cannot get a break or earn any kind of living in the arts.
The point is that Oasis broke through. This is about the joy of them. They were not grateful for their success – they owned it.
Nothing like them could happen today. It's all different now.
The same thought occurs watching the BBC's recent documentaries on Live Aid, which are full of incredible footage. It's 40 years since Bob Geldof and Midge Ure staged the huge concerts in Wembley and Philadelphia. This was an appeal for money for famine-stricken Ethiopia.
Such a thing seems unimaginable these days.
Unimaginable too, is Live 8, the string of benefit concerts that took place in the G8 countries and South Africa 20 years ago to coincide with the G8 summit being held at Gleneagles, Scotland.
In retrospect, all of these concerts were remarkable in a number of ways. Geldof's absolute drive to do something after seeing the pictures of fly-ridden, starving children was immense.
This drive seemed to cut through swathes of naysayers, of politicians, of cynics. The idea that back then we failed to see that a bunch of white-saviour pop stars trying to save famine-stricken Africans could possibly be iffy, paternalistic and politically naive is not true.
There was always suspicion as well as acclaim around Live Aid. Geldof and, later on, Bono were educating themselves along the way. There was always a tension between pure emotion – Billy Connolly weeping in the studio at the images of dying children that David Bowie insisted be shown during his set – and what happened on the ground.
Did the aid go to the people who needed it? Was the money raised being used by the Ethiopian former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to buy weapons from the Russians for his deadly civil war?
The impulse to give and the righteousness of the cause remain admirable. The hard politics of interfering in a country that is crushing its own people are immensely complicated. Humanitarian aid groups such as Live Aid were accused by Médecins Sans Frontières of actually fuelling the crisis and the slaughter of the civil war.
Geldof knew this and insists it was better to do something than not and it's hard not to agree. The older I get, the less cynical I become about such issues.
All the criticisms thrown at Geldof would be amplified today. Detractors now would note there were not enough black artists in his line-ups. Does that diminish what he's done? Not when he has explained this by saying he simply wanted the biggest artists he could get, and there was no Stormzy in those days, no 'diversity hires'.
Thankfully, back then, social media did not exist to slag off every politically incorrect move that Geldof made in his quest to get as much money as possible. Belief and pragmatism could win the day.
Any nostalgia we may have for those times is surely for an era in which people could put aside 'the narcissism of small differences' (to use a phrase from Freud) for a larger goal. We are nostalgic for the kind of idealism this represents, whether it's Live Aid's desire to help those worse off than ourselves, or Oasis's unbridled, rebellious confidence.
Such idealism now seems to be a thing of the past.
The world we live in now is full of worries about the advance of AI, climate change, perpetual war. It is an anxious place to be and I am so tired of being told how terrible everything is.
So who can blame those bouncing to Oasis, in communal bliss, escaping into the analogue times, the pre-cancellation times? When being mouthy and hedonistic was not a sin, and we were living for cigarettes and alcohol. Living forever.
I want to Be Here Now. To live in the present, not to locate optimism squarely in the past. Oasis and the Live Aid nostalgia have made me realise how dependent we all are on each other and reminded me of the stoicism of our great country.