Oasis pay poignant tribute to Ozzy Osbourne as ‘Rock N Roll Star' appears on screen at Wembley in emotional song
The band lit up a screen at
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Oasis put up an image of the late Ozzy Osbourne on screen before dedicated their next track Rock 'N' Roll Star to him
Credit: X / @OasisMania
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The rock legend passed away at the age of 76 on Tuesday, just 17 days after performing his final gig in Birmingham
Credit: Ross Halfin
The Gallagher brothers made a triumphant return to the capital - performing for the first time in London since 2009 - as they continued on their world tour.
As the band made their way through staple tracks, an image of a younger Ozzy made its way onto main screen as the crowd began to
cheer
.
After finishing the song Live Forever, Liam announced to the crowd that he wanted to dedicate the
next
track - Rock 'N' Roll Star - to the late singer.
Ozzy
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Turning to the packed Wembley crowd, Liam said: "I wanna dedicate this one to Ozzy Osbourne, Rock 'N' Roll Star."
Oasis performed an electric set at Wembley on Friday night, the first of five gigs over the next 10 days in the capital.
They will also perform two shows at the venue in September.
Liam told tens of thousands of fans of his
pride
as the band graced the stage at the iconic stadium 16 years after their last appearance there.
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Just three songs into their much-anticipated appearance, he declared the crowd was 'f****** beautiful', having bowed to the sea of raised arms before him.
Oasis superfans in bucket hats and branded T-shirts had packed the Tube en route to the gig from earlier in the day, with international accents denoting the band's worldwide popularity.
Inside Ozzy Osbourne's final days after historic last show 'took huge toll' on his health
As with previous gigs, Liam and Noel walked onstage hand in hand, opened with Hello and proceeded to belt out many of their classics including Some Might Say and Morning Glory.
The packed-out stadium was in full voice throughout and at one point Liam threw a tambourine into the jubilant crowd, while later positioning one on top of his head.
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Despite pledging to concentrate on his vocals rather than talking – telling those gathered 'every time I open my mouth at these gigs I seem to get myself into a lot of trouble so I'm just going to do the singing' – Liam later engaged in some light football banter.
The well-known
Phone camera torches also lit up the stadium as darkness fell.
Friday's show – the eighth of the tour – followed a five-night run of homecoming gigs in
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After they complete their first stint at Wembley, the band will head up north to Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium before travelling to Croke Park in
This comes after the band
They immortalised their iconic gigs at Heaton Park by issuing an official release of their live rendition of iconic track Cigarettes and Alcohol.
Recorded on the first night of their stint at the park, Cigarettes and Alcohol has become a staple favourite on the brothers' set list.
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In true Cork style, they'd even managed to secure jobs in Underworld for a few more of their mates from home. Not that it was all plain sailing. There was still an element of anti-Irish feeling in the UK in the mid-1990s – especially in the wake of the IRA bombing of the Bishopsgate financial district in 1993 – and going around in a van full of boxes meant the Cork duo were regularly stopped and questioned at police checkpoints. 'We also got a bit of it around Abbey Wood where we lived, but things were much better when we moved to Hackney, which was more multicultural,' says Mullally. Meanwhile, between April 1994 and the release of Definitely Maybe at the end of August, a real buzz was building around Oasis. The three singles Supersonic, Shakermaker, and Live Forever, had been hitting incrementally higher chart positions, and the album went straight to number one in the UK charts. The Gallagher brothers had arrived. 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Life on the road was a mixture of good fun and hard work. Depending on the tour, Mullally and McCarthy would sometimes be living on the crew's bus, or other times driving to venues themselves. Of course there were some late nights and partying along the way, but the Oasis entourage also had a serious work ethic. 'If everybody knew that did a couple of days off, then there might be a big party and a bit of a blowout. But a lot of the time, people were up early to get set up at the next venue, and working long hours through the day. You wouldn't have been able to do your job if you were partying all the time,' says Mullally, now working at the Everyman theatre in Cork. 'People got on very well on tour. You knew you just couldn't be invading people's private space or doing the langer in any way.' The band themselves travelled in a different bus, but both Mullally and McCarthy recall the Gallagher brothers as being down-to-earth lads who were always pleasant to deal with. 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On the road, part of the Cork duo's job was dealing with the increasing amount of bootleggers who were selling unofficial merchandise near the venues. 'We'd go out to chat to them, and then of course it'd turn out that a lot of them were friends of the Gallaghers from Manchester,' says Mullally. 'They were mostly nice guys so you'd just ask them to push back a bit – 'Just go down to the end of the road to sell your stuff'.' The mid-1990s was an era when everything was paid for in cash. This meant the two Cork lads would sometimes end up with tens of thousands worth of banknotes in cardboard boxes or plastic bags in the back of the truck or in a hotel after a gig. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis arriving at Cork Airport in 1996. Picture: Dan Linehan An event like Knebworth in 1996 – when Oasis played to 250,000 people across two days – created even more issues. 'A few times a day we used to do a cash-run to get the money off the stall. Somebody would come along with a backpack and we'd stuff it with maybe 10 grand in notes," says Mullally. "You'd try to be as inconspicuous as you could walking through the crowd with that on your back, hoping that nobody comes at you.' Knebworth had 'proper' security vans taking the cash from the event HQ, but Mullally recalls the earlier days when himself and his co-worker would have to bank the money. 'You can imagine with all the stuff that was going on at the time, and two Irish guys coming into the bank with 20 grand in cash, sometimes even in deutsche marks if we were after a European tour. They'd be looking at you strangely, and you know that they're just about to push a button. But they might make a few phonecalls or whatever and we'd eventually get it done.' Knebworth is widely regarded as the high point for the band, but McCarthy also has particularly warm memories of the gig they played in his hometown just a few days later. 'I couldn't believe they were actually playing in Cork at that stage,' he says. He drove the truck from the UK via the Holyhead ferry, but as he arrived at Páirc Uí Chaoimh ahead of schedule, they wouldn't let him into the arena. Wary of leaving a truck full of merchandise parked around the city, McCarthy drove it to the seaside village of Crosshaven. 'When I got there I decided I'd leave it at the carpark at Graball Bay. I didn't even know if it'd fit up the hill but I just about managed it,' he recalls. When he went back later that evening to check everything was ok, there was a big crowd of children gathered around the emblazoned truck. 'There was a big mystery in Cork about where the Gallaghers were staying, and the word had gone around that this was their truck. One of the kids asked me 'Are Liam and Noel coming out to play?' I had to shoo them away.' Oasis merchandise has become an even bigger business since the 1990s. Picture: Lucy North/PA Those two Cork gigs were among the final dealings McCarthy had with Oasis. He has since moved to Sweden, where he teaches English, but regularly returns to the merchandising world for tours with various other bands. He's happy the Gallagher brothers are back together, and realises he was part of something special in the 1990s. 'It's hard to explain people the energy in the UK that the Britpop thing had. Musically, I didn't think it was the greatest, but the energy was phenomenal,' says McCarthy. ' I think at the time, the Indie scene was very middle class. But then along came Oasis. We probably didn't realise we were living in a golden era, but we had the time of our lives.'
