More than 30 years ago, Oasis made their very first trek to Los Angeles, hitting the Sunset Strip to play the 500-capacity Whisky A Go Go. While a tiny show like that is typically the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll legend, we don’t need to rely on word of mouth to know what a disaster the night turned out to be.
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There’s video of the full September 1994 set – which found the band having to restart several songs and even playing different tracks at the same time – and as the Gallagher brothers relayed in a 2016 documentary, they were high on what they thought was coke but turned out to be crystal meth. It all led to Noel Gallagher briefly exiting the band (for the first time, but not the last time).
It was a bleak beginning for the British band’s relationship with the second biggest city in the U.S., but there were clearly no hard feelings on Saturday and Sunday night in the adjacent Pasadena, California, as Oasis’ massive Live ’25 tour drew around 180,000 fans out to the Rose Bowl for the reunion trek’s final weekend in the U.S.
“So America, it’s official: Are we dating?” Liam Gallagher asked the crowd Sunday night before launching into “Wonderwall” – appropriately the group’s only top 10 hit on the U.S.-only Billboard Hot 100. Liam took the crowd’s booming cheers as a yes: “America and Oasis, the new hot couple, yeah?”
It’s an on-again, off-again romance that just needed a 17-year cooling-off period to really reach its full, two-sold-out-stadium-nights potential. Below, find our favorite moments from Oasis’ final weekend in the U.S.
A Beatle in the Building
Comparisons to The Beatles have trailed Oasis since the start, from their floppy haircuts, to their origins in Manchester (under an hour train ride from Liverpool), to their on-the-nose lyrical and musical references to the rock legends. Even at that ill-fated Whisky A Go Go show, Oasis covered “I Am the Walrus,” a staple in their live sets over the years. And while things have sometimes leaned rocky between the two groups – with Noel infamously saying his band was “bigger” than The Beatles and Paul McCartney griping in a Howard Stern interview that reporters wouldn’t stop asking him about Oasis – they’ve since reconciled, with Noel even playing at the 50th birthday party of Paul’s fashion-designer daughter Stella.
Further proof of their mended relationship: Paul McCartney was spotted at Saturday’s Rose Bowl show, the only one standing in his suite, filming Noel singing the 2002 single “Little by Little.” McCartney was also stopped by a paparazzo on the way out of the show and asked how it was, to which he simply responded: “Fabulous.” With the obvious influence The Beatles have had on the group, the brothers must have been thrilled that Paul was one of the 90,000 fans in the house.
The Full Moon
Aside from the fireworks finale, the real champagne supernova in the sky was the full moon that was perfectly positioned to the right of Oasis’ big screen on Saturday night and to the left on Sunday night, adding a gorgeous glow to every special song fans had waited a decade-plus (or longer) to hear live. It added some extra moonlit magic to an already off-the-charts magical night.
The Crying Girl
The Crying Girl
After performing “The Masterplan,” the first song of the encore, Noel Gallagher took a moment to call out one particular fan on Saturday night. After asking her name and not making it out, he said, “I can’t really hear you, but this next song is for you. She’s been in tears all night, this girl.” The Rose Bowl big screen then cut to the fan, uncontrollably sobbing. “I hope that hasn’t been a review of the f–king gig,” Noel quipped, as she shook her head no and mouthed, “Oh my God!” If she hadn’t already been wailing, we’re guessing that getting “Don’t Look Back in Anger” dedicated to her by the band would have set off the waterworks.
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‘For All the People Who Couldn’t Be Here’
Ahead of 1995’s “Live Forever” – Oasis’ first Alternative Airplay top 10 hit here in the U.S. – Liam Gallagher has been sending a special dedication to “the people who couldn’t be here – you know who you are.”
When the Oasis reunion tour was first announced in August 2024, I know the first person I wanted to message was Russell: As a rabid middle school Oasis fan, I was on a bit of an island in my Michigan farm town, but I found a lifeline years later when somehow an honest-to-God British person started attending my high school. Hailing from the epicenter of Oasis Mania, he was the only one who understood my outsized passion for this band and my need to track down every Q magazine cover story about them, overseas shipping prices be damned. He was also the one always down to road-trip to Detroit to see them in a series of unbelievably intimate venues, like the then-named State Theater (under 3,000 capacity) in April 2000.
But I couldn’t message Russell with the reunion tour news because he sadly passed in 2017 – and I know I’m not the only one with a Russell. There are surely countless fans who went to these shows without their Oasis ride-or-dies, which made getting to be there feel all the more important.
So on Saturday night, hearing the lyrics of “Half the World Away” – which I was under the impression was my own personal little gem of a song – screamed by tens of thousands of people around me made me realize I was in a room full of Russells. I found a kindred spirit in my small town decades ago, and I found hordes of kindred spirits in one of the biggest stadiums in America over the weekend.
The U.S. Finale
After the rabid response to their U.S. shows – one stop at Chicago’s Soldier Field, two nights at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium and now back-to-back at the Rose Bowl – you have to wonder whether Live ’25 will truly be the end of this Oasis reunion here. The band has dates scheduled through Nov. 23, wrapping up the North American leg with Sept. 12-13 shows in Mexico City, returning to London for two more dates this month, and then hitting Asia, Australia and South America.
Will a return to the U.S. (and more cities beyond the lucky three) be in the cards next year or beyond? Well, if America and Oasis are the “new hot couple,” they’re going to need to get back for a visit to their long-distance love.
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