Dave Grohl once said of Oasis, ‘We’ve played shows with them before, where I look at them and think “That’s the greatest rock band I’ve ever seen in my life”’. The calibre of the songs they were releasing, especially between 1994–1996, would seem to confirm that sentiment, with the quality of even their B-sides becoming the stuff of legend. Their second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? would go on to become the best-selling album of the 1990s in the UK and, all the while, it became impossible to open a newspaper or music magazine in the mid-1990s and not read about Oasis.
From the time their debut album was released in 1994, Oasis’ climb to the top was one of the fastest in music history. Even their leader, Noel Gallagher, would say they should have split after their Knebworth 1996 concert. Yet, when they walked off that stage in 1996, they still had over a decade left together, and, to the shock of some, many good songs left to write. Heavy on music and short on gossip, this is the story of all those songs; the life-changing anthems and the forgotten gems, the throwaways and the covers.
Andrew Rooney has been a fan of Oasis since his dad owned a copy of Definitely Maybe that, eventually, he permanently borrowed. He spent hundreds of dollars collecting every Oasis single on the used CD market and still strives to make a perfect playlist of the best Oasis B-sides. When not reading about The Beatles and other music acts, he works in education in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is happily married to his wife Lorraine, who likes some of the same music he does, including some Oasis songs.
