It didn’t take long before Noel and Liam finally pressed the green light on the Oasis reunion that UK experts were highballing what the tour would gross.
These ranged from £50 million (AU$97.4 million) to the chairman of talent agency InterTalent opting for £400 million ($778 million) if the take included merchandising, sponsorships, live TV rights, film rights and making of documentaries.
Oasis, at their peak as the biggest band in the UK in the 1990s, broke attendance records everywhere.
Their biggest moment was in August 1996, when they played Hertfordshire’s Knebworth House over two days to 250,000 fans. Two—and—a—half million people applied for tickets, the largest demand in British concert history.
There were 7,000 on the guest list, and 3,000 road crew members worked on the production.
Noel Gallagher would later tell TheMusic.com.au that he should have broken up Oasis right after that. But they staggered on, with things getting more miserable with each punch-up, no-show and public slanging match.
It finally happened backstage on August 28, 2009, at the Rock En Seine festival in Paris, when an argument broke out, and Liam wielded Noel’s guitar over his head “like an axe”.
It was enough. The rest of the Dig Out Your Soul Tour was cancelled, and Noel released a statement: “It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.”
But even then, Oasis were still a drawcard. They broke ticket sales for a single day in the UK, selling over 500,000 tickets in seven hours.
How Many Tickets?
How many tickets could Oasis sell on their 2025 reunion run?
They’re doing two shows, July 4 and 5, at the Cardiff Principality Stadium. Ed Sheeran set the attendance record there at 75,000, making it the largest concert ever in Wales.
Oasis are doing four at Manchester Heaton Park on July 11, 12, 19 and 20. The crowd milestone there is 80,000 for the Parklife festival, set in June 2024.
This week, when a fan complained on X that Heaton Park is “terrible for concert venues”, Liam snarled back, “See you down the front, you big fanny”.
The London Wembley Stadium will host them on July 25 and 26 and August 2 and 3. Two months ago, Taylor Swift drew 73,000. Rumours are that Oasis will end up doing ten shows at Wembley.
Swift also set a new attendance record of 73,000 at the Edinburgh Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium in June 2024. Oasis will perform there on August 8 and 9.
On August 16 and 17, it will be at Dublin Croke Park, where Westlife had 86,500 fans eating out of their hands on June 5, 2010.
One of the worst-kept secrets is that the Gallaghers will start their reunion by headlining Glastonbury, which will run from June 25 to 29 in 2025. If Liam and Noel want to set a new record, they’ll have to beat the 300,000+ crowd that came for The Levellers (including jumping the fence) in 1994.
The Most Successful Reunion Tours Of All Time
Guns N’ Roses
The Not In This Lifetime… Tour ran between 2016 and 2019. It featured classic lineup members Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan, who played together for the first time since the Use Your Illusion Tour in 1993.
A year before, guitarist Slash had asserted on TV’s CBS This Morning that much of the tension that had existed between Axl and himself was gone. “We haven’t really talked in a long time. But a lot of the tension that you were talking about has dissipated. We don’t have all those issues anymore.”
Over 158 shows, Not In This Lifetime drew a total of 5,371,891 tickets and grossed $584.2 million. The Australian and New Zealand leg shifted 350,000 tickets.
The Police
To mark the 30th anniversary of their formation, The Police sparked it off with an appearance at the Grammys 2007. The Police Reunion Tour (May 28 2007, to August 7, 2008) marked the first time they got together in 20 years.
The trek covered five continents, with 151 shows to 1.85 million people and a gross of $536 million.
The five Australian shows, all sold out in minutes, ran between January 22 and February 2, 2008. The Brisbane show at Suncorp Stadium was 25,928 and turned over $3,306,646. In Sydney, where 43,725 headed through ANZ Stadium’s turnstiles, the gross sat at $4,840,514.
The Melbourne Cricket Ground had 29,655 of the faithful and $3,865,205. There were 13,950 at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Perth fans got two shows: each at Members Equity Stadium had 36,518 and ker-chinged $4,340,77.
The Eagles
By the time The Eagles broke up in 1980, they were hardly on talking terms. They refused to ride in the same car.
During their final show in July at Long Beach, California, Don Felder and Glenn Frey kept snarling at each other, “I’m gonna kick your butt” and almost came to fisticuffs backstage after.
But in 1994, Frey, Felder, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmidt appeared in the video for Travis Tritt‘s cover of Take It Easy. There was no aggression at all, so they got to talking about a reunion. In April of 1994, they filmed an MTV special, which resulted in the 11-track live album Hell Freezes Over.
Talking before the show, Frey told a journalist, “It’s a relief. You know, we’ve been rehearsing for so long, and we’ve been playing for men who don’t clap: our crew. So it’s like, now we got paying customers.
“For some reason everyone has a wonderful calm right now. I think we’re excited to get out and play. I’m actually not nervous yet.”
The Hell Freezes Over Tour ran from 1994 to 1996, with 122 shows and a gross of $152,900,000. In November, the Australian shows expanded to three in Melbourne, one in Adelaide, two in Brisbane, and one in Sydney. Each show grossed $1.27 million.
The story goes that the band were initially reluctant to extend their Australian shows because it was Thanksgiving, and they wanted to return to the US to spend it with their families.
Frontier Touring chief Michael Gudinski cajoled them into changing their minds by promising to throw them a giant Thanksgiving dinner with 12 of the biggest turkeys in the southern hemisphere.
