Liam Gallagher is probably the only real rock star the music industry has had in the past 30 years with every wannabe that’s followed being a pale imitator. Having fronted Oasis that captured the zeitgeist of the Nineties the band acrimoniously spilt up due to the two warring Gallagher brothers. After this Liam was in a bit of a wilderness before establishing himself over the past few years as a solo artist. And yet the rivalry with his brother Noel continues and whilst the excellent documentary ‘Oasis : Knebworth 96’ captured that iconic gig it seems that Liam wants to prove that it was him and him alone who was responsible for its success and wants to prove it by playing the venue as a solo artist and ‘Liam Gallagher Knebworth 22’comes over as something of a vanity project with the characteristically potty mouthed arrogance from the singer declaring that the gig will be ‘History Part 2’.
Rami Malek and the cast at the World Premiere of Bohemian Rhapsody at Wembley
The first hour of the documentary sets the context of the gig with the UK finally coming out of a worldwide lockdown and counts down the seven days preceding the gig with Liam pontificating on a grand scale but also follows the stories of several of the attending fans. And those fans are an eclectic bunch – a man who has dedicated his existence to Oasis having made his back garden man cave into a bar and shrine to the band and comes over more as someone on the verge of a full blown mid-life crisis and then there’s a fan’s young daughter who battled with a terminal illness and now plays Oasis type tunes on a toy guitar as her proud mother looks on and then there’s the East European girl so desperate to be at the front of the crowd that she avoids going to the toilet for two days and presumably landing herself with a huge dry cleaning bill. These are the hardcore fans with one saying that he would sell his body for a ticket something that our Editor did to medical science for the original gig only to find himself being pestered for an immediate refund when the doctors found that he had the body of a dropped lasagne (‘You’re fired!’ – Ed).
Noel Gallagher chats about the Oasis Knebworth 96 at the films world premiere
It’s the last half hour that has the gig and what is noticeable is that despite Liam’s solo songs being decent enough much of his live set heavily features Oasis hits all of which are absent here. The problem with any gig trying to recreate and capture the lightening in a bottle of the original is that the bar is so high as to be almost impossible to match let alone top as was seen with Live Aid 2. Equally the set up for the gig itself is noticeably different compared to Knebworth 96 with the crowd here being divided into large sections with an aisle running right down the centre and also at 90 degree angles instantly dissipating the free for all hedonism of the original gig. 2022 is a very much different era from 96 where Oasis captured the zeitgeist so brilliantly. Almost 30 years later Liam remains a magnetic figure on stage but as for ‘Liam Gallagher Knebworth 22’ being History Part 2, it is not, but it is a well made documentary of a large gig.
Here’s the Liam Gallagher Knebworth 22 trailer…..
