Oasis reunion

And they're not looking back in anger.

Meanwhile, you gladly hand the Stones $500 every 5 years to stumble thru the same 20 songs.

Very cool!

I saw Oasis open for Neil Young over twenty years ago. They were already on their way out: it was the fourth or fifth album, and they were no longer the biggest band in Europe. I didn't use to like them before that show, but they kicked my ass. They really rocked. They didn't even play Wonderwall. It was the epitome of rock n' roll. Don't know if they would still be as great in 2024, but I'm willing to try it!

Great. So they didn't play their biggest hit. Sounds exactly like what a band led by 2 perpetually feuding drunken dickheads would do. They make the Robinsons look like choirboys.

or KKs Priest.

Oasis reunites after 15 years: Rediscover how a San Francisco woman saved the band

By Aidin Vaziri,
Staff Writer
Aug 29, 2024

Courtesy of Melissa Lim

In a much-anticipated reunion after a 15-year hiatus, Noel and Liam Gallagher announced that Oasis will embark on a tour next year. “This is it, this is happening,” read a post on the band’s social media accounts on Tuesday, Aug. 27. The announcement confirmed 14 shows across the U.K. and Ireland, with hints of potential North American dates forthcoming.

“The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over,” the band added. “Come see. It will not be televised.”

This reunion of one of the most popular British bands of the 1990s marks yet another chapter in the brothers’ turbulent relationship. Thirty years ago, during Oasis’ first concert in San Francisco, a local woman played a pivotal role in pulling the band back together.

Revisiting the band’s first reunion, here’s our 2016 story about Melissa Lim.

Melissa Lim first locked eyes with Noel Gallagher, Oasis’ lead guitarist, backstage at Bottom of the Hill on Sept. 26, 1994. The quarrelsome British rock band was making its San Francisco debut supporting its soon-to-be-platinum-selling album, “Definitely Maybe.”

“He came over and sat down next to me,” Lim recalled. “I had never been backstage before, so I asked him, ‘Where’s the after-party?’ And he goes, ‘What after-party? Can I hang out with you tonight?’”

This encounter would become a significant part of the group’s early history, chronicled in the action-packed 2016 Oasis documentary “Supersonic.”

Three days later, after a disastrous concert at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles — where the band members were high on crystal meth and saddled with mismatched set lists — the situation escalated. Noel Gallagher was struck in the face by a tambourine hurled by his younger brother Liam and declared he’d had enough.

He grabbed his passport and boarded a plane to San Francisco, seeking refuge at Lim’s apartment in Lower Nob Hill.

“He was very upset,” Lim said. “I took him in, fed him and tried to calm him down. He wanted to break up the band.”

As Oasis’ manager and record label staff searched frantically for him, Noel settled in with the San Francisco native. They visited Huntington Park, listened to music and shopped for records.

One day, while out for her usual supply of Snapple strawberry lemonade, Lim brought back several British music magazines featuring Oasis.

“San Francisco has a reputation of being a place where bands come to die, like the Band and the Sex Pistols,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let it happen on my watch. I told him, ‘You can’t leave the band — you’re on the verge of something big.’”


While the documentary refers to Mark Coyle, the band’s producer, calling Lim a “spiritual animal,” Noel Gallagher’s recollection of their time together is fuzzy.

“If I close my eyes now, I can’t even picture the girl,” he says in the film. “I can’t remember her name.”

When the Chronicle asked Oasis to confirm Lim’s story, Gallagher declined to comment.

Lim’s memories, however, are vivid. She keeps photos from that pivotal period and, while she is not named in the documentary, fans recognize how crucial her role was in Oasis’ lore.

Once she convinced Noel to rejoin the band, he headed to a studio in Austin, where he recorded “Half the World Away” and “Talk Tonight,” the B-side to the single “Wonderwall”:

“All your dreams are made,

Of strawberry lemonade,

And you make sure I eat today,

You take me walking,

To where you played when you were young.”

In the chorus, Noel sings, “I want to talk tonight/ Until the mornin’ light/ ’Bout how you saved my life.”


The pair stayed in touch as the tour continued, meeting up during the video shoot for “Supersonic” at the Cabazon Dinosaurs in Southern California. In the days before text messages, they would also speak regularly on the phone, with Lim answering with a line from the film “Bye Bye Birdie”: “What’s the story, morning glory?”

She often had to console him as the brothers fought nonstop with each other and just about anyone else who entered their orbit, including bandmates, relatives and associates.

However, Noel’s long-distance relationship with Lim dwindled when he met Meg Matthews, who would become his wife, at the tail end of 1994 (they married in 1997 and divorced in 2001).

When Oasis returned to San Francisco in early 1995, Lim found Noel distant. She told him, “It’s OK, I won’t look back in anger. I know we’re just friends.”

Unbeknownst to her, Noel had already titled Oasis’ second album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” It sold more than 22 million copies worldwide, launched the career-defining singles “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” and led to the 1996 concerts in Knebworth, England, which drew 250,000 fans over two nights.

The documentary closes with that crowning moment, even though Oasis pressed on to diminishing returns until their violent split in 2009.

When “Supersonic” director Mat Whitecross was asked after the Chronicle article was published why Lim wasn’t interviewed in the film or mentioned by name, he demurred.

“It felt like the section was so long anyway that, ultimately, the way it stands is quite poetic,” he told NME. “She stands in for, I’m sure, a lot of women who were met along the way, from Liam, Noel or any of them.”

He added, “There’s something really nice about the way Mark Coyle described it, which was like, ‘There are these people you meet along the way, who take care of you and then send you on your way, and there’s something great about that,’ and if we spoke to her, it would become less abstract and less poetic.”

Despite the band’s eventual decline, Lim felt content reflecting on her role in their journey.

Watching “Supersonic,” she remarked, “Keith Richards can remember the name of his milkman from when he was 8 years old. I don’t know what’s going on with Noel, and that’s fine. I was a part of something that touched so many people. That’s good enough.