Definitely Maybe but Not the Greatest

There is a certain kind of man, usually from the north of England, now somewhere around 50, who will tell you over his third pint that Oasis were the greatest band of all time. Not one of the greatest. The greatest. He says this with the calm certainty of someone who has never had to defend it, because everyone else at the table is also 50 and also from the north of England.

I like this man. I even like a few of their songs. I just don't get it. I heard the same music he did, at the same age, and I didn't hear what he heard.

I left the UK in 1993. At that point Oasis were a rumour in Manchester and I was a teenager who had decided, with total seriousness, that grunge was the most important thing happening in music. Nirvana had kicked the door in two years earlier. Alice in Chains had released Dirt, which remains one of the bleakest and best records anyone has ever made. The Smashing Pumpkins had just put out Siamese Dream. And when I wasn't listening to grunge, I was going backwards: discovering New Order and Depeche Mode, working through Led Zeppelin like it was homework I actually wanted to do, and wearing out every Police record I could find. My Walkman was full. There was no vacancy.

I spent the next three years in Bangladesh, which is where I was when Oasis happened. And if you think Dhaka was out of their reach, think again. Oasis had plenty of fans there too, every bit as devoted as the lads in Manchester. A few of them were my friends, and they were obsessed. One of them pressed a copy of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? into my hands, which is how I first heard "Champagne Supernova." I was genuinely impressed. I remember thinking, this band has potential. Then I put the CD down and never quite circled back.

Back in Britain, in August 1996, they were playing Knebworth to a quarter of a million people across two nights. That is the moment the bloke at the pub remembers. He was 20, he was in a field or wished he was, and it felt like the whole country was singing the same song at the same time.

By 1996 I had moved to Canada, where "Wonderwall" was inescapable at house parties. Different country, same radio.

So whenever I hear a man of a certain age call them the greatest band of all time, I always wonder: did I miss the memo? I didn't. My friends made sure it reached me in Dhaka, and it followed me to Toronto. I heard the songs, I liked a couple of them, and I went back to Dirt. Which is why, thirty years on, I still only know the hits. "Wonderwall." "Champagne Supernova." The couple of others you'd have to avoid radio, pubs and weddings for three decades to miss. I've never sat down with an Oasis album start to finish.

He'll say that disqualifies me. I'd say it's the most honest thing I can bring to this.

Because ask me about Alice in Chains and I can go on for an hour, deep cuts included. Same with the Pumpkins, same with Nirvana. Nobody made me learn those records. One song pulled me into an album, the album pulled me into the next one, and by then I was reading liner notes like they were scripture. Those bands rewarded you for going further in.

Oasis never asked me to go further in. The hits did all the work. They were everywhere, they were catchy, and they were complete in themselves. You could love them without ever wondering what else the band had done. A band whose whole case fits into three songs on the radio is a very good singles band. That's a real achievement, and most bands never manage it. But greatest of all time is a bigger claim.

And the hits are good. "Champagne Supernova" is a great song. I thought so the first time I heard it on my friend's CD, and I think so now. It's long, it's woozy, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and it doesn't need to. Noel Gallagher could write a chorus a stadium could learn by the second time round, and Liam could sing it like he was personally insulted you hadn't learned it the first time.

So why does the bloke at the pub rank them above everyone? I don't think he's ranking a band. I think he's ranking a summer. Oasis were the soundtrack to being young in the mid-90s, whether that was in Manchester or Dhaka, and for a lot of people the music and the memory are welded together. Arguing with one feels like insulting the other. That part I understand. For me, the two never fused. The music had to make the case on its own.

Here's the strange part. There are plenty of huge bands I don't listen to, and I've never felt the need to write a word about any of them. So why this one? I think it's because I'm not really trying to win an argument. I'm trying to figure out what everyone else is hearing. So many people seem to be in on something, a club with a secret handshake and a shared memory, and I've given it a real try. I just keep hearing a very good band.

I don't think he's ranking a band. I think he's ranking a summer.

When they reunited last year, I got the fairest test I could ask for: one of their Toronto shows at Rogers Stadium. Not because I'd sat in an online queue for hours, but because a friend had flown in from Turkey just to see them and had a spare ticket. Someone crossed an ocean for this band, and the seat next to them went to a man who knows three songs.

I have never felt more like an impostor. All around me were those same men, now with reading glasses and knees that complain on the stairs, singing every word with their arms around each other. I was mouthing along to the choruses I knew and nodding politely through the rest, like a guest at a wedding where everyone else knows the family. Most of them, I suspect, weren't really there for the band. They were there to be 20 again for two hours.

It also rained. Not a polite drizzle, but the kind of steady soaking that gets into your shoes and stays there. The fans around me decided this made the night even more memorable, a proper Manchester show in Toronto. For me, it just made it cold. It didn't help that Rogers Stadium, out in Downsview, is one of the worst places I have ever been to a concert. None of that was the band's fault.

Still, they sounded good. "Champagne Supernova" in an open stadium, with fifty thousand soaked people swaying to it, is a fine way to spend six minutes. I'd gone in half-hoping this would be the night it finally clicked. But somewhere in the middle of it I had a quiet, slightly guilty thought: I'd have been perfectly fine never being there. For everyone around me, missing that night would have been unthinkable. For me, it was a good song played well, and I already had it at home.

Being 20 again for two hours is a pretty good reason to love a band. It's just a different thing from being the best one.

So no, I didn't miss the memo. It found me in Dhaka, it found me in Toronto, and it found me in a stadium full of people who'd read it cover to cover. I read it every time. I gave it a fair go. I just never got it.

P.S. To every Oasis fan who made it this far: I'm sorry. Please don't kill me. I'll see myself out, and I'd ask you, as one man to another, not to look back in anger.