live forever
Oasis - Slide Away (live) at Knebworth 1996
What for?
My love for Oasis started when my high school boyfriend lent me his copy of What’s The Story (Morning Glory), so I could burn it onto my computer and upload it to my iPod. He promised me there was more to them than just ‘Wonderwall.’ He was right. I fell hard for that record. This was early in 2009. Later that year, my boyfriend would graduate from high school and move back to England because his green card expired. I cannot put into words the deep sadness I felt when someone I loved was pulled away from me by circumstances outside of our control. The day he moved back, I laid in bed for hours listening to ‘Champagne Supernova’ on repeat until I was numb and cried out. By the end of that summer, Oasis would break up.
That was the beginning of the end of that relationship (we tried long distance, lol) and even though Oasis broke up, my fascination with them carried on. I listened to every album, all the time. “Dig out your soul,” was my senior quote for my high school yearbook. I watched every live video, including the entirety of Familiar To Millions, and every interview with Liam and Noel on YouTube. This was 15 years ago so there weren’t as many gems available as there are now. But Wibling Rivalry was on iTunes, so I bought it and listened to it with the same fascination as watching a train wreck. I absorbed every ounce of Oasis I could, but the video I have never grown tired of is the one of them performing ‘Slide Away’ at Knebworth in 1996.
Like most Oasis songs, ‘Slide Away’ was penned by Noel and sung by Liam. Supposedly, the song is about Noel’s girlfriend at the time and when they both knew it was over but weren’t quite ready to let go. In a recent interview celebrating the 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe, Noel says, “[Liam] wouldn’t sing acoustic songs … He sings at 10. He sings between 9 and 10, all the fucking time.” Those songs Noel is referring to are primarily sung by Noel, whose voice is more suitable for those acoustic, introspective songs, like ‘Talk Tonight’ or ‘Sad Song.’ ‘Slide Away’ is unique though because lyrically it fits the introspectiveness found in those acoustic songs but sonically it’s a rocker. The effectiveness of this combination is evident in the Knebworth video because the thing that makes it so gripping is Liam’s vocal performance.
On tracks like ‘Supersonic’ and ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol,’ Liam’s voice is menacing in a way that makes me want to get drunk and smash shit. But when I listen to ‘Slide Away’ and even more so when I watch the Knebworth video, it’s like some sort of deep-seated ache I buried in a past life is being unearthed. It is the way Liam sings, give it all you’ve got, while he’s giving it all he’s got, using his entire body to project his voice, each line emerging as one long exhale that urgently slides into the next before he can get a full breath. It is in the second chorus, when he sings, now that you’re mine, with such ferocity, it gives me fucking chills. It is the way that deep-seated, intangible ache is felt when Liam beats it into tangibility by repeating, I don’t know, I don’t care, all I know is you can take me there, over and over until it becomes, take me there, take me there, take me there, which he repeats again and again until you can feel that knot swell up in your own throat.
It is in this performance of ‘Slide Away,’ where the combination of the brother’s strengths––Noel’s introspective sensitivity and Liam’s menacing 10––connects with the instinctual yearning that lives in all of us; the hole we try to fill throughout our lives that can only be seen by looking at it indirectly. It is that yearning that compels me to listen to a song over and over again when I do not have the words to describe a feeling or experience. When words fail, music is the closest thing we have to a translator.
September 2024