Oasis were an English rock music band formed in Manchester in 1991. They evolved from an earlier band called the Rain, composed of Paul McGuigan (bass guitar), Paul Arthurs (guitar), Tony McCarroll (drums) and Chris Hutton (vocals). Unsatisfied with Hutton, Arthurs invited and auditioned acquaintance Liam Gallagher as a replacement. Liam suggested that the band name be changed to Oasis. This change was inspired by an Inspiral Carpets tour poster that hung in the Gallagher brothers' bedroom. One of the venues the poster listed was the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon, Wiltshire.
Oasis played their first ever live gig on 18 August 1991 at the Boardwalk club in Manchester. Liam's brother Noel Gallagher, who was a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, went with the band to watch his younger brother's band play. Whilst Noel and his friends did not think Oasis sounded particularly spectacular, he did begin to consider the possibility of using his brother's group as a possible outlet for a series of songs he had been writing for several years.
Noel approached the group about joining with the proviso that he would become the band's sole songwriter and leader, and that they would commit to an earnest pursuit of commercial success. "He had loads of stuff written," Arthurs recalled. "When he walked in, we were a band making a racket with four tunes. All of a sudden, there were loads of ideas." Oasis under Noel Gallagher crafted a musical approach that relied on simplicity, with Arthurs and McGuigan restricted to playing barre chords and root bass notes; McCarroll playing basic rhythms, and the band's amplifiers turned up to create distortion, Oasis created a sound "so devoid of finesse and complexity that it came out sounding pretty much unstoppable." Oasis have had eight UK number-one singles and eight UK number-one albums, and won fifteen NME Awards, nine Q Awards, four MTV Europe Music Awards and six Brit Awards. By 2009, the band had sold over 70 million records worldwide.
Our unique collection of Oasis photos includes iconic images by renowned photographer and Rockarchive founder Jill Furmanovsky. Jill's Oasis prints are exclusively produced and sold by Rockarchive.
You can view our online exhibition Definitely.Oasis that displays a curated selection of our Oasis prints here
