DOMINIC GREEN: Oasis at Wembley Stadium: England’s Last Band Standing.

Oasis was the most successful and least innovative of the late-1990s Britpop bands. The superlative and its antonym are closely related, for rock music is a deeply conservative form: “We fear change,” said Garth in Wayne’s World, the 1992 comedy about rock’s adolescent ossification. Garth demonstrates this by taking up a hammer and smashing the prosthetic arm of a Frankenstein’s monster in the making. The digital enemy must be destroyed if rock is to survive. Oasis’s early hits included “Live Forever.” And they have. They were the last rock band in 1995. There are none more last.

The molten core of Oasis is the dysfunctional relationship between the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel. In Britain, they are usually referred to in that order, but it is not their birth order. Noel is five years older and writes the songs. Liam is the singer. Their priority in public perception is also their priority in public affection. Noel, whose early lyrics include, “I need to be myself, / I can’t be no one else,” is frequently mistaken for Liam, who expresses his need to be himself by doing his best to look and sound like John Lennon in 1966. For several years, their drummer was Zak Starkey, Ringo’s son. This would be taking the Beatles bit too far, were it not that the whole point of Oasis is that they take it too far, and always by staying too near to the Beatles.

Heh. Read the whole thing.