Radiohead Turned Down Oasis

Ateaseweb.com, the Radiohead fan site, is revealing that Oasis was turned down by Radiohead to support them on tour in 1994.

Guitarist Ed O’ Brien declared this on BBC Radio 5 Live during 'Fighting Talk' hosted by Colin Murray: ‘We were making an album, The Bends, back in early ’94 and we were doing this three-day tour and we were looking for a support band. And our agent sent us three demo tapes from various bands and one of them was called Oasis. There was a bit of a quick laugh, cause for us, Oasis was the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon, which was down the road, which apparently it was named after. But that was early days for Oasis. I remember seeing them for months later and they were well on their way to super stardom.

Colin Murray: ‘So you didn’t pick them?’

Ed O’ Brien: ‘No, we didn’t. We picked a band called The Julie Dolphin’.

Although he did not say why they did not choose Oasis, this may be part of the explanation for the long history of Liam Gallagher repeatedly attacking Radiohead and his recent rant about them ‘writing a song about a fucking tree’.

There is a long collection of him slamming the UK band and his rants are so good, I cannot resist quoting a few. The best year seems to have been 2008 as Mr Gallagher declared this via Details magazine: ‘They’re [Radiohead] middle-class boys worrying about pushing an envelope somewhere, and all that carbon footprint and all that bollocks. Every time there’s a polar bear on his tiptoes on an ice cube in the middle of the Antarctic, you know whose fault that is? Rock stars’. That’s their fault. Any time there’s food running out somewhere– ‘Let’s do a gig. That’ll sort it out. Let’s do a big fucking gig. Let’s fly everybody in from all over the world and pontificate to poor people about how they should be saving the planet.’ Go fucking kiss my ass. It’s very easy to just say, ‘We’re going to become difficult now and challenge our audience.’ I like my audience. They paid for my swimming pool. I’m not fucking challenging anybody.’

Or this in Spin magazine: ‘I remember seeing Radiohead on the cover of a magazine in the U.K. when In Rainbows came out, and it said, RADIOHEAD: THE PAIN. And I thought, "Won't you fucking give it a rest, you bunch of moaning children?" The pain? Of making an album? I don't buy it. If you're not having a laugh, then don't do it.’

And this to The Times:‘I've mellowed, but not in the sense of liking Radiohead or Coldplay. I don't hate them. I don't wish they had accidents. I think their fans are boring and ugly and they don't look like they're having a good time’.

This guy is a real treasure for people like us!