Oasis glory in Cork: Recalling the Gallagher brothers' Leeside gig 30 years ago

In the summer of 1996, I was 15 years old and lived in the countryside between Carrigtwohill village and Midleton town.

Fifteen is a strange age; being fifteen is not unlike living between a village and a town with the twinkling lights of the city beckoning beyond—you have the sense that all the action is taking place within your sights but just out of reach. It is the plight of fifteen year olds the world over, I suspect: the notion that everything good is happening everywhere else, tantalisingly close but still far away.

Fifteen year olds the world over also have a practical common problem—they can’t get anywhere because they can’t drive. To get round this, in the summer of ’96, I cycled everywhere, beating a track along the dusty back boreens between Carrigtwohill and Midleton. I would cycle up the road to my friend Eimear’s house, a 20 minute spin on mostly flat ground, past stone walls with styes and fields of cattle. We’d go for long walks, kicking stones into potholes, grabbing ferns and twisting grass in our fingers, planning and dreaming of adventures to come. It was a summer of waiting for life to begin; a summer of anticipation.

Despite hailing from rural Cork, we were fully immersed in news of the blossoming Britpop culture across the pond in London. 

Every Thursday, while my mum did the ‘big shop’ in our local Co-op Superstore in Midleton, I would sidle off to O’Callaghan newsagents where I’d read the latest Smash Hits, Hot Press and Top of the Pops magazines. I’d buy a Dime bar for 27p and nibble the chocolate off the edges while I meticulously rifled though the newsstand. Like a an auld regular in a country pub, the shopkeeper knew my routine; he’d roll his eyes and let me at it. This is where I’d get my fix of news on Blur, Elastica, Pulp, Suede and of course, the most exalted of them all, Oasis. I’d get my hit of music nightly by diligently taping songs on cassette tape from the radio (DJs who talked over intros were a bane of our lives back then) and I saved money from baby-sitting jobs to buy much coveted single and album cassettes to play on my Walkman. The Beatbox and 2TV on a Sunday morning TV were a chance to see music videos weekly. There was no instant access to anything. 

It was not just a summer of anticipation, it was a whole era of delayed gratification. Nevertheless, within that era, it seemed that ‘life’ was happening in a big way for young people in the country next door to us. Again, so close but so far away—the gap between teenage life and adult hood yawning wide.

But then, that summer, the unthinkable happened. The news broke that, straight after their gargantuan concerts in Knebworth, Oasis planned two shows in August 1996 in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork’s GAA stadium. Tickets, priced at £24.50 Irish punts, were to go on sale in late June, mere weeks beforehand.

Oasis, at the time, were the biggest band on the planet. It is hard to describe just how enormous they were. Not a day went by without hearing their anthems blasted from the radio. Singles from their albums Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? rarely left the top ten.

How to get tickets? It was all myself and Eimear talked about that summer. To buy concert tickets, you queued up. Physically. In person, outside a music shop. To my absolute despair, our parents refused us permission to queue overnight on Patrick Street outside HMV. But as a compromise, my mother agreed to take me up to Golden Discs music shop in Douglas. Some of the smaller shops had been given a limited number of tickets and she felt sure there would be some available there. I didn’t hold out much hope and sulked in the car on the way up.

At Golden Discs, there were about ten people in the queue. As we approached, a girl left with four tickets in her hand beaming ear to ear. My mum chatted to her mum—there were tickets still available. Hope lived on. I didn’t dare dream. I danced a jig with nerves in the few minutes of queuing as each delighted teenager emerged clutching the dream ticket. 

When we reached the cash register, I couldn’t quite believe it when two tickets with Liam and Noel on the front were handed over to me. It felt too good to be true. It felt too easy. My mother and I repeated the story again and again to ourselves on the journey home. Can you believe it? Can you believe that we got them just like that? It turns out that it was a little bit too easy, for there was about to be a twist in the tale.

When I arrived home, with trembling hands, I dialled up Eimear’s number to tell her the news and hopped on my bike to cycle over to her with her ticket. It was a perfect late summer’s afternoon, the sun casting shadows through the hedgerows, midges buzzing low in the golden light. I peddled furiously. But when I got to Eimear’s house and put my hand into my pocket, no ticket. We looked into each other eyes in consternation. Where was it? I had folded it up carefully and put it into the pocket of my shorts. And suddenly, with a chilling certainty, I knew what had happened. The momentum of cycling had pushed the ticket out and it had fallen onto the road on the trip over. I looked at Eimear’s confused face and made a decision. I couldn’t tell her what I knew to be true—that I had managed to LOSE her ticket. I blushed bright red and told a white lie:

‘I was so excited to get here, I must have left it in my room! I’ll go back now and get it,’ I had said. I backed out of the house before she could ask me more and flung myself onto my bike.

To say that I combed the length and breadth of the backroads of Ballintubber is an understatement. I peddled at a postman’s idle, my eyes glued to the road, to every pothole, to all along the wildflower ditches. I was two hours in the evening sun, bent over my bike, my back broken, my heart pounding. The hopelessness of it all. I was crying, which didn’t help my search; the road blurred in front of me.

And then, a literal oasis in the desert. In the centre of the road, a piece of paper fluttered, folded on its side, it waved at me in the summer wind. Could it be? Was it possible? Yes, it was. Eimear’s Oasis ticket, folded up, still intact but with a tractor tyre track down the centre. The euphoria I felt all over again!

As for the concert itself? Without photographs to consult, I have the most beautiful, fragmented memories of those dates in August. Cork basked in the sunshine as busloads of young Irish fans from every county descended on the streets of the city. Gangs of teenagers sat all along Winthrop street outside McDonalds; string tops on the girls, bucket hats on the boys. Laughter filled the air with bursts of self conscious teenagers singing Some Might Say or boisterously bawling Roll With It.

Eimear and I headed to the stadium as early as we could and queued up for the coveted Pit 1 wristband. Another core memory, another rite of passage—being tagged by a burly security guard with a precious piece of plastic and herded inside to the pen closest to the stage. It was a little after 3pm when we arrived in Pit 1; Oasis were not due on stage for hours. 

People created their own little patches and communities on the ground, chatting, singing, drinking and laughing. 

The waiting didn’t bother me, I just soaked it all up; the vastness of the stadium, the enormity of the stage, the sheer volume of people gathered. I remember the sense of camaraderie between fellow Pit 1-ers, how we would mark out our spot with a Lucozade bottle whenever one of us needed the portaloo and how a group of Wicklow lads carefully guarded our patch till we returned.

When Oasis finally hit the stage to the sounds of Swamp Song as the sun and temperature dropped, the stadium was frenzied. Liam strode out with his characteristic swagger. He was mere metres from where I stood in Pit 1. He wore a white military style jacket, his hair blown out Beatle style with little round gold John Lennon glasses perched on his nose. I was close enough to see the veins on his neck strain as he craned into the microphone and bawled out Columbia. To my 15-year-old self, he was godlike.

The roar of the crowd, the swell of bodies surging forward, the sense of unity amongst the youth—it was something else. Looking at the set list from that ’96 gig today, (which included Slide Away, The Masterplan and Champagne Supernova) I am struck by how every song was an epic anthem; every song would go on to be loved and revered in the decades that followed.

Would Oasis have known that as they played them? Did they have any inkling that this moment, this summer, was a peak? There were times during the concert when Liam walked away from the microphone, stopped and stood completely still. At other times, he sat at the edge of the stage and just gazed out over the crowd, as though he was also processing just how unique this moment was. Looking back now, I realise how very young he was: 23 years old. The world kneeling at his feet. What a feeling it must have been.

Noel Gallagher has said about that time: ‘People will never, ever forget the way that you made them feel.’ He was right then. He is right now. It was my first concert—decades and multiple gigs later, I can still say it was the best.

I understand, therefore, the feverish rush to get tickets when news of their reunion broke last year. I was a part of it, pacing in my kitchen, five cups of coffee downed by 8am, monitoring my laptop like a crazed woman. For a large swathe of their older fans, it was the feeling we were all after; that feeling and promise of life in 1996, that wondrous time before adulthood began in earnest, a time when anything was possible. If the biggest band on the planet could play in Cork city—surely, then, any dream was attainable.

For me, Oasis are forever tied up in memories of my first taste of freedom and possibility. And nothing can put a price on that.

This article originally appeared in the 2025 Holly Bough.