The history books have made imperial-phase Oasis into avatars for political identities they rarely claimed to represent. Noel Gallagher might beg to differ with author Alex Niven’s statement, in his (very good) 33⅓ on Definitely Maybe, that, “Oasis wrote about the overwhelming sadness of late-capitalist experience.” They were fashioned into a mirror that reflected liberation from Thatcherism, rock’s triumph over rave, “Cool Britannia” over grunge, so-called laddism over intellect, and any number of (often legitimate) positions that seemed to echo within their magnetic working class swagger. But in Supersonic, as close to an official documentary as exists, the Gallaghers and director Mat Whitecross almost entirely disregard any external context.
In this version of events, the band’s rise doesn’t parallel that of New Labour and renewed British prosperity. Climaxing with their historic performances at Knebworth in August 1996, the film stops short of Noel Gallagher endorsing Tony Blair the following year. Nobody utters the word ‘Britpop,’ and the band’s scene peers are never mentioned—1995’s “chart battle” with Blur, as manufactured by the NME, is stricken from the record. There’s one exception to the rule. As the band start up in 1992, their dogged rehearsals at Manchester’s Boardwalk contrast a flash of footage from the city’s Haçienda nightclub, soundtracked by some comically tinny acid house to back up a claim made by Liam: “The city was immersed in this music that didn’t make sense to me.”
That’s as far outside the engine room as Supersonic ventures. Fortunately, as nobody needs reminding, Oasis could more than back up what Liam says next: “We weren’t the best musicians but we had spirit, man, and that was lacking massively at that point.” Compiled from archive footage and new interview voiceovers, Supersonic is easily one of the funniest rock documentaries ever made. The Gallaghers uphold their claim as rock’s wittiest, monkeying around while high as kites and pasting each other mercilessly. “Feeling supersonic, going to bed at half 9,” Liam sneers of his sensible older sibling’s distaste for trashing hotel rooms. Christine Mary Biller from Ignition Management sums up their relationship thusly: “Noel has a lot of buttons, Liam has a lot of fingers.” But it’s their Irish mum, Peggie, who steals the show. “I left him with a knife, a fork, and a spoon, and I still think I left him too much,” she says of the brothers’ abusive father, whom the family escaped in a midnight bunk.
At the start of the film, you hear Whitecross asking Noel, “It’s two and a half years, really, from being signed to playing Knebworth. What happened to you in those three years?” ‘Happened to’ is a good way of putting it. Supersonic whizzes through the coincidences that gave them a platform, and the bludgeoning, incomprehensible success that followed. Liam originally thought anyone in a band was “a bit suspect,” but after an unknown assailant hit him on the head with a hammer, “it was as if something fucking clicked.” At 16, he told Peggie that he wanted to be famous. Liam started spending his dole money on records, weed, and Greggs’ pasties, before going home “and getting fucking soaked” in music. He joined a band called the Rain and immediately renamed them Oasis, then asked Noel to be their manager. He refused, so Liam suggested he come and jam with them instead. Despite being the more musically inclined of the pair, and having roadied for Inspiral Carpets, Noel had possessed few aspirations of playing in a band before he found himself in one. They slogged away for two years, determined to infiltrate the charts and have “Phil Collins’ head on a plate.” Despite Noel’s slight industry connections, they had no way of making that happen for themselves—but the wealth of startlingly early archive footage in Supersonic shows that their knack for self-mythology was intact even then.
Tim Abbott at Creation Records had a similar sense of what was worth filming, capturing the 1993 gig at Glasgow’s King Tut’s where label boss Alan McGee signed Oasis on the spot. They were only there thanks to the largesse of Sister Lovers, an all-female band who shared their practice space and offered them a support slot. In turn, McGee had only come out because he had dated their frontwoman Debbie Turner, and, “being an evil fucker, thought I’d turn up to put Debbie on edge,” he admits. For Liam, getting signed was the chance to buy some new clothes and earn a bit of money, though his expectations were swiftly exceeded. The band caused a riot on a ferry to Amsterdam to support the Verve, and were deported back to England, which made headlines in the music press before they’d even released a song, thanks to McGee’s eye for a story. On the day of a now-infamous 1994 gig at LA’s Whisky A Go-Go, they mistook crystal meth for cocaine and fell apart on stage. Liam threw a tambourine at Noel’s head, prompting his older brother to storm off to San Francisco and quit the band for two weeks.
As cocksure as the Gallaghers become, they still seem utterly in awe of their rise and the manic brilliance surrounding them. Supersonic would undoubtedly have been a richer film for including what was going on in the outside world, but such documentaries do already exist. Here, the quick pace and chaotic intimacy is infectious, and the volume of the live footage overwhelming, leaving you fairly powerless to resist even if debauched rock shenanigans usually leave you cold. Compared to those moments, the comings and goings of Oasis’ other members feel procedural and dull, especially when the requisite sad music strikes up and jars with the Gallaghers’ take on such events, which can usually be boiled down to “whatever.” “Oasis wasn’t for wimps,” is Noel’s stance on bassist Guigsy’s breakdown (and subsequent exit from the band), and Whitecross’ attempts to psychoanalyze the brothers mostly falls flat. Liam suggests that their rivalry probably stemmed from him pissing on Noel’s new stereo as a kid, though he simmers with rage as he talks about how his dad used to beat up Noel and Peggie. Meanwhile, Noel just shrugs. “I never felt compelled to talk about it.”
But that’s the strange thing about Supersonic. For all that the brothers are brash and largely uninterested in interrogating any emotion other than being “mad fer it,” it’s a surprisingly sentimental film. The pair have hardly talked since the band’s split in 2009, routinely slag each other off publicly (“POTATO”-gate is ongoing), and were never in the same room when recording their voiceovers for the film. Yet they make no attempt to hide their lingering fondness for each other. “Liam was always cooler than me,” says Noel, over footage of the brothers kissing on the lips in Japan. “And there’s not a day go by where I don’t wish I could rock a parka like that man.” “Do the good times outweigh the bad times?” Liam muses as the film ends with them playing to 250,000 people over two nights at Knebworth. “One hundred percent.”
Some critics have knocked Supersonic for ending on that relative high point, arguing that it’s revisionist history not to deal with what came next: the career coke bloat of 1997’s Be Here Now, and the band’s steady critical, if not commercial, decline. There’s no doubt that an honest look at that record would make for equally compelling and depressing viewing, but choosing to end on Knebworth doesn’t feel anything like a victory lap. The preceding scenes trace some of the darkest periods of Oasis’ career: the parts where they turn themselves into tabloid fodder (thanks in part to Noel calling drugs as normal as “getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning”), resulting in the News of the World luring their estranged dad Thomas to the afterparty of their massive Dublin shows and baiting Liam to fight with him. (Noel pulls him away, but not before the rag records audio of Liam telling his dad he’ll break his legs, which they make available to the public via a premium rate phone hotline.)
There’s a huge sense of regret to these moments: that the band had spiraled out of control, that they felt such distance from their friends, that management types “hovering with leather man-bags” (Noel) had turned Oasis into a corporate brand. Against his better judgement, Noel’s ego was flattered into playing what were then the biggest gigs of all time (four percent of the population applied for tickets), but now, he says, “It did feel like the end of something, not the beginning.” He and guitarist Bonehead admit that they think the band should have split after those shows. (Liam, in typically ebullient fashion, declares that never mind the seven nights they could have filled, they’d still be playing Knebworth today if he had his way. “Just cos you’ve kissed the sky, give it a lovebite.”)
This, Supersonic tells us, is the one chance the brothers might have had to save their relationship, where the Gallaghers could have turned the ship around. You wonder if it’s setting the stage for Oasis’ much asked-after reunion. As diminished as they became towards the end, it’s hard not to hope for more shows off the back of the documentary’s visceral live scenes—“the last great gathering of people before the internet,” as Noel describes Knebworth. “There’s only me and him who’ll ever get this,” he tells then-BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq in a radio interview from those gigs. For two hours, Supersonic not only lets you taste the experience, but asks whether you could have resisted the same fate.