Fact #191689

For those who were there then, in August 1996, Oasis at Knebworth was the rock event of the decade. Four months earlier, in the space of two days, 2.6m applications had been received for the 250,000 available tickets. The 1,500 backstage liggers partying in the Oasis tent prompted NME to coin the phrase ‘the first guest list you can see from the moon’, and the supporting line-up -
The Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene, The Chemical Brothers, The Charlatans, Cast, Dreadzone, Kula Shaker – was a perfect cross-section of the most relevant rock-related sounds of that summer.

Whether or not it was the best Oasis performance ever remains in dispute, but Knebworth achieved everything the band hoped it would, establishing them not just as the greatest rock phenomenon of their generation, but demonstrating how far they had risen above the scene in which they were spawned, and how much they had out-distanced all of those who had inspired them. This, then, was the moment that defined the generation whose relationship with Oasis so closely mirrored the love-hate chemistry at the heart of the Gallagher brothers.

Saturday 10 August : Oasis, The Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene, The Chemical Brothers and The Bootleg Beatles.

Marcus Russell (manager, Oasis) : I had three researchers in the UK and Ireland who went around looking at potential places. I’m sure they looked at a dozen potential sites. Blenheim Palace and Castle Donington were both on the original list but we settled on Knebworth because it was the best place from a fan’s point of view.

Henry Cobbold (resident, Knebworth House) : My mother, Chrissie Lytton-Cobbold ran the previous Knebworth rock events but my wife and I started taking over at the time of the Oasis shows. The negotiations started several months before the shows, finalised around April, and tickets were on sale in May.

Noel Gallagher (Oasis) : Originally it was for one night, but then the one night sold out in a day, then the second night sold out in a day, then we all just stopped being arsed about it. It was berserk, stupid, silly.

Henry Cobbold : It was breaking new ground for us, because we’d never done two nights in a row. We decided not to have camping facilities. It would be a new audience each day.

Noel Gallagher : In three years we'd gone from playing that gig in the Boardwalk, where I wasn't even in the group, to the biggest free-standing gig by any group that wasn't a festival and wasn't free.

Henry Cobbold : We’d had some horrendous traffic jams at previous Knebworths, so the police were very keen to keep control. People were encouraged, as much as possible, to come by train to Stevenage railway station.

Jill Furmanovsky (photographer) : It was bit like Carry On Camping backstage. Meg Matthews was driving around on a motorbike, looking like a dolly bird.

Henry Cobbold : At the soundcheck, Liam and Patsy were driving around like mad things on golf carts, which caused some distress because there were a number of small children around, and they seemed careless of any injury they might have caused.

Jill Furmanovsky : I went up in the helicopter to take some aerial shots, and it was an incredible sight, like a huge city had arrived in the middle of the country.

Henry Cobbold : In the seventies, bands used to arrive by car, and The Stones or the Beach Boys would be put up in the house itself, but by the time of Oasis, they were coming in helicopters, so we didn’t see so much of them. They built their own backstage entertainment encampment.

John Harris (reviewer, Q) : In a vast air-conditioned marquee, 1,500 ‘guests’ are enjoying a superlative dose of South Mancunian hospitality. The living, for today at least, is easy: free Pimm’s, beer and Ginzing (whatever that is), white wicker sofas, and the action outside pumped in via closed-circuit television.

Liam Gallagher : All them people there and up for it, that's what I'd always wanted to do, a big gathering like that in a nice place.

Jill Furmanovsky : I was on stage behind the band doing my photographs, and it was amazing to look out on that vast crowd, who were beautifully lit up by triangular beams of light.

John Harris : Upon the opening moments of Roll With It, Oasis fall into their stride. It sounds like a far-flung hallmark of some other decade; the kind of song you find festering in the Old Gold rack of a provincial W.H.Smith’s.

Jill Furmanovsky : The big surprise that night was when John Squire came out to play Champagne Supernova with them.

John Squire (guitarist, Stone Roses) : I didn't actually enjoy being there. I had some stomach bug for ten days, straddling the gigs. But they both asked me to do it, and I love the group. I didn't really think about the size of it. I'd no idea of how many people were out there. It was just black.

Noel Gallagher : He was playing all this mad fucking Jimmy Page stuff... I'm thinking, that's another moment in my life


Sunday 11 August : Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, The Charlatans, Cast, Dreadzone and Kula Shaker.

Henry Cobbold : Litter was one of our biggest problems. We had a team of about 100 litter pickers, and they started clearing up at midnight on Saturday night. When the second crowd started to come in around noon on the Sunday, we were just getting to the end of the clearing up.

Oasis had partied all night, with backstage guests like Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, Martine McCutcheon, Helena Christiansen and Kate Moss, but we weren’t invited. We had our own party in the house. The next morning, though, Noel turned up at the back door, very keen to have a bath after his all-night exertions. The person who answered the door didn’t recognise him and was sending him off to a rather grotty shower, but we were able to intervene and directed him to a rather more suitable four-poster bath.

While he was in the bath, my father, Lord Cobbold, took him a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, but Noel mistook him for a liveried servant, and didn’t realise his error until much later.

As he was leaving, we asked Noel to sign the guest book, and he wrote, “Noel Gallagher – arrived dirty, left clean.” Then his minder wrote, “Arrived dirty, left dirty.”

Pat Gilbert (reviewer, Top magazine) : When I got into the field, it looked like the Battle of Waterloo, complete carnage, people packed in more densely than I’d ever seen at any festival, nowhere to sit or even stand. It took me and my mate forty minutes to pick our way across the field to the bar, and then we found ourselves in a queue of 200 people. It took an hour and a half to get a beer.

The Charlatans stood out that day. They were fantastic, really lifted the crowd, although Martin Duffy from Primal Scream was standing in on keyboards because Rob Collins had died three weeks before.

Mark Collins (guitarist, The Charlatans) : I always used to stand next to Rob on stage and in front of 150,000 people, I was looking around and I was seeing Martin Duffy and that's when it really dawned on me. We expected Rob's spirit to make the heavens open up.

Pat Gilbert : There had been some loutish behaviour earlier, but when Oasis came on it was starting to get dark, people were lighting fires, and there was a spirit of camaraderie, and it did become magical.

Jill Furmanovsky : Each night had a different vibe. On the second night, having been up drinking all night, Liam was rather the worse for wear, which gave that show a bit of a dangerous edge.

Pat Gilbert : We were halfway up the field, far enough away that the sound was being relayed through extra sets of speakers, so it was slightly out of sync with what was happening on the stage, but when they got to Slide Away, everything started to gel, it was absolutely beautiful, and they were playing all those great songs off the first two albums.

Noel Gallagher : We were in one of the cars coming home about six in the morning, me and Meg, and I was staring out of the window. Meg says, ‘Look at you. You’ve just done the biggest gig ever and you’re just sat there.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I don’t know what it’s meant to be like after doing something like that. You don’t go off and meet the pope, do you?’

Pat Gilbert : Getting home was a nightmare. We left through a back entrance and found ourselves in pitch black wandering down narrow country lanes that seemed endless. About three a.m., hopelessly lost, we got a lift with the morning milk cart which took us to the station. Was it all worth it? Possibly.


Thanks : Phil Sutcliffe, Select, Esquire, Paul Mathur.

This feature first appeared in Q magazine.