Like so much of Oasis' career, playing Knebworth was an idea half-inched from the greats of the past. Since the early 70's, Knebworth House and its surrounding grounds have been the home of the British mega-gig, with everyone from Led Zepplin to the Rolling Stones to, ahem, Cliff Richard gracing the stately mansion of Lord and Lady Cobbold - rocking the b******s off their fair green expanses. Yet, if as the case for the Oasis defence has gone for the last 12 years - talent borrows and genius steals, then the Gallagher brothers appropriationof a fading British Rock tradition must surely stand alongside their theft of Bowie's All The Young Dudes' for 'Whatever' as the lasting testament to their musical genius.
First, a few statistics for you. Oasis' two nights at Knebworth House in August 1996 involved over 3,000 people in the staging alone. The world's (then) largest video screen was built specially for the gig; not that it was much use for the poor b******s at the back, because on each night the crowd was 125,000 people deep. That said, life was probably a little easier if you managed to find your way on to the 7,000-strong guestlist.
At the end of the weekend, Oasis had amassed £5.6 Million between them and reached the absolute zenith of their career. But thats nothing. The truly startling facts are these - such was Oasis' monstrous popularity in the summer of '96 that when tickets went on sale, 3 Million people frazzled the phone lines of Britain in a desperate attempt to get them. That's one out of every 20 people in the country. Conceivably, Oasis could have sold out 24 consecutive nights at Knebworth without breaking a sweat. But Knebworth was about more than just numbers. It was Britpop's crowning glory, it's death knell and it's Woodstock all rolled into one. It didn't matter that Portaloo queues snaked up to 400 yards long, that Oasis'performance - by the bands own admission - was below par. This, as Noel Gallagher astutely reminded the crowd when Oasis took to the stage on the first night, was history.
As DJ and event compare Gary Crowley so eloquently put it, "I could've built Pink Floyd's wall with what was coming out of my underpants at the time." Quite. But a quick glance at the list of support acts for the two nights will tell you why it was such a big deal. The Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene, Cast, The Charlatans, Chemical Brothers and Kula Shaker, summed up everything in British popular music at the time that wasn't Oasis, Blur or the Spice Girls. These were bands at the peak of their commercial powers (yes, even Kula Shaker), capable of drawing in huge crowds on their own, thank you very much. That they'd all gathered in a field in Hertfordshire to pay homage to the biggest band in the world felt epochal.
In essence, the Britpop generation amounted to little more than renewed interest in catchy songwriting and the unfortunate emergence of laddism in popular culture. But in the summer of 1996 at least, it stood for something far grander.
Britain was on the cusp of revolution; the Tories, in power since the days of Thatcher, were almost certainly on their way out. On their way in was a revitalised Labour party, led by a youthful, exciting (no, really) politician named Tony Blair. All the talk was of 'Cool Britannia' and Oasis were to be at it's apex; a 21st-century, monobrowed Beatles. Knebworth was the staging post for this cultural shift, a Woodstock where Stella and Bensons were the drugs of choice, and where Cast were the country Joe & The Fish to Oasis's Hendrix.
Oasis themselves may have been comparatively underwhelming on the night(s), but with songs of the calibre of 'Live Forever'and 'Wonderwall' in the set, it hardly mattered. In any case, Noel's rendition of 'The Masterplan' - dedicated to everyone in the audience who was young - was the entire weekend's most poetic five-and-a-bit minutes; the point at which it all (seemingly) became clear: 'Life, on the other hand/Won't make you understand/We're all part of the masterplan."
It went off without a hitch, too. Until the morning after, that was, when Noel Gallagher conceded, "You can't play anywhere bigger than Knebworth. After this, what are we gonna do? Where are we gonna go?" It wasn't just a problem for Oasis, though - after Knebworth, Britpop itself had nowhere to go. Blur, the ying to Oasis' yang, conceded that the game was up as far as commercial competitiveness went, and retreated to Iceland to record the lo-fi, Pavement-inspired 'Blur'. Pulp would take two years to record 'This Is Hardcore' - the dark, sadistic follow-up to 'Different Class', while the likes of Sleeper and Kula Shaker scurried into obscurity. All floundered to some degree, but Oasis most of all. They themselves were in the impossible position of topping two of the biggest albums in history and the biggest British gig of all time. And, merely weeks after Knebworth had primed them for global domination, Liam Gallagher elected, at the last minute, not to join the band's crucial US tour and go house-hunting instead.
Oasis' commercial hopes in the US never recovered. Blur and Pulp's mainstream muscle also faded, and it became clear to all that Britpop had no answer to Knebworth. With the possible exception of Radiohead at Glastonbury the following year, Knebworth still towers over every other subsequent British gig in terms of sheer size and significance. In 10 years, only Robbie Williams has attempted to top it - selling out three nights in front of 375,000 people. But let's put some prospective on that - it's Robbie f*****g Williams. A man who only registers as a cultural force in branches of TK Maxx.
No, Knebworth '96 was the defining moment of a generation; the making and the breaking of a musical movement; and Oasis' greatest achievement. Arguably, only Arctic Monkeys have the potential to equal it, but until then, it should stand reveredas the single greatest, most culturally significant weekend ever to feature Ocean Colour Scene on the bill.
Source: NME
