U.K rock act Oasis has unveiled U.K and Ireland stadium dates for summer 2009, including two nights at the 80,000-capacity Wembley Stadium on July 11 and 12. The band will also play homecoming shows at Manchester Heaton Park on June 6 and 7.
The band made an appearance on the famous pitch of Wembley Stadium today (Oct. 16) ahead of a press conference by Noel Gallagher. Oasis last played the venue in 2000, performing two nights, although the venue has since been rebuilt and was re-opened last summer.
The tour, including further dates at Sunderland Stadium Of Light (June 10), Cardiff Millennium Stadium (June 12), Edinburgh Murrayfield (June 17), and Dublin Slane Castle (June 20), is described by the Oasis camp as the band’s biggest ever tour of open-air venues in the U.K.
Oasis will be supported by U.K. acts Kasabian and The Enemy for the tour.
“If I was 16 or 17, I would be here,” said Noel Gallagher, in reference to the line-up. “I think these gigs are going to be easily the gigs of next year, if not the decade for a certain demographic.”
He added: “These are the gigs that go down in people’s memories, these are that places that people will meet their future wives.”
Gallagher also had a dig at the Glastonbury festival, which is staged June 26-28, saying “I wouldn’t go to Glastonbury. Is R. Kelly playing?” That was a reference to the controversy surrounding his comments last year that headliner Jay-Z wasn’t right for the festival.
Oasis’ seventh studio set, “Dig Out Your Soul,” released on its own Big Brother Recordings label, entered the U.K. chart at No. 1 on Oct. 12 with sales of 200,000. It also entered at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 53,000, its first top ten in the U.S. since 1997. The album is released via Big Brother/Warner Bros. in the U.S.
Asked about the state of the business, Gallagher said: “I don’t give a shit about the industry. We are kind of self-contained now.
“The industry itself is in the shit because it got too big and major record labels were these big, sprawling companies.”
The Oasis songwriter said that “down-sizing is good” and added that he hoped the industry would be “leaner and meaner, more about the music and less about the product and razzamatazz.”
Unlike Foo Fighters’ Wembley show in June, Gallagher said he wouldn’t be playing in the middle of the pitch. “There will be a stage at one end and a bar at the other,” he said.
The second of the 2000 Oasis Wembley shows was notorious because of singer Liam Gallagher’s belligerent performance. Noel Gallagher explained that was “because he had been out with a Spice Girl the night before and ended up not going to bed.”
He added: “The first night was great, the second was quite skin crawlingly excruciating.”
Oasis plays the first of two nights at the indoor Wembley Arena tonight (Oct. 16). The current sold-out tour was booked through Primary Talent International and promoters for the dates are SJM Concerts, Metropolis Music, Regular Music and MCD.
