Word in the upper decks at the sold-out Rose Bowl Saturday night just before Oasis was to take the stage was that all the bars on the concourse level below had entirely run out of gin already.
Fitting, what, for the wildly anticipated reunion tour of the bad-boy Manchester band, whose feuding Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, had not been even talking, much less playing together, for the last 16 years. Seemingly every expat Englishman in Southern California were among the 90,000 fans packing the hallowed stadium in the Arroyo Seco. The return of the band “turned L.A. into Glorious Brittania for a weekend,” raved Variety. Your Brits require your gin.
Then, by 9 o’clock, 15 minutes later, we were to understand not a drop of lager nor whisky was available downstairs as well.
The crowd had drunk the bars dry, and by that time no one wanted to — no one did, that I saw — leave their seats or the standing-room field below, enraptured as we were by a really good show by a really good band, a living reminder of the 1990s, the last time rock ‘n’ roll had ruled the pop landscape before whatever it is we have now took over the music world.
Fans were delirious. A woman in the front row was shown on the massive video screens behind the stage sobbing in joy through the show. Instead of Liam hitting Neil with a tambourine, as he did to his brother at a show in 1995, he just draped one around his own neck as he sang. Instead of Neil hitting Liam with a cricket bat, as he did during a recording session in 1995, he just banged away on his big Les Paul guitar.
I’m not sure I fully realized how big a deal this was until, walking toward the elevators to go up to the club level, I was informed that the lifts were temporarily out of service for regular concert-goers. “Sorry — everything’s a bit crazy around here,” a security guard volunteered to me. “I mean, the celebrities. For instance: Paul McCartney just walked in.”
Instagram reels shot by fans later showed Sir Paul pulling his own iPhone out and recording some video of his own, testament, it was said, of a hatchet being buried. In the mid-’90s, Noel had once proclaimed that his band was “bigger than the Beatles.” No one is bigger than the Beatles. Still, a silly thing to say. (Noel later acknowledged that he must have been “high” to posit such a thought.) Now, Paul’s clearly a fan. “Fabulous!” was his one-word review as he hopped into a black car on the Brookside Golf Course after the show.
Everything went off without a hitch, a triumph for the Rose Bowl — “So much better than SoFi!” I heard a fan say on the balmy outdoor evening — after that weird hitch last month at the Rufus Du Soul concert when an accidentally spilled drink led to a man sucker-punching a woman and assaulting two others who tried to intervene. (Viral video later led to his arrest and booking on three felony charges.) Same thing on Sunday night — I mean, same calm greatness.
I knew it was a bit loud. Even briefly considered putting in earplugs, out of doors, though I didn’t. But I hadn’t realized how far the sound carried until I happened on a Reddit string: “I live way on the east side of Pasadena miles from the Rose Bowl but I am enjoying the Oasis concert from my lawn right now,” one writer posted. “It’s not as obnoxious as Jay-Z and Beyonce, which literally shook the house, but is there some reason these concerts have to be so loud?” “I can hear it at New York and Allen in Altadena LOL” posted another. “I could hear it from my lawn on La Canada Blvd in La Canada … holy cow,” went another. An Arcadian — now, that’s far — weighed in. Then came a scientist, handle, outlawparrots, who seemed to know what he was squawking about: “It’s … not just the volume of the concert. Depending on the temperature and humidity the atmosphere can help reflect sound to make it heard over a much greater distance.”
Music so alive on a lovely night. Full moon: A Champagne supernova in the sky.
A Wednesday requiem
Former Pasadena Mayor Bill Thomson. My former city editor, Bob Rector. Former Caltech President David Baltimore. Three brilliant friends and colleagues, all departed in recent weeks. More to say about them soon, but as I wrote about Nina Chomsky last week, appreciate the giants among us while we have them, learn from them, strive to live like they did as we move on without them.
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.