WHEN OASIS DRIED UP

Twenty years ago, the band played a disastrous Glastonbury show which, says Mark Beaumont, marked the beginning of the end for Liam and Noel Gallagher's Britpop dream

- Mark Beaumont

The date is 25 June 2004: Liam Gallagher strides purposefully onto Worthy Farm’s Pyramid Stage with the attitude, determination and blazing white overcoat of a man embarking on an Arctic expedition. “Glastonbury,” he addresses the 100,000 people chanting his name, “‘Rock ’n’ Roll Star...’” As the bottled lightning of their trademark opening song was uncorked upon the biggest festival in the world, the stage was set for Oasis to sweep in and steal the decade.

It wouldn’t have been the first time. Ten years earlier, at the same festival just a couple of fields away, Liam had marched onto the NME Stage midway through Sunday afternoon and – alongside Blur and Pulp, who also performed that day – cemented the cultural ascendance of Britpop. The following year, in 1995, he closed the festival’s main stage on Friday night amid scenes of generational triumph.

Now, once more headlining the greatest show on earth as millennial Britrock’s elder statesman, Liam had the chance to crown the scene’s biggest success story, cap Oasis’s career, and encase in history the band’s reputation as among the greatest of all time.

Which, sadly, wasn’t quite how it went. Despite the non-existent set design – the band didn’t even shell out for a logo backdrop – “Rock ’n’ Roll Star” made for a customarily dazzling opening. But things quickly went downhill. Come “Bring It on Down”, the crowd, who were enduring yet another mudbath – the sixth in the last seven Glastonburys – found themselves pounded with sludge from the stage, too.