"2021 is Our Year": A Timeline
This timeline came together to try to answer a question: did the production and release of the Knebworth documentary cause any shift in the public relationship between Noel and Liam?
First, a pause for additional context--while, per the doc's director, Jake Scott, Noel's manager first suggested the doc to him in June 2020, the idea of a Knebworth film releasing in 2021 for the 25th anniversary had been around since the production of Supersonic in 2015-2016, per Noel.
After production of the doc finished, Scott reported in interviews that, while Noel wanted to be interviewed for the film (of course) and had a "four or five hour chat" with Scott, Liam wasn't interested in discussing his experiences, for reasons he did not share with Scott.
Perhaps for related reasons, Liam did not promote the doc in the media; all promotion was left to Noel, who was also busy that year promoting his NGHFB best-of, Back the Way We Came: Vol. 1.
This had the effect of Noel, for the first time since he left the band, taking on the role of the public face of Oasis. In interview after interview, it was Noel who was left to ruminate on the band's legacy and, crucially, Liam's importance to its success--"Liam is at his absolute peak" will be a familiar refrain by the end of this timeline.
That effect was heightened by Liam's relative silence in comparison. He still tweeted regularly--often about Noel--and did some summer gigs, but it appears he did not do an interview until October, when he resurfaces to announce his own Knebworth show and upcoming album--and make a song dedication to Noel.
As always, if anyone sees any errors or can think of something that should be added or clarified, please add in tags or replies or send a message. Thank you!
1 January 2021: Liam makes headlines for his New Year's Eve tweet: "HNY Noel love you long time 2021 is our year c’mon you know LG x"
January-December 2021: Throughout this year, Noel is in the process of writing the album that will eventually be released in 2023 as Council Skies.
22 January 2021: Noel tells Matt Morgan that he's decided to re-record 14 Oasis-era tracks that never made it onto the albums.
28 January 2021: Noel praises "Songbird" on Morgan's podcast and muses aloud about why Liam won't play it as a solo artist.
24 February 2021: Kosmic Kyte, a motion picture production company, is formed by Noel and Liam.
6 April 2021: Noel gives Matt Morgan an update on his time in the studio, working on the album that will become Council Skies:
Noel: "I’ve been in the studio on a bit of a roll. Bit of a run, bit of a purple patch, some mega tunes, really fucking great. . . . I’m doing the songs for a new album. I’ve been in the studio every day. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know where I’d be at now. If I wasn’t going in there every day. Actually, some fucking great stuff has come out of it."
26 April 2021: Noel sits for an interview with Mr Porter, which will not be published until 10 June; the interviewer notes that the subject of Liam is totally off-limits, though Noel does confirm the existence of Kosmic Kyte while stressing that an Oasis reunion is unlikely:
Noel: "You don’t really understand unless you’ve really been in it. Once you’ve quit, there is no going back. There’s no point in going back."
note: date of interview determined to be 26 april because the interviewer notes that "the day before" man city won a trophy at wembley, so assuming that means the 2021 efl cup played 25 april
29 April 2021: Noel releases "We're on Our Way Now," a song started during the Chasing Yesterday sessions but only finished during the pandemic. Of the song, Noel says, "It’s a song about not getting to say goodbye and the frustration of things left unsaid."
29 April 2021: Noel confirms to Zoe Ball on BBC 2 that the Knebworth documentary is coming out and that he has seen a "tiny trailer" of it.
29 April 2021: Noel's The Project interview is published; when the interviewer asks Noel why he can't go back to Oasis, Noel says bluntly, "I can only say to you that I just don't feel like it," complains about not wanting to have his songs approved by a committee, and reiterates "Oasis is done, I'm afraid." When the interviewer points out how often Noel talks about Liam in interviews and asks Noel to just say he loves Liam on air, Noel responds:
Noel: "Well, it's not me that ever starts the conversations [about his fight with Liam]. Other people are fascinated by it, which is fascinating to me, but other than that, I don't really have a great deal to say about it."
29 April 2021: Noel's GQ interview is published; the interviewer notes that Noel's team asked him not to ask about an Oasis reunion, but they do discuss the band's history and Noel's ambivalent feelings about playing Oasis music at HFB shows. Noel also admits that Oasis is what he is most proud of in his career.
30 April 2021: Noel performs "Dead in the Water" on The Late Late Show.
11 May 2021: Jake Scott, the director of the "Morning Glory" video, is publicly announced as the director of Knebworth 1996.
16 May 2021: Noel films his Out of the Now special, the first and only time "A Dream is All I Need to Get By" is performed live. During the accompanying interview, Noel recounts the breakup in Paris, and though he insists he does not pine for Oasis, he admits to one regret--that they did not take off five years after Knebworth.
Noel: "I don't have any problem reconciling with the past. Oasis was the greatest thing that's ever happened in my life to me--ever. And ever will be."
18 May 2021: Liam tweets, in response to a fan asking him to respond to Noel's Project interview, "He’s so in control of his own destiny he’s marvellous."
21 May 2021: Noel appears on Jonathan Ross and mentions that "yesterday" he went to watch Knebworth footage for the doc and got emotional, noting, "Liam was at his absolute peak, and the band was." However, later in the interview, he firmly denies Liam's claim that they've been offered 100 million pounds to reform Oasis, and when Ross presses him about a reunion, Noel denies interest:
Noel: "Yeah, but it was all wrapped up in youth, and camaraderie, and all that, and once that is gone, you cannot put that genie back in the bottle, and it would just be showbiz, and it would just be for a mere, paltry, 100 million pounds."
26 May 2021: Liam tweets, in response to a NGHFB social media promotion asking fans to ask Noel a question about the last ten years, "Why you such a massive cunt." He deletes the tweet later. The same day, when a fan asks if he loves Noel, he responds, "With all my heart."
27 May 2021: Liam tweets "REAL love" and follows up with "He thinks and talks about oasis more than me guys obsessed."
note: leaving this in here because it does seem he's talking about noel, but can't find anything obvious to which he'd be responding. the phrase "love, real love" does appear in "we're gonna get there in the end," noel's new year's eve 2020 drop.
29 May 2021: Noel and Liam are both in attendance at the Champions League Final but are not pictured together.
2 June 2021: Liam tweets that he has seen the Knebworth doc and praises Oasis fans: "You steal the show im very proud take a bow as you’re the best fans in the world LG x"
7 June 2021: Noel releases "Flying on the Ground," another older song that he managed to finish during the pandemic.
10 June 2021: Noel's interview with Zeit is published in which he admits if pushed to pick between "innovation" and "consistency" that he would choose the latter. He also jokes that if Oasis had broken up in 1996 they'd already be back together.
10 June 2021: Noel's Out of the Now special airs.
11 June 2021: Noel releases Back the Way We Came: Vol. 1.
11 June 2021: Noel's Manchester Evening News interview is published; in it, he says he is proud he left Oasis and is annoyed by questions about a possible reunion:
Noel: "You'll be doing an interview for some f***ing regional paper in New Zealand when you're on tour, and they'll be asking you, 'do you think Oasis will get back together?' . . . And you just think, 'mate, do you think if Oasis was gonna do a reunion we'd announce it in this f***ing magazine? No. Can we talk about something else?' . . . This is the first time I've done interviews for over a year-and-a half and I've got a fresh perspective on it. By the end of doing interviews for this Best Of album I'll be sick of it again . . . . I know people think it's some kind of elaborate f***ing plot to jack up the money, but you can't help those people. It gets a bit tedious but you know, I could choose to not answer the question and I don't, so it's kind of my own fault."
11 June 2021: Noel's Sun interview is published; in the interview, he discusses his two careers and previews the Knebworth documentary:
Noel: "But I have to say, listening to the audio on that, we were on fire. Liam was at his absolutely f***ing peak and I’ve since realised Oasis was at its best when he was at his best. And when he started to deteriorate, the band started to go downhill."
11 June 2021: Noel's Apple Music interview is published; in the interview, he insists, to the host's shock, that he did not write the infamous break-up letter in 2009. He also discusses his attempt at getting Liam to agree to put out a "best of the 2000s" Oasis compilation, and then, toward the end of the interview, he gushes about the Knebworth doc:
Noel: "Mate, it's fucking outrageous. I got really--well, not really, but I did get quite emotional watching it. Liam is at his absolute peak--looked great, great hair, great clothes. Sound is amazing. But, actually, standing back and watching it, I was like, 'Fucking hell, we were unbelievable. We could really, really play.'"
11 June 2021: Noel appears on Absolute Radio and, when asked to explain the scissors at his shows, denies that Liam was a motivator:
Noel: "A lot of journalists tried to intellectualize it, right? . . . 'So what are you actually saying with the scissors? I mean, are you live-trolling your brother? Is that what it is?' And I was like, 'No, mate, you're gonna have to speak to her. I'm busy writing the songs here.'"
note: in 2017, noel repeatedly gloated about how liam would be annoyed by the scissors.
12 June 2021: Noel claims on a radio show that he and Liam are done, and Liam tweets a response: "Ha ha that's what he thinks."
16 June 2021: Noel's track-by-track of Back the Way We Came: Vol. 1, is published online. In the interview, he says that "If I Had a Gun" is not about anything in particular.
25 June 2021: Noel appears on The One Show, and when asked about an Oasis reunion, he jokingly pretends not to understand the question.
28 June 2021: Noel appears on Matt Morgan's podcast and mentions that the previous week he got to screen the full Knebworth doc on the big screen--before then, he'd just seen bits on a computer. He notes to Morgan, "The best thing in it? Have a guess. The best thing in it is Liam. Amazing. Absolutely amazing."
July 2021: Noel's Mojo interview is published; he discusses his career and mentions Liam a few times, notably when the interviewer wonders if Noel was "holding back" when writing songs in Oasis:
Noel: "It's difficult to make this statement without sounding like I'm slagging Liam off, but… he was way more conservative in his tastes than I am. . . . When you play a song to your bandmates you need them all to stand up and say, 'That's amazing.' If one of them is going 'pthrrrt', and that one happens to be the singer, forget it, it isn't happening. It's like you want the love of a parent. You do things to please people. After Be Here Now I wanted to throw it up in the air a little bit but I didn't really have the chops. If I'd had 10 songs like Go Let It Out, I'd have hammered them home. The material had to be undeniably great."
5 August 2021: Liam tweets, when a fan asks what he thinks of Noel's upcoming Radio X residency, an allusion to "Married With Children": "He might as well as his musics shite it keeps me up all night." He follows up with "He’s petrified to have time out as he’s scared of being forgotten he’s obsessed with being in the limelight sad CUNT."
8 August 2021: Noel does the first session of his Radio X residency and gets five minutes in before finding an opening to tell a story about Liam asking for girls' breasts on the screen at Oasis concerts.
15 August 2021: Noel does the second session of his Radio X residency, during which he claims that he is going to sell the rights to the Oasis catalogue so he can get a super-yacht. Then he says more seriously that he wants to wait until he gets to 2025, when he gets the rights back, to see how he feels about selling the songs.
17 August 2021: Liam does a concert at the 02 for healthcare workers, sings "Go Let It Out" for the first time since the Oasis split, and appears to mime playing guitar and point to his left while singing "Wonderwall."
22 August 2021: Noel confirms during the last session of his Radio X residency that so far this year he's written eight new songs for his next album (Council Skies) and is halfway through the writing process. He also notes that on 8 October 2020 he recorded his cover of "Mind Games."
note: songs noel plays during this night of the residency are "love the one you're with" and "true love will find you in the end"
27 August 2021: Liam plays Leeds.
29 August 2021: Liam plays Reading and, during "Acquiesce," shouts out Noel:
Liam: "Obviously, the little fella's still sulking somewhere, so I'm gonna, uh--but, the tunes are still fuckin' cool, and they've gotta be done. All right? They have to be done. So I need your help in the choruses. All right? The words are on the fuckin' screen--there's no excuses, man."
8 September 2021: Noel debuts a set on BBC Radio's Sofa Session: "Flying on the Ground," a cover of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," and, for the first time since the 1990s, "Live Forever," which he describes as a fist-pumping message about how he and his best friend are going to take on the world together.
🌈 Even more notably, when singing "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," he conspicuously changes some of the lyrics--see todays-just-a-daydream's commentary on the changes here.
Later, when prompted, he briefly discusses the end of Oasis:
Noel: "Yeah, nobody was happy. Liam wasn't happy. I wasn't happy. It'd had run its course, you know? It's like a--it's like a marriage, you know what I mean? It was just done. Simple as that. It was done, and it took somebody or, you know, it took an incident, the straw to break the camel's back, and that was it. And I think, uh, I'm--I'm way happier now than I was the last few years of Oasis. So it's all good."
He then admits that Liam is his favorite member of Oasis and praises Liam's Knebworth performance, but when Jo Wiley asks him if he and Liam are talking, he denies it.
9 September 2021: Noel's interview on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show is published; in it, he promotes the Knebworth doc but also discusses the possibility of reunion and praises Liam:
Noel: "I could pick up the phone now, and call somebody, anybody now, and give it the green light, and the world would stand still. . . . I think if there was to be a gig, something extraordinary, some extraordinary set of circumstances would have had to have happened, for us to be walking on stage again. . . . Obviously, nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future, but as I sit here today, a reunion doesn’t appeal to me. And as for Liam, he’s doing his thing. He’s responsible for the legacy being what it is. You know, he’s keeping the flame alive and all that, and good for him. He’s doing massive gigs, selling more records than I am, and selling more tickets than I am, if you can believe that! So he’s doing his thing, and I’m doing mine, and we’re both pretty happy doing that at the moment."
Early/Mid September 2021: Noel is interviewed by Rob Brydon approximately two weeks before the release of the Knebworth doc (the interview will be posted online on 30 September). In the interview, Noel manages to bring up Liam unprompted four times in fifteen minutes, including when he jokes to the camera about Liam singing "Live Forever" in Welsh. He also praises Liam's Knebworth performance:
Noel: "I've seen it now a couple of times, and it's a fascinating watch. . . . I was hell-bent on letting everybody know that this was a history-making moment for British music. . . . And, of course, Liam was taking the piss all the way through. . . .Liam is very, very, very, very good in it. It's him at his absolute peak."
11 September 2021: Liam plays TRNSMT but does not mention Noel during "Acquiesce."
12 September 2021: Liam tweets that Noel is "adorable."
15 September 2021: Liam plays Jazzopen.
17 September 2021: Liam plays Isle of Wight and does his Noel shout-out for "Acquiesce":
Liam: "You ever heard of a song called 'Acquiesce'? Right then. Obviously, the little fella normally does the backing vocals, but he's at home, counting his money. So you're gonna have to do the, eh, the honors. The words are on the screen, so there's no excuses if you don't know it, you super fans."
18 September 2021: Liam tweets that he fell out of a helicopter the previous night; as a result of his injuries, he is forced to cancel his planned Belfast gig.
23 September 2021: Knebworth 1996 is released.
30 September 2021: The Rob Brydon interview is published.
? September 2021: Noel appears on Matt Morgan's podcast and discusses his reaction to finding out Liam wasn't interviewed for the Knebworth doc:
Noel: "When I was watching the final thing . . . I said to the guys, 'Stop it for a minute.' I was like in a screening room, with a big screen: 'How long's left in this film?' And he's like, 'About fifteen minutes.' I was like, 'Why the fuck's Liam not in it?' And he just shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Wouldn't be in it.' And I was like, 'What a fucking weirdo.' Do you know what I mean? For someone who's, fucking, like, you know, driving the Oasis chariot 'til the fucking wheels come off it--uh, yeah, no, he just wouldn't do it."
When Morgan presses him to say how he feels about Liam after watching the film--this goes on for over five minutes, so, again, click the link to hear it--Noel has difficulty landing on an answer and insists he lives in the moment.
1 October 2021: Liam goes on Chris Moyles to announce both that he will play Knebworth in 2022 and that his new album, C'Mon You Know, will be out soon. When he answers the phone, he initially pretends that Moyles is Noel:
Liam: "Is that you, Noel? Is that you, Noel? I knew you'd come 'round! I knew you'd come 'round! What's happening? What do you want? You're not--you're not gettin' 50 million, mate!"
Later, when asked by Moyles for his favorite tracks from his upcoming album, he singles out "Better Days" and "More Power," the latter of which he dedicates to Noel, saying, "it's a naughty little tune, but it's lovely."
12 November 2021: Liam tweets that C'Mon You Know is finished.
Late 2021: Noel begins demoing Council Skies and finishes, according to a tweet he sent 1 January 2022, "ten days" ago--so, roughly 22 December 2021.
