Yup, this would be one of the June 2001 Standing on the Shoulder of Giants USA dates, the Tour Of Brotherly Love, while Oasis were on the road with The Black Crowes. The same tour where Noel and Liam were getting on fabulously, and watching the Black Crowes brothers fighting for real actually freaked them out because they were quite at peace with each other that year.
Parts of this tour you can see in the Noise And Confusion documentary, which is where this clip is from. For the record, it wasn’t always bad between the Gallagher brothers and their partners, in May 2002, Noel and Liam told Q Magazine that they all got on, unlike the last time, that they liked each other’s partners and would go for lunches together.
I don’t know how everyone was getting on in 2001, but the end of this clip, where Sara is coming on to Liam and later a bit with Gem too, Liam apparently remembers—not seemingly fondly—some fifteen years later (he tweeted). Unless he’s talking about a different instance, which. Why is there a different instance. lol. (And there’s the 2005 Q Awards, too.) Celebrities and rockstars operate by different rules…
Either way. They told the press they were all getting on fine in May 2002. Oasis released Heathen Chemistry in July.
Oasis were set to begin their 2002 North American tour on 2 August in Florida.
BBC News reported on 2 August that Noel had lost his passport and expedited his US visa processing on a spare passport his management had (2 hours instead of 6 weeks!) to make it in time for the first shows across the pond. In 2018, Liam alleges that Sara stole Noel’s passport and he ‘came crying’ to Liam’s door.
Noel’s car crash iirc was on 6 August 2002 in Indianapolis, 7th being the date Oasis were expected to play their first date in the city, which got cancelled, this being the third city on the tour. New York wasn’t for another week, and it wasn’t at Radio City this time.
Sara’s interview with the Evening Standard and Noel subsequently breaking up with her (telling Meg about it before he told Sara apparently) was also the same week. Incidentally, she was perfectly pleasant about Liam (and Nicole) in the interview.
When […]Noel's not being a rock god, they ‘go for dinner, watch telly, have a bottle of wine. We'll see Liam and Nic. I won't hear a word said against Liam,’ she says. ‘He's so bright, sharp as a tack; he'll have you in tears.
And Nic gets more beautiful the more you know her. Noel will kill me for saying this,’ she laughs, ‘but my life's actually become more sedate since I met him. I don't need to go clubbing any more; I'd rather just go home and have a snog on the sofa.’
Italicised is the bit Noel apparently took offence to and broke up with her over – didn’t want to be seen as soft, boring and domesticated. Same reason why he forced Meg to stop writing her column when they were married.
When Noel does finally return to touring at the New York Roseland show on 11 August, he grumbles on stage about how no one sent him get well soon cards in recovery. Must not be selling enough records to be important enough… :( Liam (known hay fever sufferer) goes on a mission during ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ (for which he is not on stage) and returns to gift Noel a bouquet of flowers on stage with a kiss after the song, declaring he’s ‘not just a pretty face’ for Noel (but also a supportive brother and friend). Noel had often described Liam as the ‘pretty face’ of the band. Or interpret that how you like.
Noel then tried to stop the release of She Is Love as a single, scheduled to come out the next month in September, a song he wrote about Sara.
Noel has been trying to stop the record but it looks like it's too late. “He really doesn’t want ‘She Is Love’ to be a single. It is a very personal song that he wrote when he was in love. If it is released, it will cause even more pain for her. He doesn’t want that.”
Noel and Sara split up last week after their latest massive row, just days before the crash in the US. The pair had been dating for two years.
In the meanwhile in September, Nicole announces her engagement to Liam, while Oasis are still away in America. As was the last time, Noel didn’t know. Liam didn’t tell him. (This should not have been a surprise to anyone though, Liam and Nicole literally had a child together. But the Gallaghers operate on different principles.) Safe to say, the tour of Brotherly Love was as far from band memory as it could possibly be.
The mood in the Oasis camp sours, Liam deals with it the only way he knows how to: go on the lash. That left his voice in worse nick, and then he got into a brawl in Germany in December that led to bouncers knocking his front teeth out (Liam alleges even today that his teeth were plied out… painful).
Later that month, Noel was back with Sara for good, and neither Liam nor Sara have had a good thing to say about each other since.
In 2018, Liam releases the song ‘One Of Us’, a song so painfully obviously about Noel that the music video uses childhood pictures of Noel. The song contains the line ‘Hey kid, did you know, today 16 years ago, it was you and I for the last time?’ I’m pretty sure he’s referring to this period.
The 2001-02 timeline makes me squirm so hard, I don’t know if I could personally stomach writing a full timeline like I did for 1996 (and that one’s harrowing enough to begin with, but it’s not 2002!) Luckily, braver people than me have chronicled that period from August to December 2002. Read their post instead.
