As the excitement builds ahead of the Oasis comeback tour, we’ve put together this guide to must see locations every fan should check out
Liam and Noel Gallagher pictured at the 1996 Q Awards(Image: PA)
They’re the home-town haunts, childhood hang-outs and toilet circuit venues which helped set Oasis on the road to stardom.
They include the park where the Gallagher brothers played football as kids, the flat where Noel wrote some of the band’s biggest hits and the suburban front-room which provided the backdrop to the iconic cover of Definitely Maybe.
As the excitement builds ahead of the Oasis comeback tour, we’ve put together this guide to the six places in Manchester every Oasis fan should visit…
Sifters
Mr Sifter himself, Peter Howard, at his Burnage record shop, Sifters(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
‘Mr Sifter sold me songs when I was just 16’. It’s one of the most recognisable lyrics in British rock.
And Pete Howard, the man who inspired it, can still be found behind the counter of Sifters record shop on Fog Lane, Burnage, just round the corner from the Gallaghers’ childhood home. Three decades on from being immortalised in the hit single Shakermaker, Sifters remains a Mecca for Oasis fans, who make pilgrimages from far and wide.
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In an interview with the M.E.N. last year Pete, then 76, told how even now he’s still asked for autographs and selfies.
“You have to sign as Mr Sifter,” he said. “It can’t say Pete Howard, nobody’s interested in that.
“A lot of them come from South Korea and Japan. It’s all youngsters that come in. They [Oasis] were way before they were born, which is incredible really.”
The Boardwalk
The old Boardwalk nightclub in Manchester, where Oasis honed their craft(Image: Mark Waugh Manchester Press Photography Ltd)
‘Oasis will go places,’ read the headline of the M.E.N.’s brief review of the band’s debut gig. It took place in August 1991 at the Boardwalk, a club and live music venue on Little Peter Street in the city centre.
“They sound different from all the rest,” wrote reviewer Penny Anderson as she described an audience ‘full of local pop luminaries’, including Noel’s then bosses Inspiral Carpets. “They’re much harder, rougher and erm… madder, but not so much as to preclude commercial success.
“People were already predicting they could be the next big thing to come out of Manchester. Let’s hope it’s a prediction and not a curse.”
In the audience that night was Noel and legend has it after seeing his little brother onstage he offered to make the band a success if they did things his way and played his songs. After hearing him play Live Forever, they agreed and the rest is history.
The Boardwalk was also Liam’s favourite club, over the Hacienda (which famously loved). Asked about the Hacienda in a 2023 interview with the M.E.N., he said: “I went a few times, but I don’t know man, everyone was popping pills and doing all that stuff. I was more into the guitar you know so I was quite happy at The Boardwalk me. I loved it in there.”
Sadly the club closed down in 1999, but a blue plaque on the wall commemorates its place in Manc music history.
India House
Noel Gallagher has joined the illustrious list of ‘Greater Mancunians'(Image: Katie O’Neill)
Described by Noel as ‘literally ground zero in the story of my musical life’, a fourth floor flat in India House, on Whitworth Street in the city centre, is the place he called home in the early 90s. And it’s there ‘The Chief’ wrote many of the songs on Definitely Maybe and What’s The Story….
In a 2023 interview Noel said: “I moved into a flat there with my then girlfriend in 1989, broke and bored. By the time I left in 1993 I’d joined my little brother’s band and had written Live Forever and Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!”
And in 2012 he described his time living there as the ‘glory days’. “When I pass India House I look up at my old flat window and think, ‘I wonder if they know?’,” he said. “If the people who live here now would mind me knocking on the door and saying, ‘I used to live here’.
“I wrote (What’s The Story) Morning Glory and Definitely Maybe in that flat. I’d love to stand and look out of that window again.
“I spent a lot of time staring out of that window smoking. I refer to them as the glory days.”
Definitely Maybe house
The Definitely Maybe cover(Image: Manchester Evening News)
The Burt Bacharach album propped against the settee, a photo of Rodney Marsh in the fireplace competing with the George Best pic on the windowsill, a pack of B&H cigs, the Clint Eastwood classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly playing on the telly and the glass of red wine that’s actually Ribena.
Oasis fans of all ages have pored over the cover of Definitely Maybe trying to discern some kind of hidden meaning in the myriad of little details it contains. The iconic cover was shot by photographer Michael Spencer Jones in the front room of Bonehead’s house on Stratford Avenue in West Didsbury.
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
In a 2019 interview with the Guardian he described the moment he knew he’d got the perfect shot. “I knew it was a big gig,” he said.
“I’d heard the album and knew it was going to be massive. So I was totally focused – you have to treat some album shoots like the singles final at Wimbledon.
“Once I’d got everyone positioned and the globe was spinning, I looked through the camera and I was buzzing. I knew I’d got it.”
Maine Road
Fans at the Oasis gig at Maine Road in April, 1996(Image: MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS)
Less than five years after playing to two dozen people at the Boardwalk, Oasis walked onstage at their beloved Maine Road to perform in front of 40,000 adoring fans. The two homecoming gigs on April 27 and 28, 1996, signalled the moment the band went supernova.
They were described the man who signed Oasis, Creation Records boss Alan McGee, as a ‘religious spectacle’ while the Umbro training top worn by Liam became such a fashion statement the brand have re-released it to mark the comeback. In a sign of just how expensive gig-going has now become, tickets for the two shows were £17.50 – around £35 in today’s money.
Oasis at Maine Road, April 1996(Image: Manchester Evening News)
Maine Road was demolished in 2004 after City moved across town to Eastlands. Today it’s home to a housing estate, but in a nod to its footballing roots, the original centre circle remains in place.
And in 2023 Noel returned to Maine Road to use the turf for the cover shot – taken by legendary Manc photographer Kevin Cummins – of his album Council Skies. The video for the title track also featured the now demolished Eastford Square shopping centre in Collyhurst, the Queens Hotel in Monsall and New Century Hall in the city centre.
Fog Lane Park
Liam pictured in Fog Lane Park in the Shakermaker video
Just round the corner from the brothers’ Burnage home, Fog Lane Park was where Gallaghers used to play football as kids.
And it featured in the video for Shakermaker, parts of which were also shot in the back yard of Bonehead’s home, and could well have been the inspiration for the Round Are Way lyrics ‘The game is kicking off in around the park, It’s twenty five a side and before it’s dark, There’s gonna be a loser and you know the next goal wins’.