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"It All Felt Like It Was Leading To Knebworth..."















The view from the stage, the crowd and the backstage bar by Knebworth's rock-istocracy.

The Main Players:












Liam Gallagher
"I'm very proud of it, I am. What do I remember? Not a lot, really. Nothing. I remember forgetting that we were doing a second night - I thought we were doing just one, so I got really drunk after the first night. But I can't remember anything else."










Noel Gallagher
"It got to a certain point after '...'Morning Glory', and then 'Wonderwall' took off. It felt that everything was leading up to something that was gonna define not only the size of the band, but what British pop music was about at that time. It all felt like it was leading to Knebworth. But I think we were too busy doing it to worry about it. If we'd thought about it...well, I'd have certainly worn a better outfit, let's put it that way. And may have gone to bed a little bit earlier. And may have tried to keep Liam off the sauce. I remember us flying over and just being sort of normal. We were worried about other stuff; 'Have you got the beers backstage?'; 'Are they cold?'; 'And have you got Sky?'; 'Is it Sky Plus?' Stuff like that."

The Supporting Cast:










Tim Burgess, The Charlatans

Knebworth marked The Charlatans' first live appearence after their keyboard-player Rob Collin's was killed in a car accident just three weeks before.

"After Rob died in the accident, we wanted to pull out of the show, but when you fall off the bike you have to get up and do it again. Bobby Gillespie told [Primal Scream - Keyboard-player] Martin Duffy that he should [step in and play with us] as a show of support and strength. I think we only had a weeks practice with Duffy before we played in front of all those people. Not bad for a first gig. I remember we came out with a lot of determination and a lot of fire. We brought people to their knees, down to tears! It wasn't the intention; our intention was just to survive. I remember walking off and thinking, 'That's the last gig we'll ever play', to be honest. Then me and Mark [Collins] were just crying on the way home. The comedown after the gig was quite difficult but we just had to get through it. I think if we'd played badly that would have been the end of the band, but we didn't. It was a pivotal moment in The Charlatans story."












Nicky Wire, Manic Street Preachers
"It was the year that 'A Design For Life' had taken off, and we were kind of on the fringes of the great beast of Britpop! I'm not sure Oasis realised the gigantic nature of what they were doing. I remember John Squire being in a cabin backstage noddling away. And the singer of Ocean Colour Scene saying to me, 'This is history, man!' I just smiled - I didn't have the heart to say someting nasty. The moment for me was when John Squire came on and played 'Champagne Supernova' and just turned it into this Jimmy Pageesque, Lez Zeppelin guitar solo from f*****g Mars. That moment did seem like a coming together of the great Mancunian mafia. Even today, Oasis are still a vital force. And Liam is a true Torette's Syndrome wit which is something we sadly lack in pop music. Anyone who calls Franz Ferdinand 'The Wiggles' is alright by me."









Alan McGee, Creation Records Boss
"When I signed Oasis to Creation, I thought they were gonna be big, but I'd be lying if I said I thought they would get that big. I think we should have stopped after Knebworth, and I think maybe Noel thinks that too. Oasis should have split and we should have shut Creation. But it's easy to say that now. I mean, they still love what they do and that's great. It's like when Robbie Williams said he was going one better that Oasis and doing three nights at Knebworth. Now Robbie, I'm not being funny, but Oasis changed '90s British culture, and you were a dancer in a boyband."









Liam Howlett, The Prodigy
"Noel was the only one into us at the time. He was definitely the one who instigated us playing. Just before we came onstage, Bonehead was f*****g moaning about us, like, 'what the f**k are they doing here?'. Then we just went up there and rocked it. At the back of the stage, all the Oasis boys had a Portakabin each, and I remember Liam popping his head out of his as we came offstage shouting, 'What the f**k was all that noise? turn the f*****g bass down!' I've spoken to him since and he said the whole caravan was shaking, so, y'know, we'd done our job properly. Knebworth was just so beautiful, it was like a big f*****g rave, loads of people were on Es everywhere and stuff. It was an event never to be repeated. It was a moment in time."








Neil "John Lennon" Harrison, The Bootleg Beatles
"They couldn't get The Beatles, I suppose, so they asked us! On the day of the gig they'd opened up the gates just before we came on, so there were just hundreds of people that looked like ants running towards the stage. We played more late-period, psychedelic stuff and obviously the big crowd-pleasers. The Chemical Brothers come on afterwards, and said to us, 'It's not going to be easy following The Beatles doing 'Hey Jude!' I suppose it was our Shea Stadium!'











Marcus Russell, Oasis Manager
"Knebworth wasn't designed to be a historic event. It's what people made of it - every kid who went. If they all say 10 years on that it was an important moment in their lives, that's not for the band to decide. I think Oasis went out of their way to out a special bill together that was representative of the time and pretty diverse. And not cheap! They really went to town with it. After the show the band stayed onsite - They all had their own Winnebago, because it was such a nightmare getting out. They slept backstage, so they were prisoners in their own fortress!"

In The Crowd:

Dirk Tourette, Towers Of London
"I was 15 and went with my older brother. We got given the tickets for the Sunday and sneaked some wristbands off a security guard for a fiver each so we could get closer to the action. They were brilliant Oasis changed my life. I stood next to Gaz from Supergrass in the crowd. To me, Oasis mania meant something to wake up for in the morning instead of boring old school."








Nick Hodgson, Kaiser Cheifs
"I'd actually describe Knebworth as the weirdest day of my life. I went down, didn't eat all day, didn't drink any water, dehydrated myself, got back on the bus to leave, and then was stuck for four hours in the car park! When I got home, I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night having hallucinations! My bedroom had turned into woods! i got up and walked across the room that had become a garden, walked into my mirror thinking that was the way out, shouting for Simon [Rix, Kaisers' bassist] and then looked at my curtains. they'd become trees! It was truly bizarre, no drugs were involved, just dehydration, lack of food, car fumes and Oasis - oh dear."












Jarvis Cocker, Pulp


" Well, yeah, I did quite enjoy it, though I remember we got stuck with a massive bill at the end of it, though. We'd hired a posh car up, a Merc or something, with posh cream leather seats and we picked up this friend of ours on the way. He was already hammered and first of all he bought loads of porn at a garage on the way, which was was a bit unsavoury. Then he proceeded to light a fag, fall asleep and burn a hole in the upholstery, which cost a f*****g fortune to get fixed. It's a bit of a sad thing to stick in your mind, but yeah, thats it. I remember playing Scalextric too - they had a thing set up for people to play backstage. Plus i remember when I got there the first thing i saw was Mick Hucknall trying to chat up Martine McCutcheon - that set the Standard for the day really."

Source: NME

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