"We were a pretty decent band the night before I wrote Live Forever, but it was indie music" Noel Gallagher notes in the clip above. "The day after I wrote Live Forever we were gonna be the biggest band in the world."
The band-sanctioned film Oasis Knebworth 1996 comes to cinemas on 23 September and ahead of its release the band has issued a never before seen footage of Live Forever taken from the landmark shows. The band's two nights at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 August 1996 weren't just the biggest shows Oasis ever played, they were the biggest gigs the UK had witnessed at that point with a quarter of a million fans in attendance in total. The guest list alone reportedly had 7,000 people on it.
"We were not grateful to anybody for anything," Noel admits in the clip. "Oasis was us. In a sense it belonged to the people. In a bigger sense, in a more important sense, it belonged to us and they were there to see us. We weren't there to look at them. And that's what separated us from most bands; we flipped that 'we are not worthy' on its head. We are worthy, enjoy it."
The film and clip features fan insight and the band's own commentary and here, on what is arguably the band's greatest anthem to fans, songwriter Noel Gallagher weighs in on Live Forever's impact.
"I knew enough about music and enough about songs to know that wasn't indie music, it was a f******g great song," Noel says. No arguments here.
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Rob is the Reviews Editor for GuitarWorld.com and MusicRadar guitars, so spends most of his waking hours (and beyond) thinking about and trying the latest gear while making sure our reviews team is giving you thorough and honest tests of it. He's worked for guitar mags and sites as a writer and editor for nearly 20 years but still winces at the thought of restringing anything with a Floyd Rose.