Britpop’s epic war explodes on stage as Oasis v Blur battle is reborn with C-bombs, chaos and 90s swagger
IT was the long, hot summer of 1995, John Major was in No10 and Blackburn Rovers were Premier League champions.
The music charts had been dominated by acting duo Robson and Jerome, until one crazy week in August when Britpop’s heavyweights began slugging it out.
Oasis and Blur released their new singles Roll With It and Country House on the same day in a race for the No1 spot — and the nation was absolutely mad for it.
It was an era-defining, pop culture moment, billed as North v South, working-class v posh boys and sing-along anthems v lyrical sophistication.
Yet even their most ardent fans would have struggled to imagine that 30 years down the line the rivalry in all its boozy, sweary glory would be transformed into a theatrical production.
The Battle — which opened at the Birmingham Rep theatre this week — is a comedic caper that tries to recreate the 90s vibe.
So Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher — played by George Usher — is seen snorting lines of coke, swigging champagne and threatening to knock Blur singer Damon Albarn’s block off.
And the production includes more uses of the C word than have been uttered in much of the rest of British stage history put together.
The play’s writer, best-selling novelist John Niven, tells me he had to explain the context of the expletive-laden script to the actors.
He said: “The young cast found some of the language challenging at first.
“I had to say that that was just the way people spoke back then. It was more full-on and a much more unfiltered time.
“There’s five or six c***s in it but I guess that’s a lot for the theatre.
“But there’s no way you could accurately reflect those musicians over a five-month period without a few C-bombs dropping. It wouldn’t be authentic.”
John, 60, said he took inspiration for the narrative from a comment by Oasis manager Alan McGee about the rise of his band from a tough Manchester suburb.
He recalled: “Alan said, ‘The thing is, Blur think this is all good media fun but you’ve got five lunatics off a council estate in Burnage who actually want to f*****g kill them’.
“Blur moved the release date of their record to coincide with the Oasis single, so Liam thought, ‘Right, they’ve offered us out’.”
With actor George, 21, successfully aping Liam’s loping gait, he also gets to deliver the most one-liners.
John, who spoke to Blur’s bassist Alex James while writing the play, added: “Someone like Liam is so seductive to write for.
“Noel and Liam are both very funny in completely different ways.
“Noel is really dry and has got great timing, like a stand-up comedian, while Liam is much more surreal, random and unfiltered. He’s a delight to write dialogue for.
“Sometimes you think, ‘F***, have I gone too far there?’
“And then you could go online and find an interview with Liam where he said something ten times crazier.”
John — who began writing the play in 2023, long before the triumphant Oasis reunion last year — also had to explain to the young cast how the Britpop battle came to dominate the national conversation.
He said: “It was such a big cultural phenomenon. The whole country, from six-year-olds to 60-year-olds, knew about it.
“It went from the music papers to the broadsheets to the tabloids to News At Ten. Back then, things spread via radio, TV and the Press, whereas now the culture is so atomised.
“I’ve got teenage kids and you can have acts with a billion TikTok followers who play Wembley Stadium and I’ve never heard of them.”
After a blast of Blur’s Girls & Boys, the play begins at the February 1995 Brits, where Blur won four awards to Oasis’s one.
Collecting the prize for best British group, Damon insisted: “I think this should have been shared with Oasis.”
Interviewed later, Noel Gallagher said: “As far I’m concerned, it’s us and Blur against the world now.”
But the love-in didn’t last. Later that year Noel said of Blur: “The bassist and the singer, I hope the pair of them catch Aids and die because I f***ing hate them two.”
(The guitarist would later appologise, insisting he was “f***ed” on drugs when he made the remark).
When John began writing the play, he recalled the resentment that had built up between the bands in a few short months.
The former music company executive who was at the Brits that year, added: “I thought. Now there’s a dramatic arc.
“Back in February they had all been mates with Noel giving an interview saying, ‘It’s us and Blur against the world now’.
“Now he was saying he hoped they died.”
Then, in August Oasis’s record company Creation announced their new single Roll With It would be released a week before Blur’s Country House.
John added: “Blur’s manager Andy Ross was worried that Oasis would have a massive No1.
“Back then a single could top the charts for a month so Andy was worried the Blur would be stuck at No2.”
Andy, played by Gavin and Stacey star Mathew Horne, decides to move Country House’s release date forward to coincide with Oasis and all hell was unleashed.
The then influential music magazine NME produced a front cover with the headline, British Heavyweight Championship, Blur v Oasis.
A then 29-year-old Clive Myrie reported breathlessly for the BBC News At Ten on the brewing rivalry.
Like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s, the two bands divided friends and families into rival camps.
An exclusive in the The Sun revealed that Oasis-mad Mandy Vivian-Thomas had kicked out her husband Richard for being a massive Blur fan.
Richard said: “Mandy’s been a nightmare. She’s spent a fortune on trash about Oasis and the last starw was using my card to buy their record.
“I’m out on my ear but I’m hoping things will calm down.”
Headlined, You Blurty Rat, the Sun article takes centre stage in The Battle.
It’s cited by Blur guitarist Graham Coxon as a symptom of how the chart battle has seen his band drift away from their indie ideals and into the mainstream.
John explained: “It became apparent how different the two bands were because I think Noel and Liam loved being in the tabloids and wanted to be that big.
“They had no problems with having loads of reporters outside their door. They thought, ‘We want to be the biggest band in the world and this is part of it’.
“But I reckon Blur found it all much more uncomfortable, especially Graham. That when you get that big you’ve got the tabloids banging on your door.
“I think he thought, ‘This is getting crazy now.’”
In the end, it was Blur who would win the Battle of Britpop with Country House topping the charts but Oasis would go on to have a more stellar career.
John added: “Damon and Noel are pals now.
“When men are in their 20s and 30s and they’re really ambitious, they’re all claws and teeth, sharp edges and hustling.
“You hurt people trying to get where you want to be but I think as men get older in their 40s and 50s they get a lot nicer and they calm the f*** down a bit.”
John hopes the play will transfer to the West End after runs in Birmingham and Manchester.
“I don’t think we’ll see a time when two bands dominate the national consciousness in a way like that again,” he said.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine.”
TOUCH OF TARANTINO
EFFING and jeffing as he struts around the stage like a rampant chimp, George Usher has Liam Gallagher down to a tee.
I’m supping a lager in the stalls at the Birmingham Rep, where if you suck your gut in and comb your hair forwards, it could be 1995 all over again.
With blasts of their hits, and aided by newsreel and radio clips, the great Battle of Britpop is fought once again.
The dialogue is pacy, comedic and very sweary. Yet with two bands, assorted managers and girlfriends to cover, there is little time for character development.
However, just as the play seems to be running out of narrative, it plunges into a Quentin Tarantino-esque sequence.
It’s a fittingly surreal end to this parable of a drug-addled decade.