Gallagher: The Fall and Rise of Oasis

Former music manager Harrison debuts with a lackluster account of the 15-year-split and eventual reunion of Liam and Noel Gallagher, the combative brothers behind Britpop act Oasis. He begins with the “backstage blowout” that spurred their 2009 breakup—a culmination of years of “pent-up frustration, unresolved conflicts, and deep-seated emotional baggage”—before moving onto their solo careers. Liam formed the modestly successful Beady Eye in the split’s immediate wake (a “defiant” attempt, Harrison writes, to distinguish himself from his brother, the “architect of Oasis’s sound”), while Noel added “new elements” to Oasis’s “anthemic guitar-driven rock” with 2011’s platinum-selling Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Harrison lightly sketches the brothers’ personal lives in their 15 years apart (rocky marriages, estrangement from their children, and barbs via tweets and magazine interviews) before concluding with the unlikely announcement of their 2025 reunion tour, a decision that came down, he writes, to “loadsamoney.” At the heart of the book—and the root of the brothers’ split, Harrison posits—is the fundamental tension between two very different personalities: Noel, the “introverted and meticulous songwriter... the brains of the operation” and Liam, “the extroverted, charismatic frontman”—a thesis that’s hammered home relentlessly throughout. Only the most committed fans need apply. (Aug.)