Review of Supersonic (2016) by Mark F — 08 Jan 2017

I was in my early teens when Oasis took off and I was completely swept up in the hype during the 90s. They were my first favourite band, had their posters on my bedroom wall and listened to their music constantly.

That said, even at the time, I didn't particularly like them as people. They always came across as thugs, poseurs, slightly lost, druggies and alcoholics. It was only my awe of their music that kept me a fan.

Watching this documentary with the benefit of hindsight and maturity heightens all those feelings. Liam in particular was a very dislikeable character. His walk is ridiculous. His attitude is desperate. The group in general created this aggressive, toxic atmosphere that I don't think many would have enjoyed, and that comes through particularly in the segment where they bullied Tony out of the band. Even now, as they narrate the documentary, almost none of them can get through a sentence without expletives. They talk about ripping up hotel rooms with no sense of remorse. They seem to have learned or understood nothing.

Noel is the most complex character. It seems like there's an introvert there. Someone with a soft heart behind a hard shell, who would let it out in the songs. Someone who had gone through a lot of hurt with his dad beating him as a kid. He would chastise the others when they started fights on ferries and quit the band when Liam started being a jerk on the American tour - the event that led him to write Talk Tonight. It seemed he had a sense of duty or decency, some kind of goodness in there. But it also seemed that Liam brought out the worst in him, and as their success escalated it all went to his head as much as the rest. He increasing hid the soft introvert and competed with Liam to be the loudest and most obnoxious. There's a sense in all of them leading up to Knebworth that their egos had all been massively inflated by the success and that they couldn't believe what was happening to them.

Towards the end of the film, as the nihilistic expletives kept coming and it became clear they really hadn't learned anything at all, I began to feel a bit silly for having been swept up in all that hype, even as a teenager - I'd long since lost interest in Oasis as an adult. But then as the credits begin to roll, Masterplan started blasting from the TV, and I remembered, occasionally they really did do a phenomenal song.