‘I saw Oasis in 1994

Oliver Astley was earning £2.50 an hour as a pot washer in 1994 when he first saw a little-known band called Oasis.

He heard one of their songs on the radio and decided to pay the £5 ticket fee, hopping on the bus from his home in Belper in Derbyshire.

The Gallagher brothers duly strutted on to the stage in front of 200 people at the three-storey music venue, The Wherehouse, in Derby.

“There was a local band called Cable playing, but then Oasis came on and blew my tiny mind,” he said.

Now a 48-year-old journalist, Mr Astley recalls the monumental moment he saw with his own eyes the start of the band’s journey, which saw them go on to dominate the world.

The Wherehouse back then was half the world away from the glitz and glamour of Wembley Stadium – but venues like this were the catalyst for their early success.

Now Wembley will play host to the band’s last two shows in the UK this weekend, before the Gallagher brothers head to Australia to embark on their worldwide reunion tour.

Oasis played twice at The Wherehouse – their only ever gigs in Derby.

The first time was in 1993 while supporting BMX Bandits. The last time they played was in May 1994 as part of their headline tour, three months before the release of debut album Definitely Maybe.

Looking back, Mr Astley, who was working in the kitchen at Little Chef, said he knew they were good, but did not know just how much of an impact the band would have.

“I’d heard Supersonic on the radio… my mate in my maths class said ‘let’s go and see Oasis, it’s a fiver’.

“As a 16-year-old I was a bit nervous… I was strictly speaking not allowed to be in there, but I got in.

“It was two hours of washing dishes, plus the bus there and back which was probably only £1.50.

“The whole night out came in at less than a tenner. I didn’t dare go to the bar, being 16, because I thought I’d get chucked out, so I got stuck into the crowd so the bouncers wouldn’t notice me. I got swept off my feet,” he said.

The band played tracks from the yet-to-be released Definitely Maybe album, which quickly soared to number one in the UK charts.

Mr Astley recalled frontman Liam Gallagher had already discovered his rockstar aura even back then. Confident, brash and someone who had all 200 gig-goers in the palm of his hand.

“I remember thinking there was a bit of Johnny Rotten [former Sex Pistols singer John Lydon] about him,” he said.

“He commanded the stage. The first song was Rock ‘N’ Roll Star… you believed him. You thought ‘this guy seems like he’s going places’. He was very charismatic.”

Mr Astley said he had left the gig early during the final song – I Am the Walrus – so he could catch the bus home.

“There was no Uber at the time and a taxi back to near Belper would have cost a small fortune for someone who was being paid £2.50 to wash dishes,” he added.

But Mr Astley doesn’t dine out on the fact he saw the Gallaghers before they hit the big time – he actually he stopped following them after Definitely Maybe was released, but that night in Derby lives long in his memory.

“I was in a meeting with my colleagues and the news had just broken that Oasis were getting back together, and I mentioned that I’d seen them back in the day before they were massive, when they were just on the club circuit.

“I might be wrong but I feel like I saw them at their height, when they had something to prove,” he said.

Johnny Hopkins, who worked for record label Creation Records when Oasis rose to fame, also recalls that momentous 1994 night in Derby.

He also remembered the moment co-founder of the label, Alan McGee, tasked him with following the band around.

“I get a call from Alan who ran the label saying ‘I’ve found this amazing group and I want you to work for them’. That, of course, was Oasis.”

Of the gig, he added: “It was absolutely rammed, it was heaving.

“From a media perspective, the juggernaut was beginning to roll, it was getting faster and faster and drawing in more people.

“That tour, of which the Derby Wherehouse date was a part, was the first proper time they were getting to interact with what became their audience. It was young kids, cool kids, lots of women as well as men.”

Mr Hopkins credits that tour and cities like Derby with making Oasis what they became.

He added: “Without places like Derby Wherehouse, bands like Oasis would not have been able to test out their material, work out how to deliver their songs live, and they wouldn’t have been able to build up a dedicated fanbase in the way they did.”