New Book Reveals the Story Behind Every Oasis Song Ever Recorded (Exclusive)

The long-awaited reunion of British rock band Oasis is, arguably, the live music event of the year.

No one thought the group — fronted by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher — would ever reconcile after a brutal backstage fight in Paris led to their split in 2009. It’s why the siblings broke the internet (and Ticketmaster) when they announced their Live ’25 comeback tour last year, and loyal fans — including celebs like Tom Cruise and Dua Lipa — sold out every show prior to the band’s kick-off concert in Wales on July 4.

Now, a new book that delves into the stories behind every Oasis song arrives just in time for the band’s return to the U.S. for a series of tour dates to close out the summer.

Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain’s A Sound So Very Loud, out Aug. 19 from Pegasus Books, examines Oasis’ entire discography, from era-defining albums like (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? to the group’s rarest B-sides.

It’s a book only they could have written. Kessler and MacBain, music journalists formerly of outlets like NME and Q Magazine, have each interviewed (and partied with) the Gallagher brothers many times over the years.

“We went to see Liam Gallagher during his [2024] Definitely Maybe anniversary show in London,” Kessler tells PEOPLE of the book’s origins. “We were remarking upon how many young people were there, singing quite obscure Oasis songs. We discussed whether that would make a good basis for some kind of project.”

The Live ’25 tour was the motivation the coauthors needed to finally finish the book. MacBain tells PEOPLE that they wanted A Sound So Very Loud to tell Oasis’ story through the band’s songs, rather than just their infamous past.

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“We want to do something more celebratory, going deep on the music,” he explains. “I feel like every single piece that I read when they got back together was like, ‘Here’s a history of the fights. Here’s a history of the times they walked out on each other … We got a sense from seeing younger people at Noel’s solo gigs and Liam’s solo gigs [that] they’re not really looking at it like that.”

“Essentially, it’s a book for people who love them, and are obsessed by them, and want to know the story behind every song,” MacBain continues. “And also people who are coming to them. There are lots of new generations coming to them.”

Read on for the inside scoop behind some of Oasis’ iconic songs, from tracks inspired by disastrous nights out to ones featuring unexpected celebrity guests.

‘Live Forever’

Oasis officially formed in Manchester in 1991, when Noel Gallagher joined the band his brother Liam was in alongside friends Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Tony McCarroll.

Prior to Oasis, however, Noel was working in building construction, where a steel part from a gas pipe fell and broke his foot while on the job one day. After returning from sick leave, Noel took a less treacherous gig in the company’s storeroom, where he played guitar to pass the time.

“The first song he wrote in there was ‘Live Forever,’ though it wasn’t called that — or called anything — then, but he came up with the melody, the outline,” Kessler writes. Noel would pen several songs in the storeroom that would appear on Oasis’ 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe.

‘Roll with It’

The fights between the Gallagher brothers are as synonymous with Oasis as their music, but so was their longtime feud with the band Blur. Led by singer Damon Albarn (who would later form the virtual band Gorillaz), Blur was the other popular rock group dominating Britain in the ’90s. What began as a friendly rivalry between the groups soon turned into scathing digs in the media and blatant taunting on live TV.

But their beef came to a head in the summer of 1995, when both groups put out new singles. Oasis’ track, “Roll with It,” was set to be released in mid-August, with Blur’s song “Country House” to arrive a week later.

When Blur realized that Oasis had accelerated their release date, they rescheduled “Country House” to come out Aug. 14, the same day as “Roll with It.”

“History now tells us that Oasis went into this seemingly high-stakes battle that they’d provoked curiously under-armed,” Kessler writes of the incident, which the papers dubbed “The Battle of Britpop.”

Blur’s “Country House” did claim the U.K. chart’s top spot with 274,000 sales, but Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? broke records when it was released that October. The album sold 345,000 copies in its first week — and cemented itself as a pivotal part of British music history.

‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’

One of Oasis’ most beloved hits, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” has long sent stadiums around the world to their feet, screaming the anthem’s lyrics right back at the band. Noel told Esquire in 2015 that he first wrote the song in a Paris hotel room, after Oasis finished a gig at a nearby strip club.

The song’s instantly-recognizable chorus, however, is thanks to Liam. Kessler writes that Noel was strumming an early version of “Don’t Look Back” during a soundcheck, making up the words as he went along.

Liam misheard his brother singing the phrase “so Sally can wait,” and told him as much. Liam’s new lyrics “stopped Noel in his tracks” — and made it into the final version.

For years, fans have tried to figure out who “Sally” is, but the song’s writer has been elusive with her identity, if there even is one.

“It’s clearly about a woman of a certain age who is looking back on her life and thinking, ‘I am who I am, and that’s it,’” Noel said of the hit during an interview with BBC’s First and Last, per Far Out Magazine. “And she’s kind of raising a toast to it. When you get to our age, it’s all about acceptance anyway. Accepting who you are and what you’ve become and what you’ve been, and how you got there. And that’s how I see it.”

‘Wonderwall’

A beloved song for street buskers, tipsy bar patrons and casual Oasis listeners alike, the reach of “Wonderwall” can’t be understated. But the band’s seminal classic almost didn’t become the version that the world knows today.

According to Kessler, Noel was originally supposed to sing the track, but Liam wanted to do so instead. The elder Gallagher gave his brother a choice: he could either take lead on “Wonderwall” or “Don’t Look Back in Anger.”

“‘I was, like, ‘“I’m singing one of them, so you take your f——- pick,” Noel said in an interview, according to the book. “He chose “Wonderwall.’”

MacBain writes that despite the now-legendary status of the song, Oasis have expressed “mixed feelings” about “Wonderwall” and its many covers over the years.

“[Liam] came around to it, with time realizing what exalted company he was in, having sung a song that so many people all over the world know every word of,” MacBain writes.

‘Fade In-Out’

Oasis has rubbed shoulders with many celebrities throughout their career, but this song from the band’s 1997 album Be Here Now actually featured one.

MacBain writes that Noel was on vacation in 1996 with his then-partner Meg Mathews. The couple was staying at Mick Jagger’s house on the private island Mustique, where Noel was working on some tracks for Be Here Now during the trip. 

“We got to the bit in ‘Fade In-Out’ where the slide guitar solo is, and I was playing just a regular guitar solo. And it was rubbish. It was doing me head in,’” Noel recalled in the book.

Lucky for him, Johnny Depp and then-girlfriend Kate Moss were also on the island. An Oasis fan, Depp saw the band play in 1995, and convinced them to do a concert later that year at his L.A. nightclub, The Viper Room. Depp also lent his guitar-playing skills to an Oasis charity track, so it was only natural for Noel to host Depp for a drink and see if he could manage slide guitar too.

“He said, ‘Yeah,’ so I gave it to him and he played it,” Noel said. “We recorded the one bit that he’d done separately, brought it back to England and played it over the top of the final tune.”

In 2015, Depp formed his own music supergroup Hollywood Vampires with rock legends Joe Perry and Alice Cooper.

‘Songbird’

Though Noel was responsible for many of Oasis’ hits, Liam was also a prolific songwriter for the band, as seen with this track from their 2002 album Heathen Chemistry.

The younger Gallagher wrote “Songbird” for his then-partner Nicole Appleton in just three minutes, according to Kessler.

“I was in France. We were at this massive f—— mansion, doing our album,” Liam recalled in a 2006 Lock the Box interview. “I went out with a guitar one day, sat under the tree, had a bit of a biblical moment. And [“Songbird”] pops up and that was it.”

“Songbird” would be covered by many fans over the years, as well as one of today’s best-known groups: Coldplay. The band’s frontman, Chris Martin, even told NME in 2003 that the track was “the most beautiful song in the world.”

But Liam wasn’t a fan of Coldplay’s version, even telling Martin at one point, “don’t ever f—— sing that song.”

Martin didn’t dwell on Liam’s feedback, though. The two eventually collaborated in the wake of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, when Liam joined Coldplay for a performance of “Live Forever” during the One Love Manchester benefit concert that June.

‘Ain’t Got Nothin”

This guitar-heavy song from Oasis’ final studio album, 2008’s Dig Out Your Soul, is a hard-hitting jam — and the story behind it holds just as much angst.

“Oasis were on tour in [2002]. They were celebrating the end of the German leg of their tour,” Kessler recalls to PEOPLE. “They were in a very fancy hotel bar in Munich, and there was a fight involving Liam Gallagher, various members of the crew and all the security with some local businessmen. It was extremely violent.”

“Liam was running through the lobby and, as he said to me when I interviewed him about it, said, ‘I may have kicked a copper.’”

At some point during the scuffle Liam got knocked unconscious, and woke up in a jail cell without his two front teeth.

“He’s convinced, because he has no cut on his lip, that the police used pliers to remove his front two teeth,” Kessler says. “The police obviously said he slipped and fell and cracked his teeth open. But he wrote a song about it called ‘Ain’t Got Nothin.””

Liam also memorialized the incident beyond a new Oasis track.

“Two weeks after he was released from prison, and he’d had some dentistry work and new teeth, he played in Cardiff and [dedicated] ‘Live Forever’ to his former front two teeth,” Kessler says. “That’s my favorite story.”

A Sound So Very Loud: The Inside Story of Every Oasis Song Ever Recorded is now available, wherever books are sold.