On July 5, 2025, while we ungrateful colonials were cleaning up from setting off massive amounts of fireworks the night before, across the pond, a couple of concerts were taking place. To be accurate, a couple of seismic shifts occurred in the popular culture continuum. In Birmingham, the original members of Black Sabbath appeared on stage together for the final time. At the same time, some 88 miles to the southwest in Cardiff, Wales, the seemingly ever-battling Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, played their first concert together as Oasis in 16 years.
Respect for elder innovators first; thus, we start with Black Sabbath. If Led Zeppelin's mix of heavy blues and English folk laced with Roman orgy-like levels of sex annoyed parents during the 1970s, and Alice Cooper’s mix of surprisingly melodic hard rock and B-movie horror/carnival sideshow left them unsettled, Black Sabbath positively scared them to death. The Birmingham quartet was haunted church bells with sledgehammer clappers, a deliberately ponderous funeral march not averse to unexpectedly break out into a rapid St. Vitus dance at any moment. It was the blues taken to its darkest extreme. Black Sabbath may not have single-handedly invented heavy metal, but they forever embodied and codified it, leaving every band that followed playing catch-up. The band’s 1976 album title notwithstanding, it didn’t sell its soul for rock ‘n’ roll. Black Sabbath snatched the devil’s soul at the crossroads and said you can have it back when we’re good and ready to return the thing.
Underneath the sinister exterior, Black Sabbath was a 1970s rock band in all the genre’s sex and drugs-fueled, um, glory. Especially the drugs, which eventually led to singer Ozzy Osbourne’s 1979 dismissal, followed by a lengthy stretch of fluctuating in and out of relevance, along with seemingly countless personnel changes, during which guitarist Tony Iommi remained the sole constant. Eventually, the band grew into the status of revered senior statesmen of a genre that refuses to die, and heeding mortality’s inexorable call, has offered a final curtain call.
The mood at the concert was as much melancholy as celebratory. After spirited performances by bands both relatively newcomers, such as Gojira, and seasoned veterans such as Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne ascended to the stage on a throne befitting rock’s Prince of Darkness. Sadly, the prop was far more necessary than an accessory. The frail Osbourne, weakened by Parkinson’s disease, can no longer walk; thus, he remained seated throughout his solo performance and then with his now very old bandmates, his voice wandering in and out of tune as he struggled to get through the sets. The spirit was willing, and Osbourne gave it everything he had. The flesh said we’ve had our fun, but it’s time to go home.
Meanwhile, in Wales, the faithful gathered to see something hitherto thought impossible, that being Noel and Liam Gallagher of 1990s Britpop phenom Oasis appearing in the same place at the same time without wailing on each other, let alone once more making music together. While Oasis enjoyed a decent amount of popularity in the United States, with three Top Ten albums and one Top Ten hit (“Wonderwall”) to its credit, during its heyday starting in the mid 1990s and running through the 2000s the band was insanely popular worldwide, especially in England where each of its studio albums topped the charts and the band racked up 22 consecutive Top Ten hits. Oasis’ sophomore album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” has to date sold over 22 million copies across the globe and is the third-biggest selling studio album of all time in England.
Oasis didn’t invent anything. Listening to the band, it quickly becomes apparent that the Gallagher brothers studiously listened to their parents’ Beatles records, seizing upon Paul McCartney's melodic gift and adding to it John Lennon’s edge via incorporating equal amounts of 1980s electric guitar chime and 1970s punkish crunch. The result was a band that quite nicely checked off all the boxes, one that, despite the overshadowing and often overriding nature of the internecine warfare between the Gallaghers, created a body of work that holds up well. Quality songwriting will do that for you.
The Oasis fanbase, now firmly ensconced in middle age, greeted the band with an enthusiasm level that made the screaming hordes of young girls at a Taylor Swift concert seem utterly tepid. This was their moment not only to pretend to be young again, but also to believe that they could successfully navigate life’s seemingly insurmountable hurdles. If it were possible to reunite Noel and Liam, who have a thoroughly chronicled über-fractious relationship, back on stage together, then nothing is impossible to accomplish.
Through ticket and streaming sales, the Black Sabbath and company show raised a reported $190M for different health organizations. The Gallagher brothers doubtless pocketed a tidy sum for their performance in Cardiff, hopefully setting aside at least some of it for familial relationship counseling sessions so they can complete the tour, scheduled to run through November 2025, without any punch-ups.
And so it is farewell to Black Sabbath, the heavy metal masters, even as the faithful welcome back Oasis, the band that, in between bickering, repopularized the idea of rock songs with melody as their linchpin. Neither band is for everyone. No artistic creation reaches that height. But for those who do enjoy, it was good to see them again.
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