When it comes to Oasis, there’s always been an element of anticipated controversy and discord.
This year’s triumphant reunion tour is just the latest example. There were the predictions and questions. Would it fall apart before a single note was played on stage? Would Liam and Noel get into a fight during a concert? Will they be able to finish the tour? Who really cares that much about an Oasis reunion, anyway?
In certain circles, these are mostly all reasonable questions based on the past history between Liam and Noel Gallagher. But then there’s the reality of it all. The brothers walked out to the stage each night, arm in arm like a couple of prizefighters. They delivered concerts that were similarly triumphant. The vibes between them and during the shows were surprisingly good. It was everything you’d want an Oasis reunion to be. The ending thought as all of this was happening was that Oasis had finally conquered America (and proved that they still had a strong grip on the rest of the world too).
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Oasis: Trying to Find a Way Out of Nowhere offers a glimpse, mostly in glorious black and white, of how the Gallagher brothers got to this point. Photographer Jill Furmanovsky’s steady hand is the one behind the camera lens, remarkably, for their entire journey, even now here in the present. She thankfully formed a bond and a trust that allows us as fans to walk with the band from the club days to the studios to the massive arenas, with plenty of moments on the streets of America, in the airports and otherwise wrapped in between.
“We loved Jill from the moment she rolled up at the Corn Exchange in 1994. I met her on a stairwell backstage. She kind of reminded me of a dinner lady — and that’s not an insult. It’s a compliment, because my mother was a dinner lady,” Noel Gallagher remembers, in his foreword for the book. “Then, during the gig, I’m kinda fucking rocking out and there in the pit is the dinner lady with a professional camera.”
“At the time she was working on a book of her photography called The Moment and I saw an early draft of it,” he continues.”The first photo in it was a picture of Paul McCartney outside his house taken by Jill as a schoolgirl. she was looking to end the book with a contemporary band that was on its way up. We were just blowing up at that point, so we were perfect. After that initial shoot, she appeared at everything we did.”
Gallagher goes on to paint a number of pictures of Furmanovsky, but a line that stuck with me was his description of her as “a quiet person, working in a very loud world.” If you take that out of the context of the traditional concert setting, it’s an identifiable sentiment in a lot of respects. Indeed, it can be applied to the many different layers of what Jill has experienced during her long journey with Oasis.
Wherever you may have checked in on that journey, as you will see from the photos below, this book will take you further down the rabbit hole and it’s perhaps a wise idea to have the albums ready as a soundtrack.
Oasis: Trying to Find a Way Out of Nowhere
Jill Furmanovsky’s book chronicles the band’s unique story, presented visually from 1994 through 2025.
Gallery Credit: Matt Wardlaw
