Oasis and Manchester City... it was all part of The Masterplan

November 1989: inside a Manchester warehouse, guitarist John Squire is busy pouring cans of paint over himself and the rest of his band, The Stone Roses. Suddenly, he stops. “We’ve been stitched up here,” he said.

Squire was right – and not just because the aforementioned warehouse had no shower. The Roses were Manchester United fans – as they looked around at each other and their surroundings, all they could see was a Jackson Pollock-inspired mess of sky blue and white paint covering them, Manchester City colours.

Later that month, the photograph in question was on the cover of music weekly the NME and became an iconic portrait of the band. It was also a victory for the man taking the pictures – legendary music photographer Kevin Cummins, a lifelong City fan. It wouldn’t be the last time he injected some City influences into his work.

“The smell? Hot dogs and piss”

Oasis didn’t just burst onto the scene in 1994 – they kicked the hinges off the door, barged their way through and marched straight to the front of it.

During those early years, Oasis and Manchester United were the most famous things to emerge from the north west. For Manchester City, the fact that Liam and Noel Gallagher were fans helped to keep them relevant.

On the back of the success of their first two albums, Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis were the world’s biggest band at their peak.

Just a week after their crowning homecoming gigs at Maine Road in April 1996, though, Manchester City were relegated from the Premier League. The slide didn’t stop there – two years later, they were in the third tier.

Three decades on, City are one of the most successful teams in world football, and Oasis might just reclaim their crown as the biggest live band on the planet, with their 2025 comeback tour. Their 41 gigs across the globe include seven at Wembley.

They’ve performed at the Home of Football on five previous occasions – twice in 2000, and three times in 2009, on their final UK tour before splitting. Noel has since described the second night in 2000 as the low point in Oasis history – Liam took to the stage drunk and angry, ranting throughout, altering lyrics and missing out parts of songs.

It was still marginally less eventful than Noel’s first trip to Wembley 14 years earlier. He and elder brother Paul regularly followed Manchester City home and away in the 1980s – in March 1986, they headed to London to see their side face Chelsea in the inaugural Full Members’ Cup final, bizarrely played just 24 hours after City had drawn 2-2 at Manchester United in the league.

The Full Members’ Cup was created to compensate for the ban on English clubs from European football, following the Heysel disaster. Back then, Chelsea fans had a reputation for hooliganism – on the way into the ground, there were numerous attacks on City fans.

By the time Noel and Paul made it inside, they were on the wrong side of the stadium in the Chelsea end – were it not for Noel’s quick thinking to drag his elder brother away from the trouble, he would have had his throat cut by someone who slashed at him with a knife. City lost 5-4 and wouldn’t return to Wembley again until May 1999, for their famous third-tier play-off final victory over Gillingham.

Even after the Premier League’s birth in 1992, and all of the glitz, glamour and razzmatazz that came with it, the violence that had infected the English game over the previous decades meant many musicians were reluctant to associate with football clubs. Back then, it was hard to find famous people who doubled as authentic football fans.

“My favourite teams are Arsenal, West Ham and Crystal Palace,” heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis revealed, when interviewed on the pitch at Carrow Road ahead of a Sky Sports game between Norwich and Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. His pre-match prediction? “I like Nottingham, because I like the manager, he’s kinda funny.” Hardly the phrase to endear you to match-going football fans.

Nevertheless, football and music were undoubtedly linked, and played an important role in many fans’ lives – especially in the north west with the late ’80s ‘Madchester’ scene. The Happy Mondays, James, The Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets, who had a certain Noel Gallagher as a roadie, all became integral parts of fan culture at the time.

As for football, it certainly played a key part in Noel’s early life growing up in the Longsight area of Manchester. For him, there was only one club to support.

“Coming from the great north west, football was everything,” said Noel, speaking in photographer Cummins’ new book The Masterplan. “My old man watched both City and United – and sometimes, oddly, even Liverpool. He took me to my first game: Man City vs Newcastle at Maine Road in 1974.

“Colin Bell was my absolute hero. He took his place with pride on my bedroom wall among the posters of Franny [Francis Lee], Buzzer [Mike Summerbee], Big Mal [Malcolm Allison] and, erm, The Bay City Rollers – all the greats. I loved the ritual of going down to Maine Road for a match.

“Walking to the ground from our house on Stockport Road in Longsight, being passed over the turnstiles by a complete stranger, then waiting for my old man to get through. I vividly recall the strong smells of hot dogs and piss. I still associate that pungent cocktail with football, even today.”

It could also be argued that Noel’s ability to write songs that touch people, thousands of whom sing them back at him night after night, was born on the Maine Road terraces – even if few have become City chants, with mixed results.

“City fans don’t sing many Oasis songs,” he said. “They’ve adapted a few, such as She’s Electric for Ederson – ‘He’s Brazilian, he only cost 30 million…’ And I remember a half-arsed Wonderwall adaptation back in ’95. I never really liked that one, but it’s a real honour when you see huge banners and flags with some Oasis reference on them. It’s the ultimate for me. To have the respect of the lads on the terraces, there’s no higher accolade.”

Liam: Mad fer it

When Alan McGee signed Oasis to Creation Records in 1993, the company asked fellow City fan Cummins to help develop an identity for the band. The photographer wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to get his beloved club some exposure at the same time. The Gallagher brothers weren’t shy about nailing their colours to the Manchester City mast, although the first planned photoshoot didn’t go to plan – thanks to a group of Chelsea fans. Yes, them again.

“I went to Amsterdam to do the first shoot with them in February 1994,” Cummins tells FFT. “It was supposed to be their first international gig and they were supporting The Verve. I’d flown over that morning and they were travelling overnight by boat.

“When I arrived, only Noel was there. I asked if the others were still out, and he said, ‘No, they’re all back home in England’. They’d had a fight with Chelsea fans on the ferry – not West Ham fans as has been erroneously reported – and had been locked up, then sent straight back when they arrived in the Netherlands. Noel had gone to bed early and missed it all.”

A week later, with the full band present in London, Cummins did his first Oasis photoshoot. Being a City fan was useful. “The record label thought that helped them to relax,” he explains.

“Some bands are quite abrasive when you first meet them, but Oasis were quite compliant, and we talked football. It was my idea to put Liam and Noel in Manchester City shirts.

“I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to get City in the NME.”

The club’s shirt sponsor at the time couldn’t have been any more fitting for a band fronted by two siblings – Japanese electrical company Brother. “That was an absolute gift,” continues Cummins. “We made that the strength of the shot. It was perfect really.”

He took the band onto a back street behind Sly Street Studios, where he’d daubed ‘Blues’ and ‘5-1’ onto some corrugated metal, in reference to City’s famous derby win over Manchester United in September 1989.

“I did that graffiti with various City references, ready for them to walk into,” he says. “The City shirts were mine as well – you can’t rely on the band to bring anything you ask them to. It all started off very pleasantly – they were posing and doing the shots. Then as soon as a football was introduced, Liam kicked it up in the air, Noel kicked it back, they had a bit of a scuffle and we all stood back, waiting for that to finish, before carrying on doing more pictures.

“Occasionally a fight would break out, but only in the way that you’d fight with your brother – not a full-on Green Street style fight. They probably won’t like me saying this, but they were quite sensitive lads, really.”

Johnny Hopkins was Oasis’ publicist at Creation Records, and explains that linking the band to Manchester City was an easy decision. “It was all part of presenting them as they were, that was always the aim,” he tells FFT. “The links between football and music are vital – both are teenage obsessions.

“Guigsy [Oasis bassist Paul McGuigan] was also a City fan and had trials as a teenager with Oldham, Stockport and Crewe. He was a phenomenal footballer, so to make that link between the band and football was a deliberate decision.

“I love those photographs that Kevin took – the Brother sponsorship added a whole other layer to them. They show the humour, respect and love there was between the brothers at that point. It was real.”

The photographs were supposed to be Oasis’ first ever NME cover, but the magazine’s editor was unsure abouta band on the rise being associated with a football club on the decline.

“He was a Southampton fan, and he decided against using them on the front cover, saying he didn’t want the NME to be associated with losers,” laments Cummins. “He thought we made them look a bit yobbish – he wanted them to look like The Beatles.”

The pictures did eventually end up on NME’s cover in 2010, after the band had split up. Yet even in 1994, the images became known by Oasis fans around the world. Back then, many had never heard of Manchester City.

“The Premier League wasn’t global then, so Oasis would go to America or Japan and nobody really knew what the shirt was,” says Cummins. “I used to get messages from people saying, ‘Are they a brotherhood, what does it mean?’ I’d tell them it was a Japanese electrics company, and they didn’t understand that at all.

“Even in Japan, it was very difficult to get Premier League shirts at that time. When Oasis first played there, though, the first four or five rows were all wearing Man City shirts, because they’d seen my pictures.”

In July 1994, Cummins photographed Oasis again in various locations around Manchester, including Piccadilly Gardens and the Arndale Centre, eventually ending up at Maine Road.

“We went there because I wanted some pictures of them in and around the stadium, to continue the link to the club,” he says. “The ground was being redeveloped at the time, so the gates were open. We just wandered in, sat in the North Stand and took pictures.

“When we first got to the stadium, Liam wasn’t there – when he turned up, he’d bought a pair of City shorts, put them on and wanted to go on the pitch. It was two weeks from the start of the season and I knew what groundsmen could be like with pitches, so I stopped him, but I took a few pictures with him in the City shorts.”

The nods to the football club during photoshoots didn’t end there, either.“I was going to do a shot in an alleyway near the London Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane,” adds Cummins. “It’s a narrow alleyway and works really well for band shots and portraits.

“But because we were at the Oxford Street end of Soho, I knew Flitcroft Street was nearby, so I said to the band we’d do it there instead. It wasa nod to City midfielder Garry Flitcroft – Liam and Noel loved the idea.”

Noel: board member?

When Oasis’ debut album Definitely Maybe was released in August 1994, it rocketed straight to number one in the UK album chart. The album cover was shot in guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs’ house in Didsbury, South Manchester, with the five members of the band dotted around the room.

By the fireplace is a photograph of Rodney Marsh in a Manchester City kit. On the windowsill is a picture of Manchester United great George Best. They were last-minute additions to the sleeve, picked up from the houses of Oasis roadie Phil Smith and sound engineer Mark Coyle. “Phil was a City fan and Coyley was a Red,” explains Brian Cannon of Microdot, who were commissioned to design all of the early Oasis artwork. “But as Phil said, George Best transcended football rivalry, he was a genius, so that’s why he was there.”

There was another link to Best, too. “Guigsy’s dad and George Best were friends from Northern Ireland, so growing up, Guigsy was playing football with Best, which is pretty amazing,” says publicist Hopkins. “Bonehead and Tony McCarroll [Oasis’ then drummer] were also Man United fans, so it made sense for Best to be on the cover for a number of reasons.”

The links between the band and City grew stronger, though. Oasis were asked to record the official Manchester City song for the 1995 season, entitled It’s Tough Being A Blue When You Come From Where I Do, but disputes over which record label it was to be released on meant that it never saw the light of day. Noel kept the tune and repurposed it for one of the band’s most popular B-sides, Acquiesce.

Though an official City song never materialised, match-going fans were seen as a target audience when a cover version of Slade’s Cum On Feel the Noize was pressed on CDs with a football design for promotional purposes, and sent to clubs up and down the country to play over the PA system.

“Targeting football fans made total sense, because Oasis made perfect terrace anthems and so did Slade,” says Hopkins. “It was logical to send that song to football clubs and get them to play it before games.”

Cannon agrees. “We were briefed that that was how it would be used, so I came up with the idea of the football motif on the CD,” he remembers.

“The ball design was the classic black-and-white hexagonal design and it was from one of my favourite football photographs, of Johan Cruyff skinning an Argentinian at the 1974 World Cup. I’ve still got that picture on the wall in my office.”

Rumours that links between Oasis and football would extend beyond the musical began to do the rounds – when former player Francis Lee became City’s major shareholder and chairman, there were murmurs that they might become involved financially.

“I remember going to a meeting with City,” adds Cannon. “Microdot are a graphic design company and didn’t just do album sleeves, so I went to the meeting expecting to discuss doing some work with the club. About halfway into it, I got the distinct impression that rather than giving me some work, they wanted me to try to broker a deal to get the brothers involved. At the time, City were rubbish and strapped for cash, so the club would have loved it.”

After picking up three Brit Awards in 1996, Noel told the media he was about to go onto the board at Manchester City – while a nice idea in principle, it was never a realistic proposition.

“He would have made an interesting board member,” says Hopkins. “He’s a good leader, speaks his mind and understands the fans’ perspective. It would have been a really good thing to have got him onto the board, but the reality is he wouldn’t have had the time.”

Steve Lomas’ warm-up act

Nicky Summerbee, the son of Noel’s childhood City hero Mike, arrived from Swindon for £1.3m in 1994 and was tipped off about the band early on.

“A good friend of mine was a roadie for The Stone Roses,” the former winger tells FFT. “He told me about this new band he said were going to be massive, and I should come and see them. Me and my team-mate Paul Lake went to see them, downstairs at The Hacienda.

“In Manchester at that time, City were s**te but the music was top. It was a small room and you couldn’t really hear them properly, it was just loud guitars and a bit of shouting. After the gig we went to say hello to the band – they were starting out and we were playing for City, so they were more starstruck by us than the other way round. They’d been pictured wearing City kits, so we knew they were proper fans.

“My dad’s era at City had been the last time the club had had success, and that was when they grew up, so they watched Franny Lee, Colin Bell and my dad – we chatted about that. Shortly after that gig, they went off to tour Japan. Paul and I received a postcard from them that just read, ‘To Nicky and Paul, flying the Blue flag, all the best, Liam and Noel’.

“Whenever I see Lakey now, we still talk about seeing them in that small room, what they went on to become, and what they did for Manchester and British music. I’ve got no idea where that postcard is though!”

The next time he would see the band, they were well on the path to global stardom – in April 1996 they played their first stadium gig at Maine Road. For the opening night on the Saturday, Summerbee was busy elsewhere, helping City win at Aston Villa in their penultimate game of the season, thanks to a Steve Lomas goal, to keep their hopes of avoiding relegation alive. On the Sunday, most of the City players went to watch Oasis.

“By the time the Maine Road gigs came around, all of the City players wanted to go and see them,” says Summerbee. “It was a tricky time because we were fighting relegation, but we got onto the pitch and all just pushed our way to the front.

“When Liam came out on stage, the whole crowd was transfixed – no one could take their eyes off him. He was wearing an Umbro training top like the ones we used to wear, and he just looked amazing. We were joining in with everyone bouncing up and down – the last thing we were thinking about was football.

“We were having a good time – we thought we were going to stay up as we’d won the day beforehand. We thought everything was perfect.”

The Umbro top that Liam wore that night has since become so iconic that the sportswear company re-issued it this year, ahead of Oasis’ reunion tour. Some claimed he’d found it in City’s dressing room, wearing it because he thought it belonged to a player. Not quite.

“We definitely sent them that gear,” insists Simon Jobson, then Umbro’s UK marketing manager, with a chuckle. “If it had been a training top, it would have had a City badge on it, but who cares?It was a phenomenal piece of product placement – I was at the gig, pissing myself laughing when I saw he was wearing what we’d sent him.”

The following week, Manchester City played Liverpool on the same pitch that had housed 80,000 bouncing Oasis fans. A win would have been enough to avoid the drop, but they drew 2-2. “Can we blame Oasis for being relegated? No, no, no,” says Summerbee. “The pitch was beautiful and we just didn’t turn up that season. When that final whistle went, it was the worst feeling in the world.”

“Our limo got stuck”

On the same day as Oasis’ second Maine Road gig, three miles to thewest, Manchester United hammered Nottingham Forest 5-0 at Old Trafford. Stuart Pearce was Forest captain – he and several of the team made the short trip across the city after the game.

“Scot Gemmill was the first one to mention Oasis to me,” Pearce tells FFT. “He saw them play in Derby in a really small club called The Wherehouse in November 1993 – he came in the next day and said, ‘I’ve just seen a band last night, really good, great attitude, two brothers, no one had heard of them.’

“For the Maine Road gig, as the football and music gods would have it, Forest were at Man United that day, so we got a minibus across town and saw them. Man City looked after us brilliantly when we got there. We watched the gig, then went to The Hacienda – we got back to Nottingham at about 6am. It was a fantastic day, and the concert was amazing – seeing them on their home ground was very special.”

After starring for England at Euro 96 that summer, Pearce had returned to club duty when Oasis played two more famous gigs, at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire. An astonishing 250,000 people witnessed them – including ‘Psycho’, with Forest making it back from a pre-season tour just in time.

“Scotty came to me and asked if I wanted to go to Knebworth to see them,” remembers Pearce. “He said,‘If you can get the tickets, I’ll get the transport’. I got in touch with Creation Records, sorted the tickets, then told Scotty to sort the travel.

“We flew back to Birmingham from a pre-season tour of Ireland – as we came out of the airport, half of the squad went left to get on the coach back to Nottingham, and the other half went the other way. There was a white stretch limo waiting for us, which was very out of character for what we were and what we stood for.

“Our manager, Frank Clark, had said to me, ‘Make sure you look after the players, as captain’. I told him not to worry and we’d have a sensible day. Then, as we drove past the coach, Mark Crossley was hanging out of the sun roof with two bottles of champagne in the air – Frank’s face was an absolute picture!

“It had been raining overnight, and as we pulled into Knebworth Park, the limo ran aground – we all had to get out and push this limo into the gig! It wasa great summer for football and music.”

Crediting Oasis with the re-linking of football to the zeitgeist is a little simplistic. New Order had a crossover number-one hit with World In Motion ahead of Italia 90, long before the Gallagher brothers were on the scene. By the middle of the decade, though, Oasis and British culture had become so entwined that everything they wore, said and did became famous – if they went to the football, everybody started going to football.

“Oasis were the most honest band since the Sex Pistols,” says Cannon. “They talked about football because they liked football, simple as that. It was real.”

Their relationship with Manchester City aided both parties. “City certainly benefited from Oasis during the ‘90s because they sold lots of football kits globally, and Oasis helped to make City more of a global brand,” says Hopkins. “That link between Oasis and football was made very early on. It was an important part of who they were.”

Back in 1994, positioning Oasis as football fans – and a band for football fans – was all part of the masterplan. It paid off. This year, when they stride out for their first gigs in 16 years, don’t be surprised to see a sizeable amount of retro Manchester City shirts in the crowd. Sky Blue will be everywhere. Definitely, not maybe.

For details on Johnny Hopkins' new 90s music podcast 'Breakfast at Marios' follow the Instagram account breakfast_at_marios_a_podcast_