Despite the chaos often associated with the Gallagher brothers, Oasis’ Australian reunion tour unfolded with a surprising calm.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone AU/NZ, Ball Park Music’s frontman Sam Cromack revealed that while they were stoked to land the support slot for the Oasis tour, their interactions with the brothers were minimal, because they were “in their own galaxy”, and understandably so.
“We didn’t get to formally meet them,” he explained. “They were very much sort of like in their own galaxy, you know, like you literally didn’t see them really anywhere. We didn’t see Liam once, only saw him when he was on the stage. Even when he would enter the building, things were very much kind of getting locked down.”
Despite hoping to say a “quick g’day” and thank them for the opportunity, Cromack said the band completely understood the distance. “We know what it’s like to be a headline band flung all around the place. I know for them personally, there wouldn’t have been too much excitement if someone’s like, ‘hey, you have to go and meet the support band’.”
The scale of the tour was massive, with over 320,000 fans attending across the five dates in Melbourne and Sydney — far beyond what Ball Park Music had experienced before. Despite this, they did have a couple of run-ins with the elder of the two brothers, Noel Gallagher.
“Some of us and our crew did once or twice pass Noel in the corridors. He was polite and said g’day, and we were sent some videos by people of him watching our set a couple of times.”
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Opening for Oasis lit a spark in Cromack, renewing some ambition that he said had plateaued a little bit. “It felt awesome to be up there doing a show of that scale. And I felt like our band and our music was reasonably well suited to that environment,” he said.
“And I’m not saying we’ll be in stadiums anytime soon, but just everything about their show, the size of it, the love of the fans and the production too with the screens and the sheer volume of everything in the stadium, I don’t know, it kind of did reawaken something. You’re like, ‘all right, I’ve got things I’d still love to do’. And suddenly I can see our band as being something that’s maybe bigger than little club shows or whatever.”
Ball Park Music’s experience has now been immortalised in the third edition of Live Nation’s Sound Check series, which goes behind the scenes to capture the preparation, nerves, and gratitude that accompanied the monumental shows.
Read the full interview here.
