The Guardian view on Oasis and sibling rivalry: a variation on an ancient theme

News of the reunion of Liam and Noel Gallagher next year for their first Oasis gigs since the band’s dramatic breakup 16 years ago has brightened up the dog days of summer for more than just diehard fans. Not everyone loves Oasis, but most people enjoy a sibling feud. The Gallagher brothers went about it with such unbridled fury that the pleasure of seeing them back together on stage will doubtless be enhanced by studying their body language for clues as to how long the reconciliation will last.
Though the music world has supplied more than its share of fraternal fallouts over the decades – from the Everly Brothers to the Kinks’ Ray and Dave Davies and the three Gibbs of the Bee Gees – it is not uniquely blessed. Football had Jack and Bobby Charlton, politics has the Miliband brothers. Consanguinity and ambition are a flammable combination. Add fame to the mix and it burns even more intensely.
Nor is it just about brothers. The enmity between the Hollywood sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine was spotlit again in 2018 when, at the age of 101, De Havilland fought a lawsuit over a TV documentary that alleged she referred to her sister as a “bitch”. Her dispute was not with the sentiment but with the language attributed to her. From Gone with the Wind onwards, her brand advantage was always to be the demure one of the duo.
A career-long resentment also smouldered between two of the 20th-century’s literary dames, AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble, about which Drabble, the younger of the two, has taken a philosophical view in later life, saying: “I think it is so normal for an elder sister to resent the younger one. It’s just unfortunate that we were interested in the same things.”
It did not help that Byatt chose to centre her second novel, The Game, on rivalrous sisters. She later apologised. But she could justifiably argue that she was merely tapping into a theme that has fascinated readers for as long as there has been literature to read.
From Cain and Abel to Martha and Mary and the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Bible is full of stories that not only show sibling competition in action but demonstrate very good reasons for its existence, in stories of perceived injustice that have become part of the psychological landscape. Saint Augustine could be credited as one of the early analysts of this condition when he wrote of a baby he had observed: “He could not yet speak and, pale with jealousy and bitterness, glared at his brother sharing his mother’s milk. Who is unaware of this fact of experience?”
Given such cultural baggage, perhaps the surprising thing about Oasis is not that the Gallagher brothers are reuniting, but that they ever managed to create anything of value together in the first place. However, like the Everly Brothers or the Kinks before them, they did. Both have since moved on to solo careers.
Their reunion may be a cynical attempt to cash in on former glories. They are not promising to produce any new music. But fortysomethings and fiftysomethings attending next year’s performances will not worry about that, presented with the opportunity to sing along to anthems that defined the musical landscape of their youth. Whether the return of Oasis will sink or fly will depend on whether the brothers can live up to the precocious wisdom of their own lyric: “Don’t look back in anger … At least not today.”