Outside a shuttered Sifters Records shop near Burnage station, a small but devoted band of Oasis pilgrims gathered on a grey bank holiday afternoon.
Some just wanted to take in a bit of Oasis history, or be around other fans to soak up the excitement around the band’s long-awaited reunion, while others had hoped to pick up an Oasis record.
The shop, immortalised with the lyrics “Mister Sifter sold me songs, when I was just 16” in the hit Shakermaker, is where the Gallagher brothers would buy records in their younger days.
Although Mr Sifter – otherwise known as Peter Howard, who has run the shop in Fogg Lane since 1977 – had not opened up as usual on the bank holiday, fans instead posed for photos next to a mural of Noel and Liam that appeared on the side of the shop earlier this summer.
Meanwhile, all talk was of Tuesday’s big announcement. With rumours of an Oasis reunion furiously swirling, the Gallagher brothers all but confirmed the news on Sunday night, when social media accounts for Liam, Noel, and the band shared a graphic with the date “27.08.24” and a time “8am”, in the style of the Oasis logo.
“It’s amazing news, isn’t it?” said Paddy Lambert, 37, who works in property. The band’s album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was the first record he and his friends bought, he said, and they had loved Oasis ever since.
“We’ve been waiting for this news for so many years,” he said, “and it’s finally happening”.
However, the buzz around the band is so huge that he said he was “massively worried” about getting tickets. “I’m hoping they play several dates, but it’s going to be tough,” he said.
“I’ll be absolutely devastated if [the announcement] is not a tour,” he added. “But what else would it be?”
Karen Taylor, 57, a senior debt adviser, has followed the band since she was 28 years old. She said: “It’s just so exciting, it may be the release of an album, but let’s hope it’s a concert.”
She said she was not at all worried about getting tickets: “We’ll try our best, and if we don’t get them, I’ll buy them secondhand, and if they cost, they cost and that’s that.”
Her husband, Duncan Taylor, 58, works for Citizens Advice. “We’re wishing, hoping,” he said. “It’s the closest we’ve been for a while.”
“They said the Stone Roses would never get back together, and the Eagles, and they did,” he added.
Taylor was at one of the last Oasis gigs in 2009, and hopes to be at the next one with his wife and children, but “is anywhere going to be big enough for them to play?” he asked.
Clare Dickens, 38, and her husband, Daniel Dickens, 45, from Ilkeston in Derbyshire, were in Manchester for a Blossoms gig at nearby Wythenshawe Park with their daughters, June, 12, and Maeve, nine.
“We heard the news, the rumours, last night and I thought I’d like to bring them [to Sifters], to show them the places that mean things to me,” Daniel said.
The couple play Oasis records at home and their daughters are now fans, and also excited about the prospect of a reunion.
“You’d be daft not to try [for tickets],” he added. How much is he prepared to spend to get the four of them in? “I wouldn’t like to say while my wife’s here,” he said.
Down the road at the Farmer’s Arms, owner Lawrence Hennigan, 67, remembers the brothers from their younger days. He would sometimes see them in the pub, but more often in the Palace nightclub in nearby Levenshulme, which he also ran.
Liam once called him “the fatman” on stage, he recalls, after he barred him from the Palace for “being cheeky”.
“He was bigger then,” his wife and co-owner, Kath Hennigan, 63, said, laughing.
“I think it’ll be very good,” Lawrence said. “It’s got you out of bed on a bank holiday, hasn’t it?”
However, the feeling was not universal. “If they were playing in the back yard, I’d draw the curtains,” said Peter Doherty, 77, sipping a pint of lager in a corner.
And on Burnage Lane, close to the semi-detached house where the Gallaghers grew up, one man walked off as he was asked his thoughts on an Oasis reunion, saying: “I couldn’t give a shit.”
