Most cultural eras are misrepresented in pretty cliched ways. I never knew anyone who had a mullet or drove a Sinclair C5 in the ’80s. I don’t suppose the streets were rammed with hippies in the ’60s or punks in the ’70s. However, I was around in the ’90s and can confirm that a lot of the familiar tropes of that particular decade ring true: we really did seem to be pissed most of the time.
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I was a student between 1994 and 1997 so my perception is somewhat skewed, I guess. But in those particular years a great many young people really did wear anoraks and sunglasses indoors, swagger about flicking the Vs at all and sundry, talk almost exclusively about football and listen to Britpop. At least that’s how I remember it. It was the era of the ‘lad’, in which we resolved to live life out loud, with little concession to political correctness or any other form of seriousness. Boys and girls alike embraced a nihilistic design for life. It was a lot of fun for a while, but by the end of the decade it had run its course. It lacked the sort of depth required for a lasting movement. Being a lad was, ultimately, an unfulfilling load of old bollocks.
Last week I took a walk down memory lane by taking my family to watch Liam Gallagher perform the entirety of Definitely Maybe at the O2 in London. For my wife and I, it was quite romantic – these were the songs that soundtracked our early courtship. For my kids (aged 16 and 12) it was thrilling: the ’90s seems as strange and oddly cool to them as the ’60s did to my generation. Indeed, the gig was full of adolescents who had fallen for all that ’90s folklore and wanted a taste of the ‘mad for it’ scene.
- Noel Gallagher: Oasis wouldn’t be anything if Liam hadn’t asked me to join
- Britpop’s returning heroes remain a different class
There were also a huge number of middle-aged men who had lived it the first time round but, apparently, never recovered. With their shaggy Liam hairstyles thinning on top and their expanded waistlines bursting from beneath their parkas, they waddled in and out of the O2 toilets, shovelling cocaine up their worn-out nostrils as if it was a Saturday in 1994 (as opposed to a Tuesday, 30 years later). In the stands, they guzzled lager from plastic pots and shouted profanities at the stage. They splayed out their arms like football hooligans confronting police in foreign piazzas. They snarled and staggered while some of the younger wannabes looked upon them with a disheartening admiration. The kiddies’ eyes seemed to say: “Wow, you’re the wankers we’ve heard about in all those documentaries!”
If I sound like a grumpy judgmental bastard then, well, guilty as charged. While I had the same daft hairstyle and narcotic proclivities back in the day, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t quite as aggressive and yobbish as it seems to be now. Remember, Oasis (and all those other bands) were, ultimately, indie acts raised on a love of thrift shop clothes and the whimsy of Morrissey’s lyrics.
