When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I only listened to the Beatles. At that time, I was using a walkman of Sony. One day, a female classmate came up to me. Passing me a CD, she said that I would like also Oasis if I liked the Beatles, I got home and played the CD. When "Live Forever" started, my world was completely changed.
Some months
later, I heard that Oasis would be coming to my town. I was living in Sapporo,
which is a rather big city, but a lot smaller than Tokyo or Osaka.
Foreigners
are not rare now. One sees mostly Chinese and Korean tourists, and also
Americans or Australians, but at that time foreigners were quite rare. And
foreign artists hardly ever came to my city.
Finally I got a ticket and went walked to the concert hall. It took only 15 minutes from my home. It was strange to think that an international superstar was near my home.
It was the
first time that I went to a concert. The sound was so loud that I was
surprised. Liam and Noel were far away, but I could see them.
Fortunately,
Liam didn't sulk. He stayed on the stage until the end. Noel said something in
English, but it was too difficult to understand for a 15 year old Japanese boy.
Furthermore, they speak with strong Manchester accent. I heard just the word
"snow,” so probably he said something about snow. Surely it snows a lot in
the north of Japan, and It was winter.
I still can remember that Noel sang "whatever" with a guitar. The trembling of the chords has been imprinted on my mind.
Some years later, Liam broke his brother’s guitar. The
title of the album that I borrowed from the girl was ''Stop the clocks.’’ It was their greatest hits album. The
truth is, nobody can stop the clocks. Oasis has broken up with my youth.
