Former England left-back Stuart Pearce was famous for his love of punk rock during his playing career.
This love for guitars, shouting and general chaos played perfectly with his nickname of ‘Psycho’ and while Oasis don’t quite fall neatly into the genre of punk rock, it would appear that the ex-Nottingham Forest man soon took a shine to the Gallagher brothers and their band.
So when Forest were playing away to Manchester United – who beat them 5-0 – on the same day as Oasis’ second Maine Road gig during their legendary April 1996 two-nighter, Pearce and his team-mates couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them in action.
Pearce on Forest’s wild Oasis trips
“Scot Gemmill was the first one to mention Oasis to me,” Pearce tells FourFourTwo. “He saw them play in Derby in a really small club called The Wherehouse in November 1993 – he came in the next day and said, ‘I’ve just seen a band last night, really good, great attitude, two brothers, no one had heard of them.’
“For the Maine Road gig, as the football and music gods would have it, Forest were at Man United that day, so we got a minibus across town and saw them. Man City looked after us brilliantly when we got there. We watched the gig, then went to The Hacienda – we got back to Nottingham at about 6am. It was a fantastic day, and the concert was amazing – seeing them on their home ground was very special.”
Oasis’ iconic Knebworth Park gigs took place in August 1996, shortly after Pearce – who FourFourTwo ranked at no14 in a list of England’s best defenders – starred for the Three Lions at Euro 96. The defender was back to club duty by the time the gigs, which were attended by 250,000 people, rolled around, but the Forest squad were able to make it back from a pre-season tour just in time.
“Scotty came to me and asked if I wanted to go to Knebworth to see them,” Pearce recalls. “He said, ‘If you can get the tickets, I’ll get the transport’. I got in touch with Creation Records, sorted the tickets, then told Scotty to sort the travel.
“We flew back to Birmingham from a pre-season tour of Ireland – as we came out of the airport, half of the squad went left to get on the coach back to Nottingham, and the other half went the other way.
“There was a white stretch limo waiting for us, which was very out of character for what we were and what we stood for.
“Our manager, Frank Clark, had said to me, ‘Make sure you look after the players, as captain’. I told him not to worry and we’d have a sensible day. Then, as we drove past the coach, Mark Crossley was hanging out of the sun roof with two bottles of champagne in the air – Frank’s face was an absolute picture!
“It had been raining overnight, and as we pulled into Knebworth Park, the limo ran aground – we all had to get out and push this limo into the gig! It was a great summer for football and music.”
