After touring the globe for 41 shows with the reformed Oasis, Gem Archer is ready for a rest. Before the band announced its return in August 2024, fans had begged for it but weren’t holding their breath – and when the word came, people wondered if Liam and Noel Gallagher could keep it together.
Against all odds they did, and then some. Archer says he knew the Live ’25 tour was going to be biblical. “Those songs, played in that order, are just unbeatable,” he states. Now everyone wants to know what Oasis will do next.
“I still don’t know my ass from my elbow,” Archer says. “It’s time to decompress.” His sentiments echo the band’s official line: “There will now be a pause for a period of reflection.”
Denying knowledge of any future plans, the guitarist adds: “It’s not just something you can flick on. We’ve all said we won’t know what this was ‘till next year. It really was a bit of a whirlwind.
“I’d be up for more,” he continues. “But right now, it’s only a couple of weeks since we were doing a gig in Brazil. I’ve got stuff laid all over the floor that’s from the tour. It’s still kind of like, ‘What just happened here?’”
When you found out Oasis was back together, did you know you’d be a part of it straight away?
I got the call that the band was getting back together and I went, “Right – and who’s in it?” They said, “It’s the band, but with Bonehead.” Immediately I went, “Wow, this is gonna be different – but the same, really.”
I knew for months and months before everybody else, which is the weirdest thing to be sitting on when people are asking you the question. Then, on the morning it was announced I got a text from my daughter, saying, ”You lied to me!” and a text from my son, saying, “That’ll be you changing your number then!”
The dynamic with Bonehead is of particular interest, as you more or less replaced him when he left Oasis in 1999. What was it like getting to know him?
I’ve met him many times over the years and always thought he was a great guy. My wife used to be really close with him, so I just thought, “Alright, perfect!” And now I know him so much better – it’s almost like I know him like a brother.
What can you say about Bonehead as a guitarist?
Bonehead is the glue that makes everything else sound great. He’s overlooked as a rhythm guitarist
I joined in ’99, but with how things played out, I wasn’t replacing him; it was just taking a different turn. Obviously Oasis needed two guitars, but it certainly wasn’t like Noel said, “You’ve gotta play barre chords and that’s it.” It was completely open when I joined.
At the first rehearsal, when we didn’t even have a bass player, we were in a tiny room running through about six songs, and Noel said, “You know the bit in Cigarettes and Alcohol? Can you do that?” I was like, “Well, this opens everything up.”
We developed that side of Oasis. They’d just recorded Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and the first single was Go Let It Out. I ended up playing the lead lines on that live. And songs like Gas Panic! were just different; it had taken a different turn.
So it wasn’t replacing Bonehead because it was different. Now, playing with him, it’s like he’s the bedrock – he’s the glue that makes everything else sound great. He’s overlooked as a rhythm guitarist in a way ’cause he has this feel.
I don’t want to speak for him, but it’s like he’s playing acoustic with a really gainy electric sound. He just has his own way. Whereas some of us, if we put that guitar through those amps, you wouldn't play with the kind of freedom he does.
There was a lot of speculation about how Oasis with three guitarists would play out – but it really came together beautifully. You were able to capture the guitar layers as they were on the records.
Dare I say that everybody thought Champagne Supernova was the best it’s ever been?
It really did open up; it opened everything up. During our first get-together Noel said, “Have you ever been in a band with three guitars?” I’m like, ”Are you kidding?” He said, “We’ll let Bonehead do Bonehead, and we’ll fit around it.”
And you’re not trying to capture every nuance anyway. You don’t want to get in the way of the songs. Like on Cast No Shadow I’m playing slide guitar. In the past, there never would have been any space to do that.
You played some fabulous leads on Whatever, too.
We worked things out like that between us, where Bonehead might be grabbing an acoustic or an electric. And when we were doing Morning Glory I was doing this thing on the chorus, and Noel went, “Have you always done that?” I went, “No – but now that we’ve got three guitars, I can!”
It was just an overdub, and as we know, there’s a million overdubs; that’s Noel. He’s amazing at layering up guitars. It’s everything, and it’s cleaner than you’d think, though there’s some dirt in there, too.
Noel has a huge sound anyway; if you hear him in soundcheck his rig is colossal. But it works because of the way he plays; it’s not out of control. In my in-ears I have Bonehead on the left, Noel on the right and I’m up the middle.
And I’m a lot cleaner than you’d think. I’m not playing as much as you’d think. Bonehead is the bedrock, so I don’t need to add more. If we’re doing a song we’ve done forever, like Don’t Look Back in Anger, I’ll do the fills and Noel does the solos, and he’s also singing.
If we do Slide Away I can do the arpeggio intro, but Noel does the solo. With Stand By Me I’m just tickling around the vocal until the chorus comes in, and then it’s just flat-lining it. There’s a lot of dynamics.
Dare I say that everybody thought Champagne Supernova was the best it’s ever been? It had a whole dynamic and a real good feel to it. It all worked backward from Liam’s vocal – the way he was singing it, you can do that. It had an epic-ness to it but also a poignancy, so we let it be itself.
Back in the day, you played a lot of Firebirds, but your gear seems to have changed a bit this time around. For example, there’s an Epiphone Sheraton you got from Noel.
Just for the record, Noel never gave me that guitar – It’s still Noel’s guitar! Everybody thinks he gave it to me, and it is the guitar I used to play back in the day. When I joined High Flying Birds I said to Noel, “Have you still got that one?” He said, “Oh, yeah,” and I’ve played it at every gig since. It’s a ridiculously good guitar.
I knew as soon as I saw the first setlist. I was like, ‘Wow – and we haven’t even gotten to Supersonic yet!’
What else has changed in terms of tone-shaping compared to the old days?
It really wasn’t about my old Oasis rig because we used to be pretty flat out. When Noel used to play Wonderwall, he’d be on a pretty dirty Fender Telecaster. There was that side of it. Now I was like, “I need to go from completely clean to Armageddon and everything in between.” All of that comes down to what guitar to use; I’m lucky that I had some fucking great guitars for this.
How did you and Noel end up settling on Hiwatts for amps?
There were a few ideas for amps, and we decided on me and Noel both using the same Hiwatt. Compared to High Flying Birds, it’s a lot more in-your-face. The clean stuff had to be bell-like, almost like a DI sound but with warmth, like for Half the World Away, Talk Tonight and bits of The Masterplan.
It’s all gain stages from there; tons and tons of different gain stages. I didn’t use any modulation – it was all reverb, delay and tremolo on top of the gains. Except for the start of Morning Glory, which has one of those Boss poly-octave things. But everything else, there was maybe a clean boost or a dirty boost, working through the ballsy humbucker sounds that are bright and full.
For Some Might Say you just don’t dig in as much, and it cleans up. It feels alive in my hands. With Bring it on Down I lay into it, and it’s sitting between Noel’s ES-335 and Bonehead’s Epi. The Sheraton has a lot of definition that I need for picking out lead lines – like on Don’t Look Back in Anger, which was done with a Strat on the record anyway.
Was it really?
Yeah – I think it was a sunburst Strat. One of the first times I met Noel, I was round his house and he went, “Do you wanna come upstairs and see some guitars?” And he went, “This is what I played on Don’t Look Back in Anger.” I was like, “What?”
He plays Strats with High Flying Birds, but in Oasis that’s not his thing. He doesn’t need all the bells and whistles live – it’s a direct thing, and he’s not gonna go from his wall-of-sound Les Paul to suddenly playing a Strat. It’s not needed.
Before the tour kicked off, you probably had an idea that it was going to be massive.
There’s two answers here. None of us expected it to get this kind of reaction. It’s kind of unprecedented that the feeling between us and the crowd was the same in every city. Every gig was just this joyous celebration.
At one gig, just before Don’t Look Back in Anger, Noel said to the crowd, “Now you’re gonna feel what it’s like to be in the band,” or something like that. And that’s what it was – 80,000 people in the band at that moment. That didn’t really hit us until maybe three gigs in.
If stuff was happening, I think I might already know about it
But the other answer is that I knew as soon as I saw the first setlist. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Wow – and we haven’t even gotten to Supersonic yet!” It was just ridiculous from there. The boys had been sorting it out for ages. It got amended; we’d started with, I think, 27 songs, and it ended up being 23.
What was it like seeing Noel and Liam come together again as brothers and musical partners?
I hadn’t seen them together until the first day we all rehearsed. Just looking over and seeing them like five feet apart; it really felt like we’d never split up. But of course I’ve got a guitar in my hand, we’ve got stuff to get on with, so that was it. It wasn’t all lovey-dovey or, “What do you want for Christmas?” or any of that stuff! It was serious business we were getting down to.
As the tour progressed, everyone could see that Liam and Noel were genuinely having fun and enjoyed being together on stage.
Absolutely; they really did. They’d immediately start cracking each other up on the ramp while we were walking up. It’s almost like they were just in each other’s ears and faces. But when the curtain opens it all changes; it becomes the show. But they’re brothers – and that’s tangible.
By the end of the tour, it became obvious that the world wanted more. With that in mind, are there future plans for Oasis?
I don’t know anything about what’s coming up. It’s not my place to say. Anything could happen, which could include nothing. If stuff was happening, I think I might already know about it. But Noel has said, “No rest for the immensely talented” – so take that how you want!
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