Drummer Dave Rowntree has joked that “nemeses aren’t really my style” as he confirms that the once-feuding members of Oasis and Blur now get on “quite well”.
The British musician, who rose to fame in the Nineties with his Blur bandmates Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Alex James, noted that journalists tend to avoid asking him about the Gallagher brothers until the end of interviews, seemingly out of fear that it might upset him.
“People imagine our musical nemesis is Oasis,” he said during a Q&A for The Guardian.
“They were briefly, for a few months in the Nineties, but actually we’ve all got on quite well since then. I get asked an Oasis question in most interviews but journalists usually leave it until [the] last question, in case I storm off in disgust.”
Rowntree, 61, said this always made him laugh: “As if 30 years later I’m still seething! But no, nemeses aren’t really my style. To have an effective nemesis you really have to be an effective superhero, don’t you? That’s where I fall down.”
The release of Blur’s 1995 single “Country House” is widely agreed to have sparked what the media dubbed “The Battle of Britpop”.
In part due to increasing public antagonisms between the two groups, Blur released the track on the same day that Oasis dropped their new single, “Roll With It”.
Speculation over which band would triumph with the No 1 spot reached fever-pitch in the week ahead of the result. Blur ultimately outsold Oasis’s “Roll With It” by 274,000 copies to 216,000.
After both bands moved on, Albarn and Noel Gallagher in particular were viewed to be on more friendly terms, joining one another onstage and collaborating on the Gorillaz track “We Got the Power”.
In July this year, Albarn also admitted that Oasis “won the battle” between the tour bands in the wake of their 2025 reunion tour, as he compared Blur’s two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium in 2023 to Oasis’s seven.
“I think we can officially say that Oasis won the battle, the war, the campaign, everything,” he said, adding: “They are the winners. They take first place. In the fact of such overwhelming evidence, I am happy to accept and concede defeat. It’s their summer and god bless them.”
He concluded: “I hope everyone has a wonderful time but I’m going to be in a very, very different place.”
Oasis are currently out on the next leg of their reunion tour, which is taking place in the US following a run of sold-out stadium shows in the UK and Ireland.
The Gallagher brothers will then return for their sixth and seventh shows at Wembley Stadium in London – the final concerts of their UK run –before performing in Tokyo, Melbourne, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Santiago.
The final show of their 2025 reunion tour will be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the 72,000-capacity MorumBIS stadium.
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