The fun, flares and frenzy on ‘Gallagher Hill’ when Oasis came home

On Friday, July 11, photographer Gabriel Purcell travelled with his friend to northern Manchester’s Heaton Park. It was the first night of Oasis’ run of five dates in the band’s home city as part of their reunion Oasis Live ​’25 world tour, but the pair didn’t have a ticket to get in. 

With demand for the concerts outstripping supply, and controversy over alleged ​“dynamic pricing” via ticketing website Ticketmaster, Purcell and his friend were among many who missed out in the original sale, but thought they’d try their luck anyway. ​“Obviously being from Manchester, I grew up on Oasis so I wanted to go,” he says. ​“But the tickets were preposterous – my girlfriend paid like £600 for a ticket. We went to go and see if we could break in anywhere, but it was like Fort Knox.”

With the security running a tight ship, they began heading home feeling defeated, until Purcell spotted a crowd of people standing on a nearby mound. Overlooking the temporary stadium just above the treeline, hundreds of ticketless Oasis fans had gathered on what has now come to be known as ​‘Gallagher Hill’ to catch a glimpse of the band’s first show in Manchester for 16 years. Having brought his camera along with him, Purcell began taking pictures.

• Read next: Liam Gallagher at his unapologetic, audacious best

“It was all sorts of northerners, from Manchester [and the surrounding area] who couldn’t afford tickets, making the best out of the situation,” he explains. ​“I thought: ​‘I need to come back and document this.’ I didn’t even care about going to see Oasis anymore – I was more bothered about the people.”

Returning to the hill on two further occasions – Wednesday July 16 and Sunday July 20 – Purcell has now published a new zine, Unmistakably Northern, which lays out photographs he took from those three evenings. With fun plays on the Oasis logo, Liam Gallagher masks and fans setting off flares, it documents the fun-loving, party atmosphere among those who had gathered there.

“When my girlfriend came on a couple of days, she said that the energy on the hill was better than the energy at the actual show,” Purcell says. ​“It started raining, but everyone was having an amazing time, getting plastered off crates of Stella – they were my sort of people. I was also drunk on Stella, bouncing around with my arms around people singing, so it was like capturing my culture.”

• Read next: An ode to Curry Mile and its South Asian community

Gallagher Hill quickly became a cultural moment, with a location tag being added to Google Maps, and Liam Gallagher even dedicating a rendition of the seventh track from 1994 album Definitely Maybe to fans who had gathered there. ​“If you lot are listening on the hill… ​‘Bring It on Down,’” he said, before the band launched into the track’s distinctive rolling drum intro and swaggering chords.

Despite Manchester City Council building fences to block off the viewpoint after the second show at Heaton Park – citing the need to ​“protect the trees, livestock, and the safety of people in the park” – fans continued to gather on the hill regardless. The band even handed out 1,000 free ​‘Gallagher Hill’ t‑shirts to those who attended on the last night.

“The second time [I went], the police were dragging people off the gate,” Purcell says. ​“And after the Friday when it got really busy, they built a big barrier around the area where people could see the stage – but people just stood all around the barrier and filled the hill up. You were still able to hear it anywhere.”

• Read next: A gritty portrait of radicals and upstarts in 1980s Hulme

Ultimately, Unmistakably Northern celebrates the unifying cultural moment that Oasis’ tour has been in the UK, particularly in England’s north. As political, economic and social divisions widen in an age of inequality and algorithms, hundreds of thousands of fans coming together to sing along to ​‘Wonderwall’, ​‘Champagne Supernova’ and a host of other much-loved hits has served as a brief, joyous antidote. And while many of those on Gallagher Hill were from Manchester, Purcell met others who had travelled from as far as Grimsby and Wolverhampton.

“It’s brought people together nationwide – I’m more into dance music and hip hop, but I do like their music and obviously being from Manchester, I’ve grown up with Oasis,” says Purcell. ​“Obviously you hear them everywhere but walk around Manchester City Centre and you’ve got Gallagher quotes in shops and signs. They’re working class, normal people who are sort of like you – coming from a council estate and making it, you can put yourself in their shoes.”

Unmistakably Northern is available to purchase via Gabriel Purcell’s official website. Follow him on Instagram.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

Buy your copy of Huck 81 here.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Insta­gram and sign up to our newslet­ter for more from the cut­ting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Sup­port sto­ries like this by becom­ing a mem­ber of Club Huck.