Small image preview of an in-progress painting I felt like sharing.
Maybe I’ll do some old-style blogging here for a sec – in the full post since it isn’t art-related.
Oasis Live ’25 at the Rose Bowl in LA
I just arrived back home last night from being out of town for the past few days. We were lucky to score tickets to the Oasis Live ’25 concert last year (we were a group of six, which greatly helped with the raffle-style way the tickets were sold on Ticketmaster). Our tickets were for the concert in LA at the Rose Bowl this past Saturday, where the band performed two nights, including that one and Sunday (last night).
I had heard of Oasis growing up, but I didn’t become as into their music until after they had broken up. It was Liam’s solo career (post-Beady Eye) which oddly re-introduced the band’s catalogue to me – I really enjoyed Liam’s solo albums, which became a gateway into my listening to Oasis’s older catalogue. I mostly knew their more mainstream songs, before this – I remember listening to the “Definitely Maybe” and “What’s the Story, Morning Glory?” albums back then. But upon listening to them this second time around, thanks to Spotify, I gave their entire catalogue a listen, and many of my favorite songs of theirs are their lesser-listened ones (though I still do enjoy the appeal of many of the band’s main tracks).
Hashimoto’s Diagnosis
Anyway, one of the things which also made me interested in Oasis this second time around, but also why Liam’s solo career appealed to me, is because I learned that back when the band broke up (late 2000’s), he hadn’t known that he had an autoimmune health condition. He was undiagnosed with Hashimoto’s, which affects the vocal chords, and cause a “nasal” effect, which is one of the criticisms of his voice in the yeas leading up to the band’s breakup. This “nasal” effect on the vocal chords was also exacerbated by the lifestyle he was living at the time, involving copious amounts of alcohol and other substances – not entirely conducive to vocal chord health on their own, and their effects even more pronounced in the context of the Hashimoto’s condition.
Before his Hashimoto’s diagnosis, I think the generally sentiment was that Liam’s voice was going either to age, improper singing technique, or the aforementioned substances all damaging his vocal chords permanently. You usually don’t hear about aging singers’ voices, once they began deteriorating, improving as the years went by.
This was why, when I first heard Liam’s solo song “Wall of Glass” online, I became very intrigued – wasn’t this the Oasis singer who lost his voice years ago? I haven’t heard this song, but it sounds like Oasis – is it one of their older tracks I never heard of? Wait, it’s new? How is he singing like that?
Voice Recovery
This lead me down a rabbithole of looking into how he recovered his voice learning about his post-Oasis and post-Beady Eye Hashimoto’s diagnosis. Apparently, after Liam was diagnosed, he/his doctors were able to treat the symptoms for his health condition. Which involved forgoing that old rock-and-roll lifestyle of “cigarettes and alcohol” and replacing it with honey tea and more early nights. And his recovered voice is the result!
One thing to note is that, like most autoimmune disorders (to my knowledge), there is no “cure” for Hashimoto’s – you can only do your best to treat and manage the symptoms. Many autoimmune disorders are affected by poor lifestyles, such as excessive drinking or lack of sleep, for instance. To my knowledge, Hashimoto’s is also affected by this – so, when you consider Liam’s past lifestyle, he had to make some pretty drastic changes to his everyday lifestyle to start to manage and treat his Hashimoto’s diagnosis. And, from how his voice sounds now, that hard work he must be putting into maintaining his health seems to be paying off.
I found this story of Liam overcoming this sort of health adversity incredibly inspiring for a plethora of reasons. Oasis are notable as being one of the last rock and roll bands to have a wide presence before streaming took of and segmented us into our own little silos – they are one of the last surviving bands to have tapped into that particular type of image that I do not think is quite possible nowadays. At least, probably not for a rock band. (It’s why I am always amused that when you listen to “alternative” stations on the radio now, it seems they are filled with 90’s and newer rock songs which were not at all alternative at the time of their release).
Oasis also shot into the stratosphere very early on in Liam’s life – he has only known the lifestyle of being a “rock star.” He also has an image of having a rather large ego, which, when it is dependent solely on the skill of your voice, I would imagine the prospect of losing it to be sort of terrifying. His professional identity is largely based around the quality of his voice. There were many years where, when his voice seemed like it was going, Oasis, and Liam in particular, were mocked as this dying, done-for band and vocalist.
Oasis Live ’25
That is why their performance on Saturday was even better than I expected – I don’t know how, but Liam’s voice sounds even better now than it was during his live solo performances during the late 2010’s/early 2020’s. I never thought I would be able to hear Oasis live, since after they broke-up, the brothers animosity toward each other was well-documented and persisted for at least a decade or so. It was incredible seeing both him and Noe on stage, and not only amicable toward each other, but seeming to enjoy performing together – a far cry from the later years of Oasis in the lead-up to their break-up.
Anyway, I just find this whole journey of Liam losing his voice, discovering he has an autoimmune condition, and not letting this not only bring him down, but him actively treating it to re-emerge with a voice stronger than before – it’s very inspiring to me. How easy could it have been to despair upon finding he has this health condition, and fading away to never be heard of again? Especially with autoimmune conditions with no cure, they can put you in a debilitating mental state. I just love that he didn’t let it permanently bring him down, and not only is he able to maintain his health in his personal life, but he’s managing it to the extent that he can still perform, and at a higher level than he was more than a decade ago?
There is so much I admire about and am inspired by in seeing him able to performance at this level again.
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