There are many reasons put forward to try to explain why the Gallagher brothers have decided that Oasis will finally return to the stage next year: the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of one of their most emblematic albums, (What’s The Story) Morning Glorythe weak finances of a Noel Gallagher who has just faced a multi-million pound divorce or the predictions that each of the brothers will pocket around 60 million euros for regaining their status as rock stars are some of the most repeated. However, in recent days the British press has confirmed that their reconciliation has only been possible thanks to the efforts of the only person who still united the brothers after 15 years of fraternal hatred: their mother, Peggy Gallagher.
According to various British tabloids, the first shoots of their long-awaited reunion germinated more than a year ago, when Liam accompanied his mother to a day of spa at an exclusive hotel outside London to celebrate the matriarch’s 80th birthday. Apparently, Peggy confessed that the only gift she wanted to celebrate the anniversary was for her children to “stop this nonsense and start talking to each other again”, begging Liam to bury the hatchet and take the first step towards making the rapprochement with his older brother a reality. “We all have Peggy to thank because without her this would never have happened,” confirmed a source close to the family in The Sun. In addition, the health of the matriarch seems to have deteriorated in recent months to the point of giving up her second home in the Irish town of Charlestown. This small and idyllic town on the Atlantic coast has been Peggy’s holiday retreat for decades, but the fear of the three brothers – Noel and Liam have an older brother called Paul – that she might have some mishap while alone has pushed them to sell the property for an estimated value of 300,000 euros.
In addition to a handful of hits Despite the generational differences and the penchant for the most insolent and foul-mouthed honesty, the biggest rock stars only bow their heads before their mother, for whom they profess an undisguised admiration. “To me, she is rock,” said Noel. “Mum is an angel, the coolest woman who has ever walked this fucking planet. She is an absolute gem. Everything good in me I inherited from her,” adds Liam. Born in Ireland in 1943, into a very humble family of 11 siblings, Margaret Sweeney —her maiden name— had to abandon her studies to help with the family economy when she was just a child, working as a cook and cleaner in a seminary in exchange for a salary of one pound a week. At 18, she moved to Manchester and met Thomas Gallagher, whom she married nine months later and who was the father of her three children. Her happiness was short-lived: Thomas’ addiction to drink and gambling turned the family atmosphere into hell. Liam confirms this: “My father was away all the time, fighting, hitting my mother and Noel and Paul.” In the latter’s memoir, he recalls that the stress caused by his father’s fits of rage was such that both he and Noel ended up developing a severe stammer: “At playtime I was always alone because the other children laughed at me. Our stammering was so pronounced that our mother ended up taking us to a speech therapist once a week for four years.”
One night in 1982, when Liam was just seven, Peggy gathered her three children, packed their belongings into a van and left the family home for good. “I left him a knife, a fork and a spoon. And I think I left him too much,” she would later say of her escape from her abusive husband. She found accommodation for her family in a small council house in Burnage, a working-class neighbourhood south of Manchester. Although several of her brothers moved in close to her to help her survive – with a great love of music that ended up affecting Noel and Liam – Peggy “had no other option” than to juggle several jobs in order to be able to “clothe and feed” her children. She worked as a housekeeper, a childminder, a cook at a school and worked in a biscuit factory, reconciling “cuddles and slaps” to try to calm the jealousy between the two brothers that, according to herself, began very early. “Noel was a beautiful baby and when Liam came along he kind of stole the show. You could tell there was a bit of a confrontation between the two of them,” she confirmed in the documentary. Oasis: SupersonicShe paid for Noel’s first guitar lesson when he was 12. When Liam told her he wanted to be a singer – Noel dreamed of being a firefighter – she replied with British sarcasm: “Well, you better hurry up and become famous.”
In another documentary piece, the one dedicated exclusively to Liam —As It Was—, the ever discreet Peggy Gallagher opened up for the first time about what the global success of her children meant to her. “It was very difficult for me to deal with it at the beginning. It was all very big. It was difficult to go months without seeing them because they were on tour. I am very proud of them. I still have my box of tissues ready. Every time I see them on television I have to get out my box of tissues,” she said while once again asking her son to make peace with Noel so as not to have to regret it in the future. The scenes were filmed in the same small house that Peggy moved into to escape from her husband and which she has not wanted to leave for these forty years despite the fortune she has made from the success of Oasis. “We offered to buy him a house, but five of his sisters live in the same neighbourhood, 15 minutes walk from each other, so he wasn’t going to move. The only thing he asked for was that we change the garden gate, which squeaked every time he opened it. “We bought her a new door and a gold number 5 and she was very happy with that,” Noel said in a television interview.
Peggy has never taken sides in the bloody open war between the brothers and travels periodically to London to look after her six grandchildren. As early as the autumn of 2016, the brothers came very close to making peace to ease the suffering of the matriarch. In statements to The Sunday Times, Liam said that the woman’s wish was none other than that they get back in touch and sit together at the table during the Christmas holidays. “It’s a stupid confrontation and, since we already have children, it should get better. It would be nice if we were like brothers again. I guess it would be nice to make peace for mom’s sake. I miss going out with my brother. I love him, but at the same time he has treated me horribly,” he said about a wish that has taken eight years to become a reality. The last update regarding Peggy’s feelings after the long-awaited reconciliation was offered by Liam himself, as irreverent as usual, in response to a Twitter user: “She is devastated because she did not get a ticket.”
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