I applied for Oasis tickets last week. They’re the biggest band in the world, often maligned for being more influenced than influential.
They’re also battered for their reliance on the Beatles’ 1960s sound, but their huge commercial success and cultural impact have secured their place in rock history. It’s believed millions applied for tickets, desperate to be charged three figures to listen to the classics in a stadium, experiencing something ‘biblical’ and making sure it’s recorded on their phones. They’ve got a huge fanbase of young people who didn’t even experience them during the Britpop era, who’ll turn up in their T-shirts and Insta-friendly outfits for plenty of videos and cash-sapping fun.
Yeah, I wanted to be a part of that. I missed the original Knebworth as I had tickets to see Green Day at the Aston Villa Leisure Centre the same night. Green Day cancelled the gig, and I stayed at home while my mates, who bought their tickets from a shop in Lincoln called Way Ahead Box Office, saw Oasis. I’ve seen them since, in 2000, but I did want to go next year. I haven’t seen Green Day since.
Therein lies the point of this little story at the start of my latest gig review. Britpop was great; being 17 in 1996 was living through the greatest summer England had ever had while in your prime. I was all floppy curtains and baggy T-shirts, but I wasn’t only drawn to Oasis and Blur. None of my group was stuck on just those Britpop bands. 1995 was a big year for punk, with Green Day, Rancid and Offspring dropping life-changing albums. Then, tucked away in it all, with roots far deeper than much of the surface indie labelled as Britpop, were the Levellers, predating and outliving Britpop. More than a moment in time, more than a band who (and I’ll quote Noel Gallagher here) ‘ play their fucking tunes and get off’. They mattered. They matter.
I used to argue with my mate Jason all the time about the Levellers. He was a big fan, and would sing Riverflow at me while I told him that Green Day were a million times better. We’d bicker and argue, tease each other all the time, and eventually, we switched sides. Around 2010, he told me how I’d been right, and Green Day were better. By then, I was sold on the idea of Levellers being one of the most influential British bands of all time, with their fingerprints all over the punk-folk genre. Ferocious Dog, Black Water County and Frank Turner have all been influenced by the Levellers, who, along with the Pogues, are cited as influences on the likes of Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly. No, Jason. The Levellers were better, and still are.
So, how is it possible that when my super special code for Oasis (not tickets, just a code so I could wait three hours for tickets only to still miss out) arrived while I was sitting outside my camper van with a beer, waiting to see Mark Chadwick, the driving force behind this behemoth of a band, play a village hall near Doncaster? Why is it that, rather than choose to sit for three hours during my allotted slot to buy (9 am until midday), I instead had a brew outside the van with One Way and Carry Me going round in my head? Because, while I missed out on the insanity that will be Oasis, I saw an artist more influential than them, close enough to touch, singing through an eclectic back catalogue.
I shouldn’t be disparaging a village hall near Doncaster. I’ve written plenty about Wroot Rocks, and while the venue is humble, the heart and soul is not. Mark, supported by fellow Leveller Dan Donnelly, played two gigs: a matinee (arranged due to the evening selling out almost instantly) and then the later set. Wroot seems like an unusual place for a vibrant music scene, a village stranded among fields on the Isle of Axholme, but for those wanting to feel connected to the music, who want to feel connected to the acts they see, it’s an oasis in a world of overly commercial fan milking.
Yes, that was on purpose.
We walked from our campsite to the gig, a mile or so, and even got offered a lift by a local who could see we were going to the venue, by virtue of the fact we were outside at 7:30 pm on a Saturday in Wroot. We declined, but I love that sense of community. We arrived just as Dan Donnelly was starting, and while I’d had a Mark Chadwick playlist on, I had nothing of Dan’s at all. He was the support (always support the support), but I didn’t know what to expect.
Fe thinks he was the best act of the two. Armed with a guitar and a loop pedal (whatever it’s called), he constructed his songs from the ground up, playing the beat by simply tapping on his guitar. Some of the tracks had a full band feel, while others had that stripped-back acoustic vibe that I retreat to at home these days. I really liked David Gray and I Don’t Care, both his originals, but also his cover of Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes. Donnelly is engaging, likeable, and most importantly, hugely talented. There is a wry wit to his music and exchanges with the crowd that really appeals to me.
Back in 2009-ish, I went to see Pete Doherty in Lincoln, just him and a guitar, and I remember then thinking how much talent it takes to hold an audience when that’s all you have, no band, nothing. Dan Donnelly does it by building his songs; Mark Chadwick does it by having songs that, for me, are as recognisable as anything the brothers Gallagher have put out.
This isn’t me slurring Oasis, but genuinely, songs like One Way, Riverflow and Beautiful Day are as big as Live Forever, Champagne Supernova and Wonderwall. They’re as iconic; they play as big a part in my musical DNA, but they’re band tracks. They have a fiddle, bass, and drums, so how would a 60-year-old who has made it through all the smoke and brew manage to carry that off? ‘That’s what I am worried about’, Fe said on the way there, but she need not have been concerned.
Of course, they don’t have quite the same musical punch from one man, but Levellers’ tracks are versatile. Some songs you couldn’t strip back and have them take on a new feel, but with a lot of Levellers stuff, you can. Their music is always motivated by something, and when a song means something, the delivery can be secondary, and to me, that sums up a lot of the stuff Mark played. He still has that distinct vocal, and at first, I likened this gig to seeing Shane MacGowan at Thetford Forest in 2014. It was the Pogues and Shane, but the oomph wasn’t there. I figured this might be the same: it’s Mark, they’re the Levellers’ songs, but surely they’re not going to work like they used to.
By the end of the gig, I’d forgotten this was one man and his guitar (well, three, not all played at once). I was belting out lyrics to Riverflow like I wish I had in ’96 when Jason was trying to convert me. One Way feels more poignant now, knowing that in truth, well over half of my life has been lived and living it your way really is the root of happiness. I wanted the pretend encore to last all night, because what I was seeing was a genuine, bona fide musical icon playing songs that have changed lives.
Unlike those who traipse out of Knebworth next year, I won’t say Mark Chadwick at Wroot was biblical, life-changing or a standalone moment in history. He’s done all that at Glastonbury, with 300,000 people thought to have watched in 1994. Instead, I saw an artist who has grown old disgracefully, around campfires and on festival stages, always with something to say, not just to sing. The eclectic crowd still appreciated every moment, most a little north of my age, but certainly still several young people, including one girl who had such intricate artwork on her face I couldn’t work out if it was a tattoo or drawn on.
I didn’t get my Oasis tickets, because I didn’t try. They’ve still got something to sell, and sell it they will, but Mark Chadwick doesn’t have that. His merch stand was a single T-shirt design, manned by a nice lad called Charlie. The Levellers always shunned the commercialism of the big festivals, turning down six figures to headline Reading after becoming disillusioned with everything, and even now, he’s not pushing anything on you. He’s not selling; he’s telling, the same as always, and I feel grateful I got to listen without a code, a three-hour queue, and parting with several hundred pounds of my hard-earned.
My only disappointment was not meeting Mark. Given that he turned 60 this year, he didn’t come out after the show. Charlie went to ask if he would mind coming to meet us and have a picture, but he was already drinking a Lemsip and resting his voice after back-to-back sets. I still live in hope of shaking his hand one day and just saying thank you, not just for the music, but for what he and his band have given British music.