'Liam Gallagher came to our house party!'

Oasis played their first UK tour in 1994

Noel and Liam Gallagher are set to play together next year as Oasis for the first time in 16 years.

Thirty years ago they played their first ever UK tour, but were those early gigs in the south of the country Supersonic? Or was it more a case of Whatever?

"The doorbell rang, and my memory is Liam Gallagher in his trademark little round glasses with a bottle of red wine at the front door."

A few hours earlier Abbie Eales had seen Oasis play an "amazing" gig at The Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth.

After the show, thanks to youthful "bravado", she and her friend secured autographs and invited the band to a house party at a friend's house.

However, due to their parents coming back from holiday early the "raucous party was eight or nine of us just sitting about in their front room playing on the console very quietly".

Liam Gallagher "talked a lot, holding court in the kitchen" at a spontaneous house party

Abbie says: "I think we all panicked a bit thinking ‘oh no he’s actually turned up and this isn’t even a party’."

The date is 2 May 1994 and Oasis' star is on the rise. The band's tour is to support their debut single Supersonic, and the excitement is growing with every gig.

"I used to practically live at the Wedgewood Rooms and I was thrilled when I saw Oasis were going to be there," Abbie explains.

"They’d just released Supersonic and it was a no-brainer to get tickets to go.

"They were so new and not only was there a lot of hype about them, they were a really good live band.

"There were those of us able to see them before they went on to massive stadiums - it was a really exciting gig to be at."

Oasis were "remarkably well behaved" while the parents of the house stayed upstairs

As for the house party, Liam, rhythm guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs, drummer Tony McCarroll, and a roadie, were "remarkably well behaved".

"They were all really nice," Abbie, now 47, remembers.

"Liam as you’d imagine talked a lot, holding court in the kitchen and telling everyone he was better than Noel at everything, including conkers. He was also telling us how he found his glasses in a skip."

Bonehead ended up playing on the Super Nintendo and the parents stayed upstairs, but the band did not overstay their welcome.

Abbie recalls: "When we all left we went: ‘Oh God Liam Gallagher came to our party.’

"We were all buzzing for the next week, really full of ourselves thinking we partied with rock stars."

The spontaneous gathering even got a mention in NME, though the write up inferred it was not exactly the party of the century.

"We all felt deep shame, thinking 'that was us'," Abbie says.

Abbie Eales (sat on the arm of the chair with Tony McCarroll and friends) regularly went to Portsmouth gigs

The earlier part of the tour saw Oasis co-headline with Scottish indie rock band Whiteout.

Sean Boon, now 48, caught both bands at The Joiners in Southampton in March for £3, but admits he was not there to see the Mancunian five-piece.

"Oasis were obviously knocking out hits, we just didn’t know they were hits at the time," he says of the gig. "We didn’t know what it was going to become."

He also remembers a "contretemps" between the brothers on-stage and "they disappeared from the venue".

Pat Muldowney has been the leaseholder of The Joiners for the last 26 years, but back then he was working security.

He confirms the Gallaghers "had a few words on-stage and it went out into the alleyway afterwards".

"They were shouting at each other and the bar manager went out and told them to shut up because they’d be annoying the neighbours."

Oasis played at The Joiners in Southampton in March 1994

The ill-feeling at the gig was exacerbated by the crowd being mainly Whiteout fans. At the end of the Oasis set some were still calling for the Scots to return to the stage, and Liam was annoyed with the hecklers.

But before the gig the frontman was in good spirits, and was overheard telling Noel that the band would be bigger than The Beatles.

This led to friendly jibes from the staff, but Pat remembers him as "one of the nicest fellas you’re ever likely to meet".

However, he says it was Whiteout who were "incredible" on the night while Oasis were "OK, nothing special".

Oasis were using the tour to promote their debut single Supersonic

There were others on that first tour who also felt it was more "maybe" than "definitely".

Nightshift music magazine editor Ronan Munro says their gig at Oxford Polytechnic "didn't particularly grab me; I thought they sounded a bit too much like T-Rex".

He adds: "Definitely Maybe is a good album, if a bit derivative. The other two bands on the bill that evening - Mint 400 and Bang Bang Machine, if I remember rightly - were far better."

The gig, part of an entertainments officer convention, also left another potential talent spotter nonplussed.

But when Sean, who was at The Joiners, caught the band two months later at the Wedgewood Rooms gig he noticed a definite change.

He says: "Southampton was the primer, then you had the rumour mill in the area – ‘have you seen this band?’

"Then later Portsmouth happened and it was like: These are guys to watch out for. They obviously took off."

Mark Maloney (on left and pictured with friend) says seeing Oasis play a small venue in Windsor changed his life

After his first Oasis experience, Mark Maloney, now 52, was a fan for life.

He was "living for the weekend, not in a job I really enjoyed" when he went to see Oasis at the Old Trout in Windsor five days after the Portsmouth gig.

He and a friend started the evening by bumping into Bonehead and chatting with him before buying the band's soon-to-be-iconic Union Jack T-shirts.

A 45-minute nine-song set followed on a "tiny little stage with no barrier" to 150 punters on what was a "wonderful, wonderful night".

"We were going to a lot of gigs at the time and there was just something about Oasis," Mark says.

"Liam just stood there and he was quite menacing. That’s the one thing I vividly remember. It was almost as if he’d picked on someone in the crowd and just stared at them."

He added: "The aura that they gave off made you just think ‘wow’. This is something strange.

"I bumped into Liam after the gig who was great and said thanks very much for coming along."

Mark went on to see Oasis many more times, and on one occasion was handed a flier after a gig, which led to him being in the audience for the Cigarettes & Alcohol video.

"They were just like guys you would see down the pub or at the football," he says.

"They dressed like you. You felt a connection with them.

"I look back on those times with a great deal of fondness, and above all I was lucky I was there."

In all, Oasis would play 34 venues during the Supersonic tour, only 11 of which still exist according to the Music Venue Trust, a sign of how much has changed since the heyday of Britpop.

By the time the tour ended in Glasgow on 12 June Oasis had already released their second single Shakermaker.

Live Forever, and their debut album - the fastest-selling in British music history - would follow soon after.

The rest is history... but with a reunion tour on the way fans can look to the future once more.