Who is original Oasis drummer? Pre-sale ballot sparks frenzy of interest around bandmate

As Oasis announced their long-awaited reunion tour, many people have been looking up Tony McCarroll, the band’s original drummer, but not for reasons one would expect.

Oasis, easily one of the defining rock bands of the ‘90s, split in 2009 after a fiery row in Paris and have not played together since.

On Tuesday, the band announced a run of 14 shows in the UK and Ireland next summer.

“The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised,” the band said.

To register for the presale ballot for tickets, fans need to answer a few simple questions to confirm they’re not bots – one of the questions being who the band’s original drummer was.

McCarroll’s time with the band began in the late 1980’s, when it was called The Rain and Noel Gallagher wasn’t a part of the lineup.

After Gallagher joined and the band officially became Oasis, the Manchester-born McCarroll continued as their drummer, performing on their first two albums, 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s What’s The Story (Morning Glory?).

McCarroll didn’t quite get on with Gallagher, with the former claiming that Gallagher didn’t like anyone “disagreeing with him”. Gallagher has said he didn’t trust McCarroll’s skills as a drummer.

Oasis producer Owen Morris in an interview about recording Definitely Maybe said of McCarroll: “Tony was quiet and always polite to me, but seemed out of his depth…so I think Tony did well to survive as long as he did in Oasis.

“And I loved Tony’s drumming. It was simple, certainly, but his timing was immaculate and he hit the shit out of them. Tony’s simple patterns allowed the space for Bonehead’s strumming rhythm guitar playing to really work.

“On record, Noel mostly played the bass, but on what Guigs did play – particularly live – he was solid and right. I loved the sound of Oasis with Tony drumming. There was magic in the dumbness of the rhythm tracks. The band never sounded the same after Tony left.” Morris was referring to Paul McGuigan, the bassist from the original lineup.

In Supersonic, a 2016 documentary on the band, soundman Mark Coyle talked about how McCarroll had a hard time on the Definitely Maybe tour as tensions between the drummer and Gallagher continued to boil over.

“You’d have to feel for the boy. I’ll put my hand up with the rest of the band and say I gave him a terrible time as well,” he said.

In 1995, McCarroll was asked to leave and was replaced by Alan White, who continued with the band till 2004.

“I like Tony as a geezer, but he wouldn’t have been able to drum the new songs,” Gallagher told the Associated Press after McCarroll was fired.

After he was fired, McCarroll filed a lawsuit against Oasis, alleging that he was “unlawfully expelled from the partnership” and was therefore owed royalties of £18 m, as part of his five-album deal with Creation.

He hired solicitor Jens Hills, famous for securing former Beatles drummer Pete Best £2,000,000 for back payments.

Finally McCarroll accepted an out-of-court settlement of £600,000 in March 1999 as well as giving up all claims for future royalties.

“I don’t have a bad thing to say about Noel Gallagher. He’s an a******* though,” McCarroll said in an interview to The Guardian in 1999, while discussing the lawsuit and his departure from the band.

“We were in it together. I worked my bollocks off to set up the group. I was a member of a super-group one day and unemployed the next. I was trying to work out how.”

Liam Gallagher, the brother of Noel Gallagher, told a fan on X in 2018 that he tried to bring together the original Oasis lineup but failed.

“I did ask them and they weren’t up for it,” Liam wrote on X.

After he left the band, McCarroll kept a relatively low profile, writing his 2010 autobiography, The Truth: My Life as Oasis’s Drummer.

In 2021, he was admitted to hospital after suffering a heart attack, but posted on X with an update.

“I’m not quite out of the woods as yet but just want to give a massive big up to our NHS. We are more than fortunate to have such a service! Thank you!!” he wrote.

The band will be playing in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin will be Oasis’s “only shows in Europe next year”, it’s been confirmed. Find details on how to get tickets here.

Formed in Manchester in 1991, Oasis quickly rose to become one of the biggest-selling bands of the era. All seven studio albums topped the charts, with that success translating to ticket sales – most famously when 125,000 fans turned up for each of their two Knebworth shows in 1996. They headlined Glastonbury twice, first in 1995, then again in 2004. They won six Brit Awards and two Ivor Novellos.