There is considerably more than audio in the lot. The accompanying memorabilia reportedly includes:
- Tour itineraries and handwritten setlists
- An Epiphone guitar
- A Kangol tour parka
- Adidas trainers
- Recordings of rehearsals, soundchecks and live performances
- Unfiltered conversations between Liam and Noel
Those conversations appear to be the sensitive part. The brothers’ disagreements were rarely subtle in public, so recordings made when nobody was preparing an official statement may contain material they would prefer to keep private. A surprising preference, apparently.
The detailed auction catalogue is no longer publicly accessible, meaning prospective observers cannot inspect a complete inventory online. Littleton Auctions still lists the October 3 sale, however, and no withdrawal, injunction or lawsuit has been announced.
Why might a £1.6 million buyer be disappointed?
Buying the tapes would not automatically transfer the copyrights in the recordings or the performers’ rights attached to them. Complete Music Update reported that any commercial release would still require approval from Oasis.
In practical terms, a bidder could own the physical DAT tapes, cassettes and MiniDiscs while remaining unable to publish an album, documentary soundtrack or digital archive from their contents. The buyer would have possession, historical significance and a formidable storage responsibility. The profitable part would remain complicated.
Music lawyer Ben Gisbey told Complete Music Update that the sale leaves Oasis with an awkward choice. The band can attempt to buy the collection now, or risk dealing later with a collector or institution seeking substantial payment for access.
That distinction gives the archive value beyond what can immediately be sold to fans. Oasis may hold the rights needed to exploit the recordings, but it does not possess the objects. A future project could therefore require cooperation between the band and whoever wins the auction, which is an efficient way to turn old rehearsal tapes into a new negotiation.
What has the band said about the sale?
Owain Richards told The Times that Oasis does not want the recordings sold to an outside buyer.
“They don’t want these tapes to be sold through anyone else,” he said. “They want them back in their possession.”
Richards said earlier discussions with the band’s management had “fizzled away,” leaving the archive headed for auction instead.
Littleton Auctions managing director Ben Homer said the Oasis camp knew about the sale and had raised concerns. He described that response as understandable given the scale and importance of the collection, while maintaining that the auction house was following the proper legal process and verifying the archive’s provenance.
The objections do not appear to have stopped the sale. Reports from The Guardian, Sky News, NME and The Independent all corroborate the planned auction and its £1.2 million to £1.6 million estimate.
A cultural institution might see preservation value in the collection even without broad commercial rights. A private collector might value exclusivity. Either way, the price depends partly on access to material that cannot simply be uploaded or released because somebody won the bidding.
Why is the timing particularly uncomfortable?
The sale arrives soon after Liam and Noel repaired a relationship that had been publicly broken for 15 years. Oasis split in 2009 following a confrontation in Paris, and the brothers spent much of the next decade and a half trading insults rather than setlists.
They reunited for the Live ’25 tour in 2025, bringing their families together as well as the band. Their reconciliation forms the basis of the documentary Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, which follows rehearsals, the tour and the gradual thaw between the brothers.
Noel says in the film that his sons, Donovan and Sonny, had never met Liam’s sons, Lennon and Gene, before the reunion. “Lo and behold they’re best friends now,” he says. Screenwriter Steven Knight described the project as a film about “reconciliation, redemption, and forgiveness,” with cameras recording the family relationships as they developed.
The documentary received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, where Noel was seen wiping away a tear. Co-director Dylan Southern Lovelace said both brothers became emotional after watching the completed film.
More Oasis activity may follow. During an appearance on talkSPORT’s Drive, Noel responded to questions about touring in 2027 by pointing out that there would be no major football tournament that summer and adding, “We’ve gotta do something in the summer, right?”
The band is therefore carefully presenting its repaired relationship while an archive of unfiltered conversations from a less peaceful period moves toward the auction block. For any buyer, the tapes could be priceless history, an expensive bargaining chip or both. Listening may be the easy part. Doing anything with what is heard is where the lawyers enter the room.
