How my encounter with Oasis went in 1994 when it was far from certain that they were set for superstardom - David Behrens

It was in the spring of 1994 at the Warehouse nightclub in Leeds that I directed one of their early TV performances. They sang their first two singles and the opening track from their debut album. I showed them where to stand, where the cameras would be and how to engage with them. Of that I can be sure because that’s what television directors do. But I have no memory of what they said back to me.

So I cannot tell you if Liam laughed in my face or Noel gestured behind my back. I don’t think so because their performance was engaged and electrifying. Liam’s eyes hugged the lens as it danced in front of him, filling the screen with his head as he bent it forward into the microphone and almost swallowed it whole. The image would become synonymous with him.

It didn’t dawn on me until much later that I hadn’t got as much out of the experience as I could have. But that’s the nature of work; it’s so often about getting through the day, not seizing it. The TV folk who met Lennon 30 years earlier must have felt the same. It couldn’t have crossed their minds that their grandchildren would still know who he was.

And it was far from certain in 1994 that Oasis would become a phenomenon. They were one of two bands on our show that were being tipped for the Really Big Time and the dice could have rolled either way. The other was called Whiteout: famous for 15 minutes and then Tipp-Exed out of music history.

What I do remember is that our schedule that day included three or four bands that had to be rehearsed and recorded later in front of a live audience if we were to stay within Yorkshire TV’s budget. To give you an idea of how small that was, we paid less to get Oasis than it now costs for one ticket to their reunion gigs. So the day was spent scuttling between the stage and the outside broadcast trucks on Somers Street as roadies wheeled musicians in and out like crates off a lorry. There was no time for a conversation. And mobile phones didn’t have cameras so a selfie was out of the question.

The frenzy over the Gallaghers’ reunion throws up many cultural counterpoints with the 1990s. Britpop hit its peak as Tony Blair arrived in Downing Street and appropriated the term Cool Britannia to define his administration. No-one seemed to notice it was already a golden oldie: it had been the title of a track by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in 1967.

Blair’s play-on music was another Britpop anthem: Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream, a band I also directed, this time at the BBC. They’d have to rewrite the lyrics for the Keir Starmer age: Things Can Only Get Worse Before They Get Better But They Probably Won’t Anyway. Try dancing to that.

Starmer is Blair’s polar opposite. It’s to his credit that he doesn’t court popularity by jumping on every cultural bandwagon – but his policies are predicated on the sacrifices we must make, not the happiness we might enjoy. A middle ground would be nice.

The optimism of Britpop which Blair hoped would rub off on him is entirely missing today. It was manufactured but it was infectious all the same. Three decades from now, will we look back on our present era with the same fond nostalgia? Or will it seem as dark a period as the unrest of the early 1980s, when the forces of division outnumbered those of unity?

Perhaps we will see 2024 as a golden age of lighting up cigarettes in beer gardens before it was made illegal by a government that came to office promising to “tread more lightly” on our lives. On the other hand, we might come to celebrate this as the time smoking was finally consigned to history – like dressing up on Sundays or going shopping on the high street.

A few customs of 30 years ago have already disappeared. People no longer go to record shops to buy singles; they stream songs to order. Behrens junior, who is just as old as the internet, told me in all seriousness that kids today are more likely to think singles are cheese slices.

He does, however, enjoy telling his friends that his old man sort-of-knew Oasis. As ‘dad points’ go, it’s a topper, especially when there’s the footage on YouTube to prove it. So perhaps there will be a story for the grandchildren after all.