Oasis Sues to Block Auction of Unheard Recordings Held by Former Sound Engineer
Oasis has filed a lawsuit against its longtime former sound engineer to block his looming auction of a trove of unheard recordings valued at more than $2 million.
The planned sale, announced earlier this month, centered on recordings held by engineer Huw Richards that include dozens of live shows, soundchecks and rehearsals from the 1990s — and reportedly feature “unfiltered dialogue” between brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher.
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On Tuesday (Sept. 29), Oasis, the Gallaghers and Sony Music Entertainment U.K. filed a legal action against Richards in London’s High Court, according to legal records obtained by Billboard. The case also names the auction house, Littleton Auctions, as well as Richards’ son Owain.
Details of the lawsuit are not yet publicly available, but it already appears to have had its intended effect: The auction house confirmed to the BBC on Wednesday (Sept. 30) that the Oasis recordings had been pulled from the planned auction, set for October 3. “We are very disappointed that we cannot offer this significant archive as planned,” Littleton told the outlet.
The dispute comes amid a surge in interest in Oasis, an iconic British rock act that reunited in 2024 after years of strife between the Gallaghers. The Britpop band went on a massively-lucrative concert tour last year, and a second tour of 42 shows is set to kick off in May. The brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year — and Liam has even teased that new music might be coming.
The recordings held by Richards, who worked with Oasis from the release of their 1994 debut album until 2001, contain more than 100 hours of Oasis material. They include potentially the only recording of a 1996 concert near Loch Lomond in Scotland, as well as informal conversations between the famously-feuding Gallagher brothers. When Littleton first announced the auction earlier this month, it set a guide price for the archive, known as the Desk Tapes, of between £1.2m and £1.6m.
But Oasis quickly voiced opposition. As reported by the Guardian, the auction house confirmed that the band had “expressed concerns” about the planned sale of the tapes. Richards’ son told the outlet that he’d been in discussions with the band about the archive, but that such negotiations had “fizzled away.”
