How Foo Fighters Ended up in a One-Sided Beef With Oasis’ Noel Gallagher

Noel Gallagher’s strong opinions are hardly an industry secret. His headstrong personality helped spur Oasis’ breakup, it’s what made the band’s 2025 reunion announcement so surprising, and it also explains how the Foo Fighters ended up in one-sided beef with Gallagher, despite them being huge fans of the Britpop band.

If there was ever any doubt as to which Gallagher brother the Foo Fighters sided with before this awkwardly tense interaction, they certainly walked away as members of the Team Liam camp.

It All Started With an On-Stage Shoutout

The tension between the Foo Fighters and Noel Gallagher began after the former rock band headlined the Reading Festival in 2019. Drummer Taylor Hawkins had a picture of Noel and Liam Gallagher on his kick drum head. He would later explain it was part of a harmless tradition of putting random people on his drum head for fun. Since the band was performing in Reading, he thought the Gallagher brothers were appropriate.

During the set, Hawkins and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl switched places, with Grohl taking a seat on the drum throne. Hawkins began bantering about the Gallagher brothers “watching on” as Grohl played, which inevitably led to Grohl and Hawkins talking about how much they’d like to see an Oasis reunion.

“One of these days, we’ll get Oasis back,” Hawkins told the crowd. “One of these days. We’re trying! We’re trying. Let’s sign a petition, everyone here, okay?” Grohl added from behind the kit: “How many people want to see Oasis f***ing play a show?” As the crowd roared, Hawkins said, “It’ll happen.” It didn’t take long for the news to reach Noel Gallagher, and when it did, his reaction snowballed into a full-blown beef between him and the band.

The Beef Between the Foo Fighters and Noel Gallagher

Shortly after the Foo Fighters’ performance in Reading, Noel Gallagher was performing a concert when he asked the crowd if there were any Oasis fans in attendance. “Is anyone gonna sign that petition Dave Grohl wants to get together to get us back together?” Gallagher asked (via SPIN). “I’d like to start a petition to get the Foo Fighters to split up.”

In an interview with Radio X, Taylor Hawkins said Gallagher brought up the incident again the next time—this time, even more crassly. Hawkins admitted he thought the petition counteroffer was funny. But when Gallagher said, “If the drummer of Nirvana…wants Oasis to get back together, he can come up on this stage right now and suck my you-know-what,” that took things too far. Hawkins said the comments were unnecessarily mean, including Gallagher’s condescending way of referring to Grohl simply as the “drummer” to belittle his place in the band.

Hawkins called the former Oasis star’s new band “Noel Gallagher and the Low-Charting Turds” and added that he thought Gallagher was “really a jerk.” One year later, Gallagher was still commenting on the Foo Fighters, saying in a 2020 interview that he wished Grohl would “wind his f***ing neck in about Oasis.” He added that he saw Grohl at an LCD Soundsystem concert, but “I wouldn’t talk to him. I haven’t got that time for that f***ing mob anymore. I haven’t got f*** all to say to him.”

We think it’s safe to say Grohl would have been a bit happier to see Liam Gallagher than his older brother, anyway.

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