Oasis Halt £1.6 Million Auction of 1990s Live Tapes

Oasis have forced the withdrawal of a trove of unreleased 1990s recordings from a UK auction set for this weekend, after filing a legal motion to stop the sale.

Littleton Auctions in England had valued the lot at between £1.2 million and £1.6 million ($1.59 million to $2.12 million). According to the BBC, the collection contains 63 recorded live shows and more than 100 hours of the Gallaghers and their bandmates rehearsing during the Nineties.

The tapes came from Huw Richards, a sound engineer the band employed from the release of their 1994 debut album until 2001. Richards recorded the material himself; his son, Owain Richards, consigned it to the auction house.

"It is true that Oasis have sued me and my father to try to prevent the auction of the tapes made by my father many years ago," Owain Richards told the BBC. "We have agreed to postpone the auction [of the tapes] to enable the legal dispute to be resolved either by litigation or otherwise in an orderly way."

Representatives for Oasis did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone's request for comment.

Littleton Auctions confirmed the withdrawal and cited the ongoing litigation. "Littleton Auctions has always sought to conduct its sales professionally, transparently and responsibly," managing director Benjamin Homer told Rolling Stone. "Following legal proceedings relating to one lot, the Oasis tapes have been withdrawn from the auction. … As the matter remains the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further."

The tapes themselves now sit in legal limbo. Owain Richards had previously described to the BBC how carefully his father preserved the archive over 25 years. "Dad labelled everything, recorded everything and backed it all up to cassette, over and over," he said. "I grew up listening to these recordings. Oasis were part of the family as much as they were part of the culture."

The withdrawal does not stop the rest of the sale. Littleton will proceed this weekend with other Oasis items, including previously unpublished photographs of the band, studio material, set lists, a tour parka, and instruments the group once owned.

The legal fight lands at a delicate moment for the Gallaghers. Their reconciliation is already the subject of a new documentary, and the band is set to return to the road next year — a reunion the tapes, whatever they contain, will now not precede into public circulation. Whether the dispute ends in litigation or a settlement, the fate of more than 100 hours of unheard Nineties rehearsal material will be decided in court rather than on the auction block.