Don't look back in anger - get an injunction instead! Oasis tapes auction by former sound engineer halted after band legal action

Photo by Nuno Alberto on Unsplash

Liam and Noel Gallagher, the brothers behind iconic 1990s pop group Oasis, and their management company, Oasis Partnership, have successfully applied for an injunction in the UK High Court to stop the auction of a massive archive of ‘behind the scenes’ including soundchecks, rehearsals, and conversations between the two, made by a former sounds engineer between 1994 and 2001.

Also listed in court documents as seeking the injunction were Sony Music and Big Brother Recordings (the Gallagher brothers’ record label).

The collection, listed in the auction catalogue as The Desk Tapes, consists of 209 DAT tapes, 73 analogue cassettes and three mini discs, and may also include the only recording of a concert by the band at Balloch Castle Country Park, Loch Lomond, in August 1996.

The tapes formed one lot in Worcestershire-based Littleton Auctions’ Icons and Artefacts sale scheduled for early October 2026, with a guide price of between £1.2m and £1.6m.

Ben Homer, managing director of Littleton Auctions, has told the media that “Littleton Auctions confirms that the Oasis recordings known as The Desk Tapes have been withdrawn from our 3 October auction in light of legal proceedings. We are very disappointed that we cannot offer this significant archive as planned.”

As reported by UK music news site, New Musical Express, “the master recordings were gathered by Oasis’s former sound engineer Huw Richards, who worked with the band from the release of their 1994 debut ‘Definitely Maybe’, up until 2001. He recorded the tapes directly from the sound desk.”

However, while anyone who bought the collection would own the physical objects, Oasis retains the intellectual property and copyright to the music and the performances. As a result, the acquirer would not be allowed to use the tapes commercially, unless the Gallagher brothers gave their permission.

Huw Richards’ son Owain, who is also a sound engineer, has told the UK media that he had previously been in discussions with the Gallaghers’ management over their buying the recordings, but those talks had ended in failure.