Oasis Win Injunction to Halt £1.6m Auction of Unheard 1990s Recordings

An auction of previously unheard Oasis recordings, valued at between £1.2m and £1.6m, has been called off after the band took legal action to block the sale. The collection, known as "The Desk Tapes", was due to go under the hammer at Littleton Auctions in Evesham next month, but has now been withdrawn following an injunction filed by the Manchester group.

The sale had been announced earlier this month and was billed by the auction house as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" for fans and collectors. It included 63 live shows captured during the Britpop era, alongside soundcheck recordings and more than 100 hours of material featuring brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher. The auction was scheduled to take place on 3 October.

The recordings were amassed by Huw Richards, Oasis's sound engineer, who worked with the band from the release of their debut album Definitely, Maybe in 1994 through to 2001. His tenure covered the group's rise from Manchester hopefuls to one of the biggest rock acts in the world, a period that produced multi-million-selling albums and headline slots at festivals including Knebworth.

The tapes were put up for sale by Richards's son, Owain Richards. In a statement, he confirmed that the band had launched proceedings against both himself and his father in an effort to prevent the auction from going ahead. He said the family had agreed to postpone the sale so that the legal dispute could be resolved "either by litigation or otherwise in an orderly way".

Littleton Auctions' managing director, Ben Homer, said the lot had been pulled "in light of legal proceedings". He added that the auction house was "very disappointed that we cannot offer this significant archive as planned". Homer stressed that the remainder of the sale would proceed as normal and that the business respected the legal process, declining to comment further on the case while it remains live.

The decision marks a sharp reversal for an auction that had generated considerable excitement among Oasis fans. When the sale was first publicised, the auction house acknowledged that the band did not support it, but pressed ahead with marketing the collection as a rare window into the group's peak years. The recordings were said to capture the raw, unpolished side of life on the road, from warm-up sessions to full concert performances.

The dispute raises familiar questions about who owns the rights to live recordings made by crew members during a band's touring years. While the physical tapes may have belonged to the engineer who made them, the performances captured on them involve the band's compositions and likenesses, areas where artists have historically asserted strong legal claims. The injunction suggests Oasis's representatives believe the sale would infringe those rights.

The episode also highlights the growing commercial appetite for music memorabilia and archive material. In recent years, auctions of demo tapes, handwritten lyrics and stage-used instruments have fetched increasingly large sums, driven by a global collector base and a nostalgia market for 1990s guitar music. The valuation placed on The Desk Tapes, running into seven figures, reflects both the scarcity of the material and Oasis's enduring cultural standing.

Even with the headline lot removed, the October sale at Littleton Auctions will still feature a range of Oasis-related items. These include internal tour itineraries, original setlists, a band-played Epiphone guitar and an original Kangol Oasis tour Parka. Such objects typically attract dedicated collectors, though none carries the same significance, or the same legal complication, as the withdrawn tapes.

The Gallagher brothers' relationship has long been a subject of public fascination, and any unearthed material from the 1990s tends to generate intense interest. Recordings capturing the pair during their famously fractious peak years would hold obvious appeal for fans and historians of the era alike. Their commercial value rests not only on the music itself but on the documentary quality of the material, offering an intimate behind-the-scenes record of a band at its commercial height.

Oasis's legal intervention is consistent with the protective stance many major artists take towards unreleased recordings. Unauthorised releases can undermine carefully managed reissue campaigns, licensing deals and archival projects. By securing an injunction, the band has bought time to argue its case and, potentially, to negotiate a settlement with the Richards family outside court.

The BBC has approached Oasis's representatives for comment. The outcome of the dispute, whether resolved through negotiation or litigation, may set a useful precedent for how similar collections of artist-adjacent recordings are handled at auction in future. For now, the tapes remain unsold, and the auction house's October event will go ahead without its most anticipated and most contested lot.

The wider context is a music industry increasingly alert to the value locked in unreleased archives. Artists and estates have become more assertive about controlling what reaches the market, particularly where recordings were made without formal agreements. The Oasis case illustrates how quickly a celebrated auction can turn into a courtroom battle when those expectations collide with the ambitions of private sellers.