On May 6, 1995, Oasis had their first No. 1 hit in the U.K. charts with “Some Might Say”. This single received overwhelming critical acclaim, and the band’s trajectory took off like a shot. But while it was the start of something big for Oasis, it meant the end of the line for original drummer Tony McCarroll.

McCarroll co-founded Oasis originally as the Rain. He formed the group in 1990 with Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs, and original vocalist Chris Hutton. Shortly after they booted Hutton, Liam Gallagher joined. Liam brought Noel, and the rest was history. For a time, anyway.

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“Some Might Say” was one of the earliest songs written for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, with Noel recording a mellow, acoustic demo in 1994. The final version, released on April 24, 1995, was a rollicking rock tune that swept the nation. Pure, undiluted Oasis, like “Cigarettes & Alcohol” from Definitely Maybe, the year before.

Original Oasis Drummer Tony McCarroll Said He ‘Needed to Get Away From the Whole Thing’

This song’s popularity spelled disaster for McCarroll, however. In just 11 days, from release to No. 1 single, Oasis fired McCarroll as its drummer. Noel Gallagher explained it at the time, saying, “I like Tony as a geezer, but he wouldn’t have been able to drum the new songs.”

Producer Owen Morris seemed to feel similarly. “Tony was quiet and always polite to me, but seemed out of his depth … so I think Tony did well to survive as long as he did in Oasis,” he said in an interview posted to his website around 2015. He described McCarroll’s drumming as “extremely basic.” But he also felt McCarroll’s replacement, Alan White, “never actually hit his drums hard enough or actually understood the basic Oasis sound.”

Oasis went on to international success, broke up, made up, and reunited in 2025. But as Tony McCarroll recalled in 2019, it was hard for him to escape the onus of being Oasis’ original drummer.

Speaking with AP News, McCarroll reflected on his firing from Oasis, a band he co-founded in its earliest iteration. After his firing in 1995, he hit the bottle hard “for three whole years.” By 1999, he sued his former bandmates for £18 million ($24 million) on the grounds that he should still be owed the rest of his share from their five-album record deal.

“I couldn’t get myself out of a suitcase for the next few years,” McCarroll recalled in 2019. “The band were getting bigger, good on them, but I needed to get away from the whole thing. Really, I got drunk for three whole years.”

McCarroll and Oasis ultimately settled their legal dispute out of court

Then, there was the court case to contend with, which McCarroll felt wasn’t something he would usually do. “That just wasn’t me,” he said. “I was a young lad, I didn’t appreciate or care about law and litigation, and I was just gutted I had to go through that.”

In March 1999, McCarroll chose to settle out of court for £550,000 ($748,000). He also gave up all future royalties. But despite mending his friendship with Liam Gallagher in 2016, Oasis still followed him around like a shadow.

“You’re reminded every single f—ing day of Oasis,” he explained. “I’ll never get away from being the original Oasis drummer, and that’s something I’ve got to take on the chin.”

The post Despite Drumming Their First No. 1 Hit 31 Years Ago, This OG Britpop Drummer Was Fired After Bandmates Felt He Couldn’t Keep up With New Material appeared first on VICE.

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People cross a street near a billboard on the facade of a building depicting the Strait of Hormuz with a caption in Persian reading “Forever in Iran’s Hand,” at Vanak Square in Tehran on May 6, 2026. | AFP via Getty Images

Despite the US and Iran exchanging fire and new missile attacks aimed at the United Arab Emirates this week, the Trump administration maintains that the ceasefire that began in early April is still in effect. Iran’s attacks on commercial and US Navy ships are still “all below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point,” according to Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine. 

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At the same time, Iran’s chokehold on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains in effect, with experts predicting only weeks left before a catastrophic global energy crunch. And the US blockade on Iranian ports is already having a devastating impact on the war-battered country’s economy.

Is there a way out? The US began a naval operation, “Project Freedom,” over the weekend to escort stranded ships out of the strait, but President Donald Trump paused it on Tuesday, citing progress in diplomatic negotiations. On Wednesday, Axios’s Barak Ravid reported the US and Iran were close to a deal to end the standoff. Oil prices began plummeting, but then paused when Trump poured some cold water on the reporting, saying it was a “big assumption” that “Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to.”

In short, no one really knows how this stalemate will end, but a few plausible scenarios are taking shape. 

1) A nuclear deal

Ravid’s reporting, which appears to be heavily based on sources within the Trump administration, suggests the two sides are close to agreement on a “one-page memorandum,” that would include lifting both sides’ restrictions on shipping through Hormuz, Iran agreeing to pause its nuclear enrichment activity, and the US releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds. How long the enrichment pause would last is still under negotiation, but would probably be somewhere between the five years proposed by Iran and the 20 proposed by the US.

This would be an ironic outcome: The “green, green cash” flown on planes to Iran in 2015 has been one of Trump’s favorite talking points about the Barack Obama-negotiated deal he pulled out of in 2018. But it may be the best outcome available for the administration at this point, particularly if Iran agrees to remove its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

2) A nonnuclear deal

Wednesday’s reports might be spin. This is not the first time in recent weeks that the two sides have reportedly been close to a deal. The main division between the two sides has been that the US wants concession on Iran’s nuclear program as part of the deal, while Iran just wants a deal to reopen the strait in exchange for the US lifting its blockade, with the nuclear issue put off for later.

Ordinary Iranians are struggling to buy basic necessities, and Iran may be running out of storage for the oil it can’t export (though this is probably less of a problem for Tehran than the White House seems to think). But Iran’s new leaders may still believe they can absorb more pain than Trump and could hold out for a deal on their terms — one that sidesteps nuclear concessions or at least puts them off until later. 

According a recent Reuters report, US intelligence officials believe the Operation Epic Fury bombing campaign did not significantly change Iran’s timeline for building a nuclear weapon. While its missile resources have been significantly degraded, these can be rebuilt.

To the extent this war was ever primarily about Iran’s nuclear program, this outcome would have to be judged an unambiguous US defeat, despite the damage Iran has sustained. 

3) The US reopens the strait by force

Under the currently paused Project Freedom, which the Pentagon maintains is an entirely separate operation from Epic Fury, US naval vessels successfully escorted two ships out of the Strait of Hormuz on Monday; more than 1,000 vessels are still stranded in the Persian Gulf. Even if it is resumed and expanded, Project Freedom is only intended to help stranded ships out of the Gulf, not help new ones to get in. Resuming full shipping through the waterways will require international shipping companies (and their insurers) to believe the trip is worth the liability.  

During the 1980s “Tanker War,” the US Navy escorted ships through the Persian Gulf, protecting them from Iranian attacks — but that was before the age of drones, which allow Iran to threaten more ships at a much lower cost.

Trump has been reluctant to consider more dramatic steps like deploying US ground troops to capture the strategically located Kharg Island, given the high risk of US casualties, but public pressure on the White House to take action is growing. The administration has also been trying to cajole allies into joining a coalition to reopen the strait. They’ve been reluctant so far, but pressure may grow in the coming weeks as the economic devastation mounts. 

4) Return to full-scale war

Given Trump’s insistence to the public and to Congress that the war has ended, it seems unlikely he would restart it. But he also says he will “go back to bombing the hell out of them” if there is no deal. This could entail targeting Iran’s power grid and bridges, which Trump dramatically threatened, but didn’t carry out in April. Certainly US ally Israel would be more than happy to resume the air campaign. 

On Tuesday, Trump urged Iranian leaders to wave “the white flag of surrender” because “we don’t want to go in and kill people.” But as has been the case since the beginning of this war, it’s not clear that a regime more than willing to kill thousands of its own people to stay in power is willing to make concessions to keep the US and Israel from killing them. 

5) It doesn’t end

Certainly the current status quo seems unsustainable, but rather than ending dramatically in a deal or a return to war, it’s possible this crisis could simply ease over time. The US could ease up on its embargo, as it has recently in Cuba. Iran could establish a system, either on its own or with other countries in the region, to charge tolls on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This would be a new economic reality not just for the Middle East, but for the world. 

Other countries located on strategic maritime chokepoints are likely looking at the possibility of taking similar steps to leverage them, threatening the freedom of navigation that has made our era of globalization possible.

And even if Iran does agree to lift its restrictions, it will now have the implicit ability to close the strait again when it feels under threat, arguably a more useful form of deterrence than its nuclear program ever was. Rather than asking how this crisis will end, it may be time to start asking how to adjust to the new world it has created.

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