November 9, 1995 • RTL Nachtshow, Cologne, Germany

Setlist

Show Notes

• Oasis performed 'Wonderwall' on the German late-night television programme 'RTL Nachtshow mit Thomas Koschwitz'. The programme was produced at the MMC Studios in Hürth-Kalscheuren, near Cologne.
• As I've noticed, there isn't much information about this show out there, but a great deal of confusion. So, I've done a little bit of research... Thomas Koschwitz first took over the RTL Nachtshow in 1994 as a summer replacement for Gottschalk Late Night, before returning in January 1995 with a slot of his own. After Gottschalk left RTL in 1995, the programme took over his old weekday slot at 11:15 pm and was produced by Brainpool. It wasn't a true live show, but was pre-recorded (a so-called "live-on-tape" format), even though it was meant to give the impression of a spontaneous live broadcast. A newspaper report from 1994 describes the main show being recorded in front of a studio audience in the evening, only a couple of hours before it aired, with musical guests recorded separately earlier in the day. Recording on the same day meant that the news of the day could be worked into the stand-up monologue, while still giving the team a chance to fix slips of the tongue or technical errors before broadcast. The show ran for most of the year before RTL pulled it ahead of the launch of Die Harald Schmidt Show on rival channel Sat.1, with its final episode broadcast on November 17, 1995.
• Every now and then, there were some doubts about where this performance took place. According to the band's tour itinerary ("World Tour '95 – Part Two"), a TV show was recorded in Cologne on Thursday 9 November 1995, the first stop on the German leg before Hamburg the following day and back to Cologne for the Live Music Hall gig on the 12th. The studio backdrop, a city skyline against a purple-pink night sky, matches the RTL Nachtshow, whose show intro featured Cologne Cathedral. Although there's a thread on Reddit doubting that this took place in Germany at all, none of the arguments there really hold up. One user posted a photo showing Liam at a table with a Virgin Megastore sign in the background, most likely taken around the same time, as he's wearing the same hat and jumper as in photos from the studio, and concluded that the band played a Virgin Megastore. That's a bit of a leap, though: no instruments, no stage, just coffee and cigarettes. And as Virgin Megastore had already pulled out of Germany by then, that photo is unlikely to have been taken there anyway, possibly in France a few days later, where the tour continued in Nantes on 14 November. Another user called it a playback situation because there were no mics to be seen. That's not right either: photos from the studio show a mic stand in the middle and a monitor wedge on the floor. No amps in shot doesn't mean much, as the acoustic guitars would have been plugged straight into the mixing desk anyway. A missing capo has also been mentioned as a sign of miming, but that's hard to tell from a still. Whether it was live or mimed remains open. Some thought the set looked like Letterman, which is exactly what you'd expect, since the RTL Nachtshow deliberately copied the Letterman look.
• I think this firmly establishes both the date and location of the performance. There have been several attempts to track down the recording over the years, including one by Oasis fan Soloalbum, who posted a request on the Qtalk television forum in 2015 and contacted RTL, Brainpool and Thomas Koschwitz's management, but without success. The people who might have a copy probably aren't part of the music collecting community. They may have recorded the show because of another guest, or simply taped the whole evening on VHS. The chances aren't great, but there's still some hope, maybe by pure chance...