It was a dose of deja vu when Oasis walked offstage 30 minutes into their set at the Sudvest Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, August 6 after drummer Alan White was hit by a rock thrown from the audience.

The band was pelted with missiles and singer Liam Gallagher warned the troublemakers to stop. “We’re here to play f***ing music. If you don’t f***ing like it, we’ll go play somewhere else where people do,” he said, according to an NME report.

The handful of assailants in the crowd of 35,000 kept up the barrage and the band left the stage. According to eyewitnesses, a plea for peace from the festival promoters only exacerbated the problem,

A spokesperson for the band said, “This kind of behaviour is utterly deplorable. Had the rock hit Alan in the face, he could have been very seriously hurt. It is regrettable that once again, a small group of idiots have ruined a great night for the majority of fans.”

Festival producers, however, blamed the band.

“It was a problem with Oasis’ attitude,” producers at Musica no Coracao said. “They didn’t try to calm people down.”

A local newspaper claimed Gallagher lost his temper because the crowd would not join in singing. “Due to Liam’s tantrum, the hostility of a small section of the audience spread and became general contempt,” a critic wrote.

A Portuguese fan who was at Sudvest directly contradicted those statements in a message posted on the band’s official Web site. The fan said the incident was “sad and stupid of the audience… I can’t believe how [the] Portuguese press can blame Oasis for this! It ashames me… the gig was going fine, Liam was even being nice to the fans.”

Oasis faced a strikingly similar situation at the Paleo Nyon Festival in Switzerland, July 26. The band stormed off the stage after playing for 30 minutes, complaining that it had been pelted with bottles and cans.

On that occasion, Oasis did return to the stage but left for good after two songs when Gallagher and White were hit with more debris.

The organizers, however, said “these projectiles consisted of a few empty plastic bottles and a water-filled balloon. None of these objects hit any member of the band.”

“The arrogant and provocative attitude of singer Liam Gallagher is doubtless not unconnected to the reaction of the audience,” the organizers charged, adding that the objects were thrown after Gallagher insulted festival-goers “several times.”

The British PA News later reported that Oasis’ management announced the band would be filing suit against festival organizers “as a result of their outrageous remarks leveled against the band following the curtailed performance at last night’s festival.”