Virgin's first time (Tubular Bells Vol.1 - Mike Oldfield)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Tubular Bells Vol.1 - Mike Oldfield
Date:	03/06/01 (768 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A unique musical experience

Disadvantages: Second half couldn't live up to the first.

Warning: This album cannot be played on old tin boxes.


Virgin
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Tubular Bells was the first record released on Richard Branson's fledgling Virgin record label, on May 25th, 1973, and so from this little acorn a giant oak tree grew ...and then dropped all it's leaves on the line, delaying trains across the country for hours.

Richard Branson's career as an entrepeneur had begun when
he founded a student magazine called (rather unimaginatively) Student; and the Virgin brand was born when he started selling records by mail-order in 1969 - becoming successful by doubling sales by halving profit margins.

Branson used some of his profits to buy a country manor house at Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, which was then converted into a recording studio and named (wait for it...) The Manor.
Fortunately Mike Oldfield was a bit more imaginative, musically.


Mike Oldfield
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Michael Gordon Oldfield was born in Reading on May 15th, 1953.
He asked his parents for a guitar at the age of seven, inspired, like so many others, by seeing Bert Weedon on the television.

Family life was quite rocky, his mother suffered from depression, alcoholism, and addiction to pills, and she was institutionalised several times. He grew up insecure, emotionally disturbed and introspective, as he said himself: "when I was ten I found my guitar was a better way of communicating than words."

On his fifteenth birthday he walked out of school rather than cut his long hair, and formed a folk duo with his sister (singer Sally).
Sibling squabbles led them split after one album and Mike went on to make two albums with Kevin Ayers And The Whole World.


Tubular Bells
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Oldfield borrowed a tape recorder from Ayers and used it
to create a demo tape of what would become Tubular Bells,
with the help of some inventive jiggery-pokery - like covering
the erase head with a bit of cardboard so he could overdub.
He even used his mum's hoover in lieu of bagpipes!

He found work as a session musician, and, in September 1971,
this brought him to Virgin's newly opened Manor studio.
Between sessions he played the tape to engineer Tom Newman - and he was impressed enough to tell Branson about it.

Unfortunately they weren't in a position to launch their own
record label at that time, so they encouraged him to try the
established ones. But every record company he approached
with the demo turned him down (isn't that always the way?)
Indeed, one American label suggested that he should go back
into the studio and "put some lyrics on it". (It was the record
companies' refusal to countenance an instrumental album
which inspired the 'Piltdown Man' vocals of the Caveman Song
on part two - well, that and half a bottle of Irish whiskey!)

At one point he even considered applying to the Soviet Union
for "artistic asylum" he was so desperate to be taken seriously.
Luckily, a year later, Branson & co. got back in touch and offered him the use of the studio for a week. He finished the album by living-in for a while and using the studio whenever it was free.

And so, Virgin Records and Tubular Bells (V2001) were born.

Despite critical acclaim, the album took a long time to take off -
it didn't make the album charts until July, as interest in it spread slowly through word of mouth. It was only when Mike Oldfield's second album "Hergest Ridge" was released (and went to No.1)
i
n September 1974, that Tubular Bells followed it to the top spot - in the first week of October, 16 months after it was released.

The album has gone on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide.


My copies
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I first heard Tubular Bells thanks to a dodgy copy on a cheap wonky tape. The record industry would have liked to have me (and the mate that made the copy) put up against a wall and shot for reducing their profits, sorry, I mean stealing from artists and endangering the system by which they nurture new talent.

Er, hang on a sec, would that be the same record industry that didn't want this album in the first place? That couldn't recognize new talent if it bit them on their fat bottoms? What wallies.

I did buy the LP eventually though... from a second-hand shop
(why aren't there any hour-hand shops by the way?)
So Mike Oldfield still hadn't had a penny from me!
Now why didn't the music industry run a campaign saying that
second-hand record shops are killing music?

In the end I did buy it on CD though (but it must have been in a sale because I wouldn't pay rip-off Britain prices that's for sure.)
So you don't have to report me to the rock 'n' roll rozzers ok?

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking: when is he going
to tell us what the bloody thing SOUNDS like??? Okay, I'll try...


Part One - 25 mins
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You'll know the opening to Tubular Bells even if you think you've
never heard it. This is because the hypnotic tinkly piano tune
was used by director William Friedkin as the theme to the horror
flick The Exorcist. Not only did the movie make heads spin,
(sorry, I couldn't resist that)
it also made creepy, tinkly piano
melodies de rigueur for 70's horror films.

The piece develops along classical lines, with this main theme,
and variations on it, being taken up by a variety of instruments
in turn, with different tempos and amazing textures of sound
which invoke all kinds of moods and emotions in the listener.

Midway the delicate mood changes when a juxtaposition
of distorted electric guitar and honky tonk piano breaks out,
followed by a 70's rock style rhythm guitar solo and the first chimes of those tubular bells, accompanied by the opening theme, now played insistently on a bass guitar.

And so it builds to the finale of side one, sorry, part one. (That's what makes CD's superior to LP's in my opinion - not having to get up and turn them over when they are half-way through!)
It is here that the only words on the record are spoken, by Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who acts as master
of ceremonies, introducing the various instruments as they appear in a fugue, like Noah counting the animals into the ark:-

Grand Piano...
Reed and pipe organ...
Glockenspiel...
Bass guitar...
Double speed guitar...
Two slightly distorted guitars...
Mandolin...
Spanish guitar and introducing acoustic guitar...
plus Tubular Bells...!

This truly is a masterpiece, and I never tire of hearing it.


Part Two - 23 mins 50 secs
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Part two is less memorable, apart from the section in which
a bass drum and some one-finger piano playing leads to the Caveman Song in which Oldfield grunts and howls to the music.
The less said the better probably. At least it isn't boring.


Sailors' Hornpipe
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Part two ends with Oldfield playing the Sailors' Hornpipe faster and faster. The original version was recorded on the move - microphones were placed all over the Manor and he wandered around strumming his guitar, accompanied by a drunken Viv Stanshall who provided a mock 'guided tour' commentary on the Manor's history and contents, inventing the word 'lewid' on the way. His attempts to pronounce the word anthropologky, and final contributions of "buggered if I know" are very funny. This performance is found on the Boxed Set version of Tubular Bells.


Instrumentation
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In part one, Mike Oldfield plays:- grand piano, glockenspiel,
farfisa organ, bass guitar, electric guitar, speed guitar, taped
motor drive amplifier organ chord, mandolin-like guitar, fuzz
guitars, assorted percussion, acoustic guitar, flageolet, honky
tonk, lowrey organ and, of course... tubular bells.

But no drums, he wasn't a big fan of drums.

Then in part two, oh I can't be bothered to list them all again,
basically much the same only with guitars sounding
like bagpipes, piltdown man and a moribund chorus!

Nor did he have the benfit of synthesisers back then either.
The fuzz, mandolin-like and speed guitars are not actually
real instruments of course, rather they are effects produced
by varying the speed of the tape during recording or playback.

Oh, and he didn't use the proper hammer on the tubular bells -
he hit them with a big sledgehammer instead...

But if you you can't singalong to it, and you can't dance to it
what is it good for? Oh just chill out...


Classic
al inspiration
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You could say that this album is the missing link between classical music and rock. Indeed, its working title was Opus One. (Although he also considered calling it Breakfast In Bed!)

Oldfield was particularly inspired by Sibelius's Fifth Symphony,
and his use of the tubular bells bears a strong resemblance to the last movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14.

In a way it vaguely reminds me of Beethoven's 6th (Pastoral)symphony. Perhaps it's the storm-like sequence in part two.
And imagine what Ludwig's 'glorious' ninth would sound like if he'd used vocals by a Neanderthal man and moribund chorus... Much better I reckon.


If you want to know more about Mike Oldfield (or if you fancy
programming the Tubular Bells/Exorcist theme as the ring-tone
on your mobile phone) then you can find his official website at:

http://tubular.net/

Apparently Mike Oldfield plans to re-record Tubular Bells, using the latest technology to finally realize his original aims, and, of course, to mark the 30th anniversary in 2003.

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