Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

Released - May 1973

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Tom Newman, Simon Heyworth & Mike Oldfield

Selected Personnel - Mike Oldfield (Guitar/Bass/Organ/Piano/Mandolin/Percussion/Vocals/Tubular Bells); Steve Broughton (Percussion); Lindsay L. Cooper (Bass); Jon Field (Flutes); Sally Oldfield (Vocals); Vivian Stanshall (Master of Ceremonies)

Standout Track - Tubular Bells (Part I)

It's literally just now, as I sat down to do a bit of background reading on Tubular Bells to refresh my memory of it before writing this review, that I find to my astonishment that Mike Oldfield was only nineteen when it was recorded. To be frank, I'm stunned. Music is full of astonishingly talented young prodigies, and their talent is always delightful and surprising, but that something like Tubular Bells could be produced by someone so young is nothing short of ridiculous - it's an epic piece that demonstrates not only prodigious talent, but is also so ambitiously epic and meticulously complex that it betrays not just talent but absolute genius. Of course, like most people, I first encountered the piece due to its opening piano melody being used as the theme for William Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist (a film I was familiar with far younger than I should have been) and for many years thought of it as nothing other than "The Exorcist Theme Tune." It was in a music class in perhaps about 2004, when I would have been about fifteen, that we spent a class studying it as a significant piece of modern music, and I was surprised to even learn that it existed outside of the film itself, and was even more surprised to learn that fifty-minute pieces of music existed (remember, this was a good few years before my interest in prog started). As an Elton John-obsessed teenager, the idea of a ludicrously complex fifty-minute instrumental did little to excite me, and it was only at uni, after watching a documentary on the history of prog rock in Britain that placed considerable emphasis on Tubular Bells that I decided it was time to listen to it properly.

To be honest, a big part of me still has trouble truly labelling Oldfield's work as pure prog - yes, it has the epic grandiosity of prog, but there's none of the vast, sprawling solos or prog's sense of jazzy loose-limbed wandering here. On the contrary, everything feels meticulously planned, with every note occurring with such precision and accuracy that it feels far more like some vast orchestral, New Age suite than some prog epic. As the years went by Oldfield's work would continue bending the rules of such labels by becoming increasingly folkloric and pastoral while still exploring side-long epic formats, and moving further away from the traditions of "rock" music. Such precision is to be expected, of course, considering the key element that made Tubular Bells so radically different to pretty much all other music being made at the time - the fact that pretty much every instrument, with a few minor exceptions, was played by Oldfield himself. There was no room for jazzy solos or instrumental jams when each performance had to be recorded separately and layered on top of one another - Oldfield was not just performer but also sculptor, carefully trying to work out how to construct this mammoth piece of music from isolated fragments of his own instrumental performances. (Once again, the thought that a nineteen-year-old would be able to be such a talented multi-instrumentalist is mind-boggling).

Although the album marked his solo debut, Oldfield was no stranger to the music industry at this time and had played in various folk and rock bands before trying to put more focus on his own solo work. As young as fifteen he had already been composing fifteen-minute instrumentals on the guitar, so the scope and range of music like Tubular Bells was obviously something that came fairly naturally to him. By 1972, he had started tentatively writing and recording sections of what would eventually become his landmark album, and started trying to earn the interest of record labels. Despite the popularity of prog rock at the time, most of these record labels were reluctant to back the project, believing it was too anti-commercial, until a small new label called Virgin Records, headed by a certain Richard Branson and based at the Manor Studios, saw promise in it and funded a full recording session. Oldfield's role in the history of Virgin would come to be key, being their flagship artist for the launch of their new record label, and therefore partly helping to contribute to the ongoing success of the Virgin empire in the future.

Quite why Oldfield felt he had to have such control over the recording process and play every instrument himself isn't clear - of course, if one is able to play everything well without recourse to session musicians, then why not, but at the time the notion of a piece so vast and complicated being performed almost entirely by one person was almost unheard-of. At the time, Oldfield was painfully shy and suffered from extensive social anxiety, and it might simply be that he had no faith in the idea of being able to communicate his musical and creative ideas to session musicians and so decided to maintain absolute control over the recording and the performances himself, knowing he knew how to deliver the sounds he wanted, regardless of how much work this would be making for himself in trying to edit the whole thing together.

The end result is quite simply astonishing - that sense of precision and meticulous care taken over everything means that over a fifty-minute running time it manages to avoid ever hitting on a musical idea that struggles to hold the listener's rapt attention. It moves along at a stately pace, slowly developing one motif into another. That stateliness and sense of care also means it occasionally suffers from a lack of real passion or energy (with the notable exception of the "Piltdown Man" section of Part II) - it feels, in places, slightly cold and detached, but then it's a sense of cool detachment that suits the grandeur and majesty of the music itself. The other thing that occasionally counts against it is that feels slightly less coherent and cohesive than some of Oldfield's later work - while motifs are gradually developed over several minutes, there is the odd moment where one idea is suddenly completely abandoned and a new thought takes over, while almost nothing in Part II really relates musically to anything on the record's first side. This isn't a huge problem in itself - it gives the sense that we're listening to a vast and sprawling suite that moves through multiple moods and ideas and thoughts, but it's a shame there feels like there is no solid musical backbone to the piece that informs it and lends it its identity. These issues are ones that Oldfield would be able to hone in later work, but what he really achieves here is that incredible sense of versatility and range and ambition, even if it doesn't quite hang together as a coherent work.

The first half or so of Part I is largely built on a single motif, namely the iconic piano tune that Friedkin used for The Exorcist - it's a chillingly simple, cold and clear tune that's echoed on other keyboards and acoustic guitar, with the occasional staccato chiming of an organ in the early minutes puncturing its icy ambience. Over ten minutes or so, this theme is played with in a variety of moods and tempos, even incorporating a brutal rock guitar moment, before the tempo drops halfway through and, over electronic bleeping, a mysterious electric guitar line takes over with a new tune. Shortly after is an all-too-brief moment that's always been one of my favourite parts of the whole suite - the bright, churning piano motif that's played over the contented humming of what sounds like a vast male voice choir, but is probably just Oldfield's own voice overdubbing itself again and again. The final minutes of Part I involve the same repeated motif played by a whole host of instruments, introduced one by one by Master of Ceremonies Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (who were due to start recording at the Manor Studios as soon as Oldfield had completed his own sessions). Supposedly, the album's now iconic title was chosen in response to the dramatic reading Stanshall gave to his final line, "Plus tubular bells!"

Part II, as I mentioned, bears little to no musical relation to Part I and starts again with a slowly developed theme, a pleasant, almost pastoral acoustic guitar melody that's then explored on piano and keyboards too before a meditative organ part takes over. Over the course of Part II, Oldfield seems to take more time to experiment with distortion and to change the sounds of the instrument he uses, incorporating things like the "Bagpipe Guitars," an electric guitar that he had applied a certain effect to in order to make it sound more like a bagpipe. Perhaps the standout moment of Part II is similarly founded in distortion effects, in the form of the "Piltdown Man" section. Allegedly, Branson had demanded that there be a part of the album to feature vocals so it could be released as a single. Frustrated at having to compromise his artistic vision, Oldfield got drunk on whisky and proceeded to scream and wail into a microphone while recording onto a tape playing at double speed, so that when played back at normal speed, his ranting became unintelligible nonsense. Whether or not the story behind it is true, this section of nonsensical shouting and aggression, over perhaps the album's only moment of noticeable percussion, is bizarre but demonstrates the album's energetic highpoint. As further evidence of Oldfield's ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, the entire mammoth piece is rounded off by a rendition of "The Sailor's Hornpipe," that rapidly gains pace until it spirals off into silence.

Ultimately, then, it's a piece with a decent sense of silliness and fun to counteract its own stately grandeur, and, while it doesn't quite hang together as a coherent suite, it's a wildly impressive testament to the talent of an obviously gifted young man. His later work would manage to achieve more sense of cohesive identity across its entire length, but the buying public at the time weren't put off by the few flaws Tubular Bells exhibited - in the wake of its being used in The Exorcist, the album became wildly popular and put both Oldfield and Virgin Records on the map. In later years, a heart-warmingly sweet Oldfield would reflect on how the album's incredible success affected him mentally. As mentioned, he was a deeply shy and anxious man who made music not out of a desire for fame and success (the outrageously ambitious nature of his music is obvious enough proof of that) but out of a love of music itself. He therefore recalled feeling immensely pressured by the album's success and the subsequent entreaties to tour and to give interviews, and responded by going off to live in the remote countryside for a few months, hoping everybody would just go away and leave him alone and let him continue making music. While the public and the press weren't too keen on leaving him alone, they were all too happy to let him make more music, and as the years went by and Oldfield's confidence issues gradually resolved themselves, he was also able to tackle head-on the issues that held back Tubular Bells from being quite as phenomenal as it could have been. Despite its obvious brilliance, Tubular Bells has never been my favourite Oldfield album, and in the following years the world would get a look at what further brilliance this bizarre young prodigy would be able to achieve as he honed his craft, even if none of it would ever generate quite the phenomenal response that this early classic was given.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Mike Oldfield, except where noted.

1. Tubular Bells (Part I)

2. Tubular Bells (Part II) (Incorporates "The Sailor's Hornpipe" - Traditional, arranged by Mike Oldfield)