SAVED BY THE BELLS

Once people wore kaftans and listened to concept albums. With Tubular Bells II Mike Oldfield hopes they will do it again.
by Marianne Jonssen

Vox October 1992

Old hippies never die, they're simply reincarnated. Steve Hillage is recording with The Orb and Shamen, ELP are recording and touring again, and Yes made a packet on their world tour last year. Thanks to Bill Drummond (KLF) and Dr Alex Patterson (The Orb), the post-rave generation -who believe in "getting out of it" to a soundtrack of weird and wonderful laid-back sounds in the "chill-out room" - have discovered the early -'70s progressive rock genre. Twenty years after the release of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells laid the foundations for Richard Branson's Virgin empire, the master knob-twiddler is set to release Tubular Bells II.
Tubular Bells (the original) is now bracketed, by Oldfield at least, with events such as man landing on the moon. "People remember what they were doing when they first heard it," he claims. Certainly there are more myths about Bells than there are about Neil Armstrong - that it took an unbelievable 200 recording overdubs, that Oldfield trooped the masters around scores of companies who wouldn't even listen. The opening bars contain one of the world's most profitable riffs ever, and it was written on one string. The piece has a bizarre place in the flared history of progressive rock, and its repetitive pattern, weird instruments, and spoken introductions made it unforgettable at the time. Even Blue Peter mentioned it.
"Tubular Bells II is what Branson and everybody would have liked me to have done in 1974, after the first one," says Mike Oldfield of his newly-released re-working of this instrumental album debut. In all the years Oldfield was with Virgin, Branson failed to get the Bells sequel he wanted. As Virgin gets set to release the first TB on CD, its author seems to be sticking two fingers up at his former home by releasing TBII on WEA.

"Not really," offers the affable old hippy, relaxing in a studio in the south of France. "I still talk to Richard; he gave me cheap flights on his airline." A hint of a smile here. "I was invited to go and stay on his island free of charge. And he rang me up the day he sold Virgin and thanked me for making it possible. He didn't offer me half the proceeds or anything (definite laughter now) but at least he was gentlemanly enough to say thanks."

In Tubular Bells II, produced by Trevor Horn, WEA have a work from Oldfield that hints strongly at the melody, timbre and structure of the original, an album bought by some 16 million record buyers around the globe.
But it's not, Oldfield scolds, a remake - "I wouldn't bother." Despite Virgin having pressed up an orchestral version of TB in 1975, Oldfield refused to deliver TBII to Branson back in 1974 when the bearded impresario so clearly wanted it, because he claims: "I felt that I'd explored that area of music and I wanted at the time to explore different areas." He describes the follow-up albums, Hergest Ridge (1974) and Ommadawn (1975), as "more folky things, Celtic music."
Although he made another ten albums or so before departing Virgin, the failure of said LPs to register in the memories of any but Oldfield family members meant that the times were a-changing, and Mike wasn't. Will 1992 be the year the world turned again for Mike Oldfield?

"These days I'm fed up with hearing Tubular Bells ripped-off all the time," complains the aggrieved writer. What he describes as "the front part of Tubular Bells, a sort of hammering between one note and lots of different other notes with a tinkly bell sound" has been sampled and emulated and otherwise nicked by any number of musical thieves.

Pressed for examples, he names Paul Hardcastle ("19") and an advertising agency (a TV commercial for toothpaste). "Some things were so close that my publishers actually managed to get a slice of the publishing royalties on them," he reveals. "You hear them everywhere. It was about time I did something similar to my original work."
As the '90s are set to become the sharing, caring decade, Mike is introducing a new charitable organisation, Tonic.
At 20 he was unprepared for the vast fame afforded by Tubular Bells, he explains. As a result I became very isolated and was unable to relate to people in a normal way. A musical recluse, if you like. But as a result of various therapy and seminars that I've done, I've learned all the reasons why I behave like I do."

Mike discovered that all the nastiness in the world stems from those who suffer wretched childhoods. "A lot of people turn to drugs or violence or crime to escape unhappy family lives, to create something which they can control. In my case I turned to music; many good musicians probably had a similar experience. So I've started Tonic to sponsor people to do therapy, to pass on that gift that I've been able to achieve."

As any E-head will tell you, the drug and the music puts you in a different world; but as the chemicals take their toll, so the post-rave generation are turning to new, less taxing ways of reaching a state of other-worldliness. Mike has his own passage to Nirvana.

"When I'm really hot, making a piece of music, I go into some amazing trance. I'm in a different place. It's like levitation, some sort of going-to-another-place, astral projection, whatever you want to call it. But it's a truly wonderful experience, the best I know of in the world: to be really soaring away, making a piece of music." Spread your wings and, erm, fly...