mike oldfield band. Early career

Mike Gordon Oldfield (born May 15, 1953 in Reading, Berkshire) is an English multi-instrumentalist and composer who works in a wide variety of genres: progressive and art rock, electronic music, folk, Celtic music. The latest albums feature standalone club-style dance tracks. The main work of Mike Oldfield is considered by critics to be the concept album Tubular Bells, released ... Read all

Mike Gordon Oldfield (born May 15, 1953 in Reading, Berkshire) is an English multi-instrumentalist and composer who works in a wide variety of genres: progressive and art rock, electronic music, folk, Celtic music. The latest albums feature standalone club-style dance tracks. Critics consider the concept album Tubular Bells, released in 1973, to be the main work of Mike Oldfield. It was the first record released on the newly formed label Virgin Records.

Mike's parents are Mauren and Raymond. His brother Terry and sister Sally are also quite famous musicians. They repeatedly took part in the recording of his albums. The composer has six children, including two with the popular Norwegian singer Anita Hegerland.

Mike Oldfield began his career at the age of 14 as a folk duo with his sister Sally, with whom he recorded the CD Sallyangie. He then formed the one-night band Barefeet and subsequently briefly joined Kevin Ayres' ensemble The Whole World until the latter disbanded in mid-1971.

Oldfield's game was still very immature in those days, although promising. In any case, his name meant little not only to the average listener of rock music, but also to the seasoned businessmen of show business, and when Mike began to submit plans for his ambitious 50-minute composition to various English recording companies, no one supported him. The only well-wisher was a company that didn't exist yet. It was called Virgin and was the brainchild of one Richard Branson, who as a teenager founded Student and owned several discount record stores.

Oldfield's arrival coincided with Branson's plans to start a new firm, and the young composer got studio time. There he compiled a recording from many overdubs, where he himself played many instruments. The result was the epic Tubular Bells, which Virgin released on its first disc in May 1973.

It was preceded by an excellent performance in concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and television broadcast. The enthusiastic reception of the disc by critics contributed to the fact that it was quickly accepted by the public. The play has since become one of the most successful works in rock. Apart from the Beatles' The Lonely Hearts Club and Simon & Garfunkel's Stormy Waters Bridge, no record in rock music has been able to gain global respect as quickly and globally as Tubular Bells. Even in early December 1974, 68 weeks after its publication, it was in seventh place in terms of the number of copies sold, which at that time exceeded 2 million copies, and by 1981 reached 10 million.

Its popularity in the United States was helped by the fact that excerpts from the album were used for the musical accompaniment of the movie The Exorcist. One of these extracts was printed there as a single and again with great success, although Oldfield and Branson, who are afraid of the American market, recorded another single separately for the English edition, "Theme From Tubular Bells", which was supposed to meet import needs.

“Cylindrical Bells” is one instrumental composition, with melodic motifs generously scattered by Oldfield throughout the album with their most primitive variations, with the sounds of a guitar that can be compared to a pipe or a mandolin, with the sound of a bell ringing, with pompous echoes of some instruments on which played by former Bonzo Dog Band member Viv Stanshell, with various organs and 2,300 tape cuts that can be rearranged, cut, sped up, whatever.

In August 1974, the "wizard of a thousand overdubs," as the rock press dubbed him, emerged from the studio with his next album, Hergest Ridge, named after a range of hills on the Anglo-Welsh coast. Again a monothematic play. And although the disc immediately topped the lists, while the debut of its predecessor was noted "only" in second place, it only lasted 12 weeks in the top twenty, and its overall sales were relatively disappointing.

This album turned out to be technically more mature, expressive and powerful than Tubular Bells, but it lost that basic naivety and charm that distinguished The Bells. Oldfield again showed a peculiar ability to draw very green, combed and very English musical landscapes. Again, a couple of themes, with rather banal harmonies, simple rhythms and arrangements. Enchanting melodies flow endlessly and unhindered. All the magic of Oldfield is here - in the combination of sounds, electric with acoustic, keyboards with strings, upper octaves with bass, as well as an effective, sometimes sophisticated use of choirs and percussion. The scenes change slowly and unhurriedly, and the uniform legato of the musical base ensures that the alternating leading instruments tend towards monotony.

As time went on it began to look like Oldfield had passed his peak with a phenomenal debut, but Ommadawn dispelled any fears that might have arisen, at least commercially. Leading a completely reclusive life, Oldfield has avoided live work ever since his days with Ayres. He did, however, play guitar when David Bedford's "Star's End" was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1975, and again with the same orchestra at a concert performance of "The Orchestral Tubular Bells" conducted by Bedford (David Bedford studied music at the Royal Academy , worked in Ayres' group The Whole World, recorded solo). Soon a 19-minute film about this concert was shown on television.

It is hard to imagine that ordinary rock music could generate such interest. And "The Bells", for example, has a much more fatal basis than, say, "The Lonely Hearts Club" or "The Bridge" mentioned above. Each reviewer respects the success of Oldfield, but opinions and assessments differ significantly. And is it really possible to consider "The Bells" "the most best album world popular music”, as it followed from the reader's questionnaire of New Musical Express?

"Borrowing nothing from famous classics and not leaning towards the echoes, sobs and gurgles of the stubborn avant-garde, Mike Oldfield has created music that combines logic and surprise, sunshine with rain,” wrote John Peel, the most famous English radio disc jockey, who willingly loses Zappa and Tchaikovsky.

“Of course, I understand that all absolute judgments are temporary, and I can only say that this is the most amazing and most complete great and original music that has ever appeared under the heading “pop”. It makes the same emotional impression on me as the works of Sibelius and Debussy,” declared his credo William Murray in Time Out magazine.

Ian Macdonald devoted two pages in New Musical Express to reviewing both of Oldfield's first albums. It is unlikely that most of the musician's fans were grateful to him for his efforts. “An exact likeness is Richard Eddisell's Warsaw Concerto. The Bells are a blend of the philosophies of serious music with popular expressiveness and contemporary taste." The reviewer compared the merits to the level of Bartók - equally popular - namely his 1943 concerto for orchestra and the level of various film scores. “No, Mike Oldfield is not the fatal Debussy. Rather, he is the fatal Michel Legrand.

"Mike Oldfield will do just in case," wrote Steve Lake in Melody Maker. His compositions will not offend the most conservative listeners and provide the perfect backdrop for driving, ceiling painting and department store shopping." And further: "His music sounds like a children's accompaniment of a rock band."

But in the final analysis, it should be noted that with all the electro-acoustic flaws, with the most primitive compositional development, the naivety, tenderness and magic of Oldfield's music do not lose their charm. It becomes desirable for compiling light and music programs. Good rock music? Maybe. fate of rock? Only posterity can answer this question.

Meanwhile, Oldfield did not stop his studio work. By the end of 1976, he pleased his admirers with a special four-disc set called "Boxed", which contained the albums "Tubular Bells", "Hergest Ridge" and "Ommadawn", and when remixing them, Oldfield gave the recordings a quadraphonic effect, supplemented the first part of the "Tubular Bells" with a small insert, on the next one I remade some of the melodies in accordance with a later author's concept. The set complemented the "Collaboration" disc, which was made up of recordings made by Oldfield with other musicians and until then unreleased.

After another bout of seclusion, the young composer and multi-instrumentalist, who was only 26 years old, moved to London at the end of 1978 and released the double album Incantations, on which he placed special hopes. To his characteristic layered overlay of instrumentals, he added former Steeleye Span vocalist Maddie Pryor, who performed Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha". Reviewers found echoes of Ravel and Debussy in the album's music, with a delivery more modest than that of Yes, ELP or Moody Blues, but as attractive as that of Keith Jarrett. In addition, for Christmas, Oldfield released a new illustrated edition of The Bells, in February 1979, in a New York studio with the participation of a local rhythm section, he recorded the single "I'm Guilty" in the disco style and took part in the creation debut album his sister Sally. He continued to work on film scores and released a "live" double "Exposed".

The Platinum album, which marked a more simplistic approach, contained a parody of the punk Punkadiddle, which was contrasted on the other side of the record with a reworking of the Irish jig. Commercial success secured the next disc "Queen Elizabeth II", immediately after the release became "gold", and intensive tours in early 1981. The extent of the musician's recognition is evidenced by the fact that he was elected an honorary citizen of London for his music and charitable activities, the second fatal musician after Paul McCartney he got into the famous publication "Who's Who".

A musician of a synthetic warehouse, Oldfield in the 70s became his own for the supporters of "easy listening", and was also highly appreciated by authors and performers of serious music. symphonic music. This is an extremely rare coincidence. But at the very time when his early works were still pleasing numerous admirers, the composer abruptly changed course.

“If yesterday's music can be called very melodic, then Oldfield's current creations seem rather simplified and generally understandable,” critics assessed the musical orientation of the Crises and Discovery albums. Since the recording of these discs, former Free members Phil Spaulding and Paul Rogers, famed drummers Morris Perth and Pierre Merlin, bassist Rick Farne and keyboardist Tim Cross have joined Oldfield. On the CRISES album, Oldfield laid out the old true trump cards - multi-instrumentalism and studio tricks. The same disc showed how closely airplanes were intertwined in his life - after all, it was already eight years since Oldfield entered into incessant litigation with the RAF building a noisy airfield near his home. Already in the introduction to the album, the roar of a twin-engine aircraft hints to listeners that they are dealing with air drama. One side of the disc is occupied by the composition "Taurus II", in which folk motifs and folk instruments with the latest vocoders.

The album "Discovery" was recorded on the shores of Lake Geneva, at an altitude of 2000 meters. A young singer Maggie Reilly appeared on the disc, whose performance was enthusiastically received by experts. The compositions "To France" and "Tricks Of The Light" did not go unnoticed, but the hit song "Moonlight Shadow" was especially successful. “This is a kind of light of my youth, when the life of an unknown amateur was a continuous crisis,” Oldfield himself said then in an interview about this album.

And in the same interview: "The melodious thematic simplicity of this LP is due to my tendency to play in an archaic manner." What did this stylistic turn mean? A new zigzag in his work? A prearranged surprise? Or a real crisis of the author? The failure of almost all of his subsequent albums and concert tours testified, rather, to the latter. The Islands album has a decent lengthy instrumentation of The Wind Chimes, but it also has a lot of pop with vocalists Max Bacon (of GTR), Kevin Ayres and Bonnie Tyler. high quality perhaps only the disc "Amarok" differed, which contained one hour-long composition in sound and was recorded using exotic instruments.

Oldfield's accomplishments in the 1990s included a successful tour of Scotland in the summer of 1992 and the release of the Tubular Bells II album, made with the help of Trevor Horn, which went platinum within a week of its release. His music is a hybrid between the "old" Oldfield from the Bells period and the Amarok LP. In the mid-90s, Mike released two quite successful albums - "Songs of Distant Earth" and "Voyager". However, a little later it turned out that the theme of “bells” in Oldfield’s work had not been exhausted at all - in 1998 the grandiose “Tubular Bells III” followed, and a year later, the no less pompous “The Millennium Bell”, between which the chamber “Guitars” managed to wedge (1999). When The Best Of Tubular Bells was released in 2001, it caused nothing but chuckles from critics.

1973 - Tubular Bells
1974 Hergest Ridge
1975 – The Orchestral Tubular Bells
1975 - Ommadawn
1976 - Orchestral Hergest Ridge
1978 - Incantations
1979 - Platinum
1980 - QE2
1982 - Five Miles Out
1983 Crises
1984 - Discovery
1987 - Islands
1989 - Earth Moving
1990 - Amarok
1991 Heaven's Open
1992 - Tubular Bells II
1994 – The Songs of Distant Earth
1996 - Voyager
1998 - Tubular Bells III
1999 – Guitars
1999 - The Millennium Bell
2002 – Tr3s Lunas
2003 - Tubular Bells 2003
2005 - Light & Shade
2006 - New Times
2007 - The Music Of The Spheres

1984 The Killing Fields

1992 - Tubular Bells II. (Concert in Edinburgh.)
1998 - Tubular Bells III (Live in London)
2000 - The Millennium Bell (Live in Berlin)
2005 - Live at Montreux, 1981
2006 - Exposed

Biography

Early career. Sallyangie, Barefoot, The Whole World.

Michael Gordon Oldfield was born on May 15, 1953 in Reading, England. His parents are of Irish descent, Catholics. Fascinated by playing the guitar, Mike began writing music and performing at local folk clubs at the age of 10. At the age of 14, Mike left school and, together with his sister Sally, formed the folk duo Sallyangie.

The band recorded several singles and the album Children of the sun, followed by a small concert tour. The duo broke up and Mike organized new group- Barefoot, which also lasted less than a year. In 1969, Mike joins Kevin Ayers and group The Whole World as a guitarist. The group also included David Bedford, who later became Mike's collaborator in his solo career.

The beginning of a solo career. 70s

AT The Whole World Mike has worked on four albums. In 1971, the group disbanded and Oldfield began his solo career.

The album, released in 1974, immediately topped the charts and proved that Mike Oldfield was not a one-night stand. The name of the record comes from the name of the area on the coast of Wales. The album turned out to be more mature in content, but lost some novelty and originality. Sales were comparatively disappointing. Interesting fact- Hergest Ridge was Oldfield's first album to top the UK charts. While Tubular Bells took only second place in the year of release. And only after the release of his follower Tubular Bells topped the chart for a week. Mike became the third musician in the world, after Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, to displace himself from the first place in the British charts. In total, Tubular Bells stayed on the British chart for 247(!) weeks.

It was then that Mike surprised the music press and his fans with short hair and an earring in his right ear. Then he gave some pretty aggressive interviews. So Mike changed and to prove it he went on tour with over 100 musicians. Although nearly every concert sold out, the tour was unprofitable and ended with £100,000 in debt. Fragments of this tour were included in the double album Exposed.

Released in 1979, Platinum was a new concept by Mike Oldfield - a long instrumental track on the first side of the record and four light songs on the other.

For the first time, Mike also used compositions by other musicians - "North Star" by Philip Glass and I Got Rhythm by Gershwin. This was followed by a Platinum tour accompanied by 11 people.

Oldfield's career in the 80s

In 1980, the next disc of the composer Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) was released, which quickly became "gold".

The album did not contain a long instrumental composition that filled the entire side of the record. Taurus I is the longest track on the disc - less than 10 minutes. Again, compositions by other musicians were presented - Arrival (ABBA) and Wonderful Land (The Shadows). In March 1981 Mike goes on a new European tour, accompanied by 5 musicians. In each country, some national tune was included in the concert - "O Sole Mio" (Livorno, Italy), "Blue Danube" (Vienna) and "The Royal Wedding Anthem" in Portsmouth and London. In London, Mike was awarded the title of "Honorary Citizen of London".

After such experiments, Mike abruptly changes course and turns to symphonic music - in 2008, the album Music Of The Spheres is released, in which Carl Jenkins took part. In 2009, this work took 1st place in the UK Classical Chart, and was nominated for the best album of the year Classical BRIT Awards!

On June 8, the collector's edition of Tubular Bells was released in 4 various versions with limited edition.

2010s.

Mike Oldfield has been living in the Bahamas since 2009 with his wife Fanny, whom he married in 2003. From Mike, Fanny had two children - Jake and Eugene.

On June 4 and 7, 2010, re-releases of Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn were also released in 4 different versions, remixed by Oldfield himself.

On July 25, 2011, the Incantations album was re-released in 3 different versions (including vinyl).

In an interview with the BBC in July 2011, Mike Oldfield stated that he does not rule out the possibility of a new album and concerts, but it is too early to talk about anything specific.

Mike Gordon Oldfield (born May 15, 1953 in Reading, Berkshire) is an English multi-instrumentalist and composer who works in a wide variety of genres: progressive and art rock, electronic music, folk, Celtic music. The latest albums feature standalone club-style dance tracks. Critics consider the concept album Tubular Bells, released in 1973, to be the main work of Mike Oldfield. It was the first record released on the newly formed label Virgin Records.

This album turned out to be technically more mature, expressive and powerful than Tubular Bells, but it lost that basic naivety and charm that distinguished The Bells. Oldfield again showed a peculiar ability to paint very green, brushed-up and very English musical landscapes. Again, a couple of themes, with rather banal harmonies, simple rhythms and arrangements. Enchanting melodies flow endlessly and unhindered. All the magic of Oldfield is here - in the combination of sounds, electric with acoustic, keyboards with strings, upper octaves with bass, as well as an effective, sometimes sophisticated use of choirs and percussion. The scenes change slowly and unhurriedly, and the uniform legato of the musical base ensures that the alternating leading instruments tend towards monotony.

It is hard to imagine that ordinary rock music could generate such interest. And "The Bells", for example, has a much more fatal basis than, say, "The Lonely Hearts Club" or "The Bridge" mentioned above. Each reviewer respects the success of Oldfield, but opinions and assessments differ significantly. And can the Bells really be considered “the best album of the world's popular music”, as it followed from the New Musical Express reader's questionnaire?

"Borrowing nothing from the famous classics and not leaning towards the echoes, sobs and gurgles of the stubborn avant-garde, Mike Oldfield has created music that combines logic and surprise, sunshine with rain," wrote John Peel, the most famous English radio disc jockey, willingly losing to Zappa and Tchaikovsky.

After another bout of seclusion, the young composer and multi-instrumentalist, who was only 26 years old, moved to London at the end of 1978 and released the double album Incantations, on which he placed special hopes. To his characteristic layered overlay of instrumentals, he added former Steeleye Span vocalist Maddie Pryor, who performed Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha". Reviewers found echoes of Ravel and Debussy in the album's music, with a delivery more modest than that of Yes, ELP or Moody Blues, but as attractive as that of Keith Jarrett. In addition, for Christmas, Oldfield released a new illustrated edition of The Bells, in February 1979, in a New York studio with the participation of a local rhythm section, he recorded the disco single "I'm Guilty" and took part in the creation of his sister Sally's debut album. . He continued to work on film scores and released a "live" double "Exposed".

The Platinum album, which marked a more simplistic approach, contained a parody of the punk Punkadiddle, which was contrasted on the other side of the record with a reworking of the Irish jig. Commercial success was consolidated by the next disc "Queen Elizabeth II", which became "gold" immediately after the release, and intensive touring in early 1981. The extent of the musician's recognition is evidenced by the fact that he was elected an honorary citizen of London for his music and charitable activities, the second fatal musician after Paul McCartney he got into the famous publication "Who's Who".

A musician of a synthetic warehouse, Oldfield in the 70s became his own for the supporters of "easy listening", and was also highly appreciated by authors and performers of serious symphonic music. This is an extremely rare coincidence. But at the very time when his early works were still pleasing numerous admirers, the composer abruptly changed course.

“If yesterday's music can be called very melodic, then Oldfield's current creations seem rather simplified and generally understandable,” critics assessed the musical orientation of the Crises and Discovery albums. Since the recording of these discs, former Free members Phil Spaulding and Paul Rogers, famed drummers Morris Perth and Pierre Merlin, bassist Rick Farne and keyboardist Tim Cross have joined Oldfield. On the CRISES album, Oldfield laid out the old true trump cards - multi-instrumentalism and studio tricks. The same disc showed how closely airplanes were intertwined in his life - after all, it has been eight years since Oldfield entered into ongoing legal battles with the British Air Force, which began building a noisy airfield near his home. Already in the introduction to the album, the roar of a twin-engine aircraft hints to the listeners that they are dealing with an aerial drama. One side of the disc is occupied by the composition "Taurus II", which alternates folk motifs and folk instruments with the latest vocoders.

And in the same interview: "The melodious thematic simplicity of this LP is due to my tendency to play in an archaic manner." What did this stylistic turn mean? A new zigzag in his work? A prearranged surprise? Or a real crisis of the author? The failure of almost all of his subsequent albums and concert tours testified, rather, to the latter. The Islands album has a decent lengthy instrumentation of The Wind Chimes, but it also has a lot of pop with vocalists Max Bacon (of GTR), Kevin Ayres and Bonnie Tyler. Perhaps only the Amarok disc was of high quality, which contained one hour-long composition in sound and was recorded using exotic instruments.

Mike OldfieldMike Oldfield- An English multi-instrumentalist musician working in various musical directions, such as: electronic music, progressive rock, folk, world, etc. Not distinguished by his particular virtuosity of playing and innovative ideas, Oldfield nevertheless made a huge contribution to the development of many genres and subgenres of music of the twentieth century, decorating it with its solid creative heritage.

The most significant in Oldfield's discography is the first album "Tubular Bells", released in 1973. An absolute masterpiece, recognized as the best album of the year, the disc is still listened to in one breath, despite the concept and the presence of only two long compositions. Prior to the release of his debut album, Mike Oldfield did not particularly distinguish himself, except that in 1969 he recorded the most enjoyable disc “Children of the Sun” with his sister Sally. But fame suddenly and irrevocably fell on the 20-year-old musician precisely with the release of Tubular Bells.

Hergest Ridge (1974), released a year later, also featured two large-scale compositions. This and the follow-up album Ommadawn (1975) are made in a similar vein, very melodic, deep and capable of decorating the most serious record library. The only thing that darkens the impression from these discs is the recording of all the instruments on the overlay. Oldfield performed all the parts, with the exception of the brass ones, by himself alone.

After a strong debut in the form of three wonderful albums, Mike Oldfield takes a short break and comes to his senses, living in the countryside. And three years later he returns to the big stage with a large-scale double "Incantations" (1978). Only four long compositions on two records confirmed the ambitions of the young multi-instrumentalist to compose serious music, but, unfortunately, the popularity of this work was not so significant compared to the previous ones. Oldfield goes on his first tour, after which he decides to simplify his approach to music a little. The next several albums demonstrate short compositions, the presence of cover versions and "lightweight" arrangements.

As expected, in the eighties, the musician's work moved away from progressive rock and as close as possible to pop music. Despite this, sales of his albums did not fall at all from this. During this period, folk ethnic motifs often slip through his compositions, and singer Maggie Reilly most often performs vocal parts.

Having safely passed a difficult period for serious music, in 1990 Mike Oldfield released a curious instrumental album "Amarok", which consisted of one 60-minute composition, and two years later "Tubular Bells II" appeared. Of course, it is not worth comparing this disc with the debut album of 1973, but the work turned out to be quite strong. It should be noted that the progressive component in the work of Mike Oldfield has greatly decreased compared to the mid-seventies. On the later albums of the musician, the new age style often dominates.

In 1998, "Tubular Bells III" was released - a work in its sound that goes even further from the debut disc than "Tubular Bells II". There is a discography of the musician and purely electronic albums, reminiscent of Space, Tangerine Dream and similar bands.

The last studio album of the multi-instrumentalist was released in 2008 under the name "Music of the Spheres". The most magnificent neoclassical work, which showed everyone that Mike Oldfield is not as simple as it might seem. The disc is made in best traditions latest albums former member The Soft Machine by Karl Jenkins, who produced "Music of the Spheres" and orchestrated the songs.

It is generally accepted that Mike Oldfield created his work in splendid isolation, playing all the instruments, for which he received the nickname "The Wizard of a Thousand Overdubs", but this was not always the case. When recording his later albums, a number of various musicians were often involved, because the main instruments of Oldfield himself have always been and remain the guitar and keyboards.