Mike Oldfield
Michael Gordon Oldfield is a retired English musician, songwriter and producer best known for his debut album Tubular Bells, which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield played a range of instruments, which included keyboards and percussion, as well as vocals. He had adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient and new age music. His discography includes 25 studio albums, nine of which have reached the UK top ten.
Oldfield took up the guitar at age ten and left school in his teens to embark on a music career. From 1967 to 1970, he and his sister Sally Oldfield were a folk duo, the Sallyangie, after which he performed with Kevin Ayers before starting work on Tubular Bells in 1971. The album caught the attention of Richard Branson, who agreed to make it the first-ever release on his new label Virgin Records. Its opening was used in the horror film The Exorcist, and the album went on to sell over 2.7 million copies in the UK. Oldfield followed it with Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn and Incantations. Like Tubular Bells, these albums consist of longform, mostly instrumental pieces.
In the late 1970s, Oldfield began to tour and release more commercial and song-based music, beginning with Platinum, QE2 and Five Miles Out. His most successful album of this period was Crises, which features the worldwide hit single "Moonlight Shadow," with the vocalist Maggie Reilly. After leaving Virgin and signing with WEA, the 1990s saw him release Tubular Bells II and Tubular Bells III among other albums, and he experimented with virtual reality and gaming content with his MusicVR project. In 2012, Oldfield performed at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, while 2017 saw the release of his final album, Return to Ommadawn. Oldfield's label announced his retirement in 2023.
Early life
Michael Gordon Oldfield was born in Reading, Berkshire, on 15 May 1953, to Raymond Henry Oldfield, an English general practitioner, and Maureen, an Irish nurse from Charleville, County Cork, who emigrated to England to pursue career in nursing. Oldfield has two elder siblings, sister Sally and brother Terence. In 1959, when Oldfield was six, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, David, who had Down syndrome. The parents dropped off David in an institution and lied to Mike, Sally and Terence that the baby had died in infancy. His mother was prescribed barbiturates, to which she became addicted, and developed mental health problems. She spent much of the rest of her life in mental institutions and died in early 1975, shortly after Oldfield had started writing Ommadawn. Oldfield attended Highlands Junior School, followed by St. Edward's Preparatory School and Presentation College, all in Reading. When he was thirteen, the family moved to Harold Wood, Essex, and Oldfield attended Hornchurch Grammar School where, having already displayed musical talent, he earned one GCE qualification in English.Oldfield took up the guitar aged ten, first learning on a 6-string acoustic which his father had given to him. He learned technique by copying parts from songs, by folk guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, that he played on a portable record player. He tried to learn musical notation but was a "very, very slow" learner, saying: "If I have to, I can write things down. But I don't like to." By the time he was twelve, Oldfield played the electric guitar and performed in local folk and youth clubs and dances, earning as much as £4 per gig. During a six-month break from music that Oldfield had around this time, he took up painting. In May 1968, when Oldfield turned fifteen, his school headmaster requested that he cut his long hair. Oldfield refused, left abruptly and never returned. It was at this point when he decided to pursue music on a full-time, professional basis.
Career
1968–1972: Early career
After leaving school Oldfield accepted an invitation from his sister Sally to form a folk duo the Sallyangie, taking its name from her name and Oldfield's favourite Jansch tune, "Angie". They toured England and Paris and signed a deal with Transatlantic Records, for which they recorded one album, Children of the Sun. After they split in the following year Oldfield had a nervous breakdown. He auditioned as bassist for Family in 1969 following the departure of Ric Grech, but the group did not share Roger Chapman's enthusiasm towards Oldfield's performance. Oldfield spent much of the next year living off his father and performing in an electric rock band named Barefoot that included his brother Terry on flute, until the group disbanded in early 1970.In February 1970, Oldfield auditioned to become the bassist in the Whole World, a new backing band that former Soft Machine vocalist Kevin Ayers was putting together. He landed the position despite the bass being a new instrument for him, but he also played occasional lead guitar and later looked back on this time as providing valuable training on the bass. Oldfield went on to play on Ayers's albums Shooting at the Moon and Whatevershebringswesing, and played mandolin on Edgar Broughton Band. All three albums were recorded at Abbey Road Studios, where Oldfield familiarised himself with a variety of instruments, such as orchestral percussion, piano, Mellotron and harpsichord, and started to write and put down musical ideas of his own. While doing so Oldfield took up work as a reserve guitarist in a stage production of Hair at the Shaftesbury Theatre, where he played and gigged with Alex Harvey. After ten performances Oldfield grew bored of the job and was fired after he decided to play his part for "Let the Sunshine In" in 7/8 time.
1971–1991: Virgin years
''Tubular Bells''
By mid-1971, Oldfield had assembled a demo tape containing sections of a longform instrumental piece initially titled "Opus One". Attempts to secure a recording deal to record it professionally came to nothing. In September 1971, Oldfield, now a session musician and bassist for the Arthur Louis Band, attended recording sessions at The Manor Studio at Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, owned by businessman Richard Branson and run by engineers Tom Newman and Simon Heyworth. Branson already had several business ventures and was about to launch Virgin Records with Simon Draper. Newman and Heyworth heard some of Oldfield's demos and took them to Branson and Draper, who eventually gave Oldfield one week of recording time at The Manor, after which Oldfield had completed what became "Part One" of his composition, Tubular Bells. He recorded "Part Two" mostly at night in the studio downtime, from February to April 1973. Branson agreed to release Tubular Bells as the first record on the Virgin label and secured Oldfield a six-album deal with an additional four albums as optional.Tubular Bells was released on 25 May 1973. Oldfield played more than twenty different instruments in the multi-layered recording, and its style moved through diverse musical genres. Its 2,760,000 UK sales puts it at No. 42 on the list of the best-selling albums in the country. The title track became a top-10 hit single in the US after the opening was used in the film The Exorcist in 1973. It is today considered to be a forerunner of the new-age music movement.
''Hergest Ridge'' to ''Incantations''
In 1974, Oldfield played the guitar on the critically acclaimed album Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt.In late 1974, his follow-up LP, Hergest Ridge, was No. 1 in the UK for three weeks before being dethroned by Tubular Bells. Although Hergest Ridge was released over a year after Tubular Bells, it reached No. 1 first. Tubular Bells spent 11 weeks at No. 2 before its one week at the top. Like Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge is a two-movement instrumental piece, this time evoking scenes from Oldfield's Herefordshire country retreat. It was followed in 1975 by the pioneering world music piece Ommadawn released after the death of his mother, Maureen.
In 1975, Oldfield recorded a version of the Christmas piece "In Dulci Jubilo" which charted at No. 4 in the UK.
In 1975, Oldfield received a Grammy award for Best Instrumental Composition in "Tubular Bells – Theme from The Exorcist".
In 1976, Oldfield and his sister joined his friend and band member Pekka Pohjola to play on his album Mathematician's Air Display, which was released in 1977. The album was recorded and edited at Oldfield's Througham Slad Manor in Gloucestershire by Oldfield and Paul Lindsay. Oldfield's 1976 rendition of "Portsmouth" remains his best-performing single on the UK Singles Chart, reaching No. 3.
Oldfield recorded the double album Incantations between December 1977 and September 1978. This introduced more diverse choral performances from Sally Oldfield, Maddy Prior and the Queen's College Girls Choir. When it was released on 1 December 1978, the album went to No. 14 in the UK and reached platinum certification for 300,000 copies sold.
In 1979, Oldfield supported Incantations with a European tour that spanned 21 dates between March and May 1979. The tour was documented with the live album and concert film, Exposed. Initially marketed as a limited pressing of 100,000 copies, the strength of sales for the album were strong enough for Virgin to abandon the idea shortly after, transferring it to regular production. During the tour Oldfield released the disco-influenced non-album single "Guilty", for which he went to New York City to find the best session musicians and write a song with them in mind. He wrote a chord chart for the song and presented it to the group, who completed it in the studio. Released in April 1979, the song went to No. 22 in the UK and Oldfield performed the song on the national television show Top of the Pops.
Oldfield's music was used for the score of The Space Movie, a Virgin Films production that celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. In 1979, he recorded a version of the signature tune for the BBC children's television programme Blue Peter, which was used by the show for 10 years.