[Trailer: VH-1 - "Greatest Hits"]
Hello! I'm Mike Oldfield and you're watching VH-1 and this is "Greatest Hits". And I'm going to introduce to you some of my videos which I like very much, first one of which is a track called "Let There Be Light".
This track was written along the lines of a book, science-fiction book by Arthur C. Clarke. It describes really the end of the Earth when the Sun becomes a supernova and I had a very enjoyable day in Sri Lanka with Arthur C. Clarke getting ideas for the music ... say, set the book to music.
And this video was filmed in Miami and it used one of the best computer-animation teams who generated all these strange creatures, stingrays and dragons, and ... I actually noticed that Meat Loaf stole my dragon for one of his videos. This video won a few awards and it's probably one of the best ones that I've been involved in making, so please enjoy it.
[Clip: "Let There Be Light" (Short Version)]
So, the next video is a track called "Man In The Rain" and it's filmed live, live concert. This was done last year in this very special place in London. It's called "Horse Guards Parade". And it's most famous for - once a year they have this ceremony with all these soldiers with big hats made up with bear skin and they march around on the Queen's Celebration. We were the first ever rock concert to be allowed to play in this venue, and ... of course, in England it rained. And my God, did it rain! It rained like you wouldn't believe. Best thing about is I remember seeing Richard Branson near the front row. He was completely wet and they wouldn't allow any umbrellas and the rain was dripping off his beard and was pouring all over everywhere and we just happened to bescene this song called "Man In The Rain" and it was just perfect: "Man In The Rain", rain ... it was a good night!
[Clip: "Man In The Rain"]
The next video is a track called "Pictures In The Dark". What happened was - sort of mid-80's - I got involved in video-making, and it was right at the beginning of computer-animation and the machines were very primitive then and I had my own video studio. This video was the first one I ever made and although it ... now it looks very old-fashioned, it doesn't look very good, but at the time it was great and I learnt how to edit videos myself, I did some of the camera work, I had my own bluescreen. I wanted to have a video studio and an audio studio next to each other and for a while I did that and "Pictures In The Dark" was the first video I ever made on this very primitive computer equipment.
[Clip: "Pictures In The Dark"]
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[Trailer: VH-1 - "Greatest Hits"]
Hello! This is Mike Oldfield and you're watching VH-1 and this is my "Greatest Hits". You probably remember a track called "Moonlight Shadow". At the time this video was made it was fashionable to do this kind of costume-period videos, so what we did is ... we hired this old haunted mansion somewhere in the middle of England and everybody had to dress up in costumes and there was a coach and horses riding around and people like being very sort of 18th century. I remember I had a duel with these pistols with this other person, I can't remember who it was. It actually wasn't anything like I had in mind for this track, but the video director had a big budget and they got all very creative and so we had to go and spend a whole day in this country house in London and ... I actually don't like this video very much, but you may as well watch it anyway.
[Clip: "Moonlight Shadow" (Full Version)]
This next track is called "Islands" which was one of those tracks which I called my "problem track". I made three, four versions of it, all with different singers, I worked for three months on this one track and I tried it this way, that way, up, down, backwards, forewards, took it apart, made it again, I still haven't got this track right, you know. Still ... it's pretty good, but I do remember I had this idea: 'Maybe we need a rocky voice to sing it' and I thought "Perhaps we can get Bonnie Tyler?" And then ... you know, behold, three days later in walks Bonnie Tyler into the studio and for the moment she put the microphone to her mouth and started singing I just went: "Ooaaahh!! It's great!!" We did a lot of TV shows with this track and this was a video, it was made for this track, the first and only time I'd used real dancers. They were supposed to be naked, but they weren't allowed to be naked, so they had to wear bodysuits which actually would have looked better naked than wearing bodysuits. It's a pretty good video ... enjoy it!
[Clip: "Islands" (elements)]
Well, I hope you enjoyed that. These were my "Greatest Hits" on video up until now. I think the future I will be working on more virtual reality interactive type of video which you will be able to download from the internet, something like that. I already did a lot of work on this. But this is something for the future and that was my past. Thank you for watching!
[Clip: "To France"]
Notice: The "Greatest Hits" broadcast on 09/05/2000 was a shortened version. The original show included "Innocent", "Earth Moving" und "Five Miles Out" as well.
