1953-1971 Learning the game

Michael Gordon Oldfield was born in the town of Reading, England on May 15, 1953. His father, Raymond, was a doctor who owned a guitar acquired while serving in the Royal Air Force in Egypt during World War II. Mike remembers that his father "used to play the guitar every Christmas Eve, singing the only song he knew, Danny Boy". Mike also attributed his early interest in music to the virtuoso guitarist Bert Weedon: "I saw him on television when I was seven and immediately persuaded my father to buy me my first guitar. In fact, if it wasn't for Bert I might never have taken it up in the first place." The Oldfields turned out to be a musical family. Mike's older brother Terry later became a composer of film and television music and his sister Sally went on to be a professional singer.

By the age of ten, Mike was already composing instrumental pieces on acoustic guitar. The guitar was more than just an instrument to him. It was a way out of a family situation that was harrowing and had in many ways cut him off from the world at large.

Throughout the previous decade there had been a very healthy acoustic music scene in England. The music was performed at the many folk clubs opened during this period. It was at the local folk club that the young Mike Oldfield began to gain the sense that his musical ideas might have a wider audience.

"I used to have two fifteen minute instrumentals which l'd play at the local folk clubs in which I would go through all sorts of moods", he recalled. "I even did bits of detuning the strings totally and playing and bending the strings around the neck and doing all kinds of stuff. The minute I came home from school the entire weekend would be spent practising and playing guitar." He was also getting involved with electric music, playing instrumental pieces by The Shadows in an amateur beat group.

When Mike was 13 the Oldfield family moved to Romford in Essex. In 1967 he left school and with his sister Sally formed Sallyangie, a folk voice and guitar duo. They were signed up by the Transatlantic record label which issued the album "Children Of The Sun" in 1968 and a single Two Ships in 1969. At this stage, Mike's guitar playing was strongly influenced by the "folk baroque" style popularised by John Renbourn and Bert Jansch.

After a year, Sallyangie came to an end. Mike turned back to rock music, forming a short-lived group called Barefoot. This led to a job as bass player with Kevin Ayers & the Whole World. Ayers had been a founder member of Soft Machine but left the group in 1968. The following year he made a solo album "Joy Of A Toy", forming a touring band in March 1970. Among the members of the Whole World was David Bedford on keyboards. A classically-trained composer, Bedford became close friends with Mike, encouraging him in his composition of an early version of "Tubular Bells". While touring with the Whole World, Mike came into contact with Centipede, a very large jazz orchestra led by Keith Tippett. The range of instruments involved was one influence on the multi-instrumental character that Mike later gave to his own compositions.

Kevin Ayers & the Whole World made two albums, "Shooting At The Moon" and "Whatevershebringswesing" before splitting up in August 1971. By now Mike was playing lead guitar and his proficient solos with Kevin Ayers were already gaining him a reputation as a master musician. He later described his own stage performance with the Ayers band. "I would do an electric guitar solo and depending on how pissed I was, I used to let it feed back and do somersaults all over the floor".