1979-1984 Band on the road

Although he is a master of the recording studio, live performance has played an important part in Mike's artistic life. Having been through therapy in the late 1970s, he felt ready to take a large group of musicians on the road. This resulted in the live set, Exposed.

The first Mike Oldfield tour took place in 1979 It began almost six years after Tubular Bells were released. The lavish show was performed by an orchestra and chorus of 50 musicians. There was a crew of 25 roadies and technicians and three articulated lorries full of equipment. Among the performers were Maddy Prior (performing the sequence from Longfellow's poem Hiawatha included in Incantations), guitarists Phil Beer and Nico Ramsden and Pierre Moerlen with his brother Benoit on percussion. The troupe also included two traditional folk musicians, Robin Morton and Ringo McDonough, as well as members of the Queens College Girls Choir. There was also a visual dimension incorporating films specially made by lan Eames.

The tour opened in Madrid and Barcelona where Mike and the musicians performed Incantations and Tubular Bells to what one journalist called "an audience of 30000 frenzied young Spaniards". There were 11 further concerts in Belgium, France, Holland and Germany which were a success with critics and audiences alike. In August, Virgin released Exposed, a double live album recorded during the tour. In later years, Mike revealed that the tour itself had been a financial disaster.

In the spring of 1980, Mike formed an eleven-piece group for a 40-date tour of Europe with a show featuring material from Platinum. Its members included saxophonist Bimbo Acock, Pierre Moerlen and vocalist Wendy Roberts. Ian Eames again provided film sequences for back projection including a shimmering seascape in which a glider soared and turned. The live shows culminated at the Knebworth Festival in July. After flying in by helicopter, he was second on the bill to The Beach Boys and Lindisfarne: Santana also performed. The excellence of Mike's musicianship won over the Record Mirror reviewer, who wrote "the sound was crystal clear, highlighting the new colour and shading of his arrangements." In keeping with the new emphasis on lighter aspects of his work he issued two cover versions as singles in the autumn of 1980, The first was Arrival, a tongue-in-cheek salute to Abba, one of the new pop bands which had pushed progressive rock away from centre stage in the pop scene. This was followed by a more wholehearted tribute. Wonderful Land was a revival of a 1962 tune by The Shadows whose leader Hank Marvin had been an inspiration to all junior guitarists of Oldfield's generation.

It is ironic that many people who do not know his work well look upon Mike as primarily a keyboard player. His main instrument is in fact the guitar. His guitar work has many references to the styles of John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, two acoustic instrumentalists who were an early influence on him. He spent many hours analysing and learning their music and through this process he developed a formidable guitar technique. As an electric guitar player Mike can stand comparison to the best England has produced.

Both Arrival and Wonderful Land appeared on QE2, an album in the mould of Platinum This time the title track took up side one of the album and reappeared as a finale at the end of side two. QE2 was co-produced with engineer David Hentschel who had prevously worked with Genesis, Hentschel told an interviewer, "I've aways loved Mike's stuff. All his ideas were fresh to me and all mine fresh to him. It was all great fun and I believe it's got to be fun if you want to do a really good job." The contributing musicians on QE2 included Phil Collins on drums, Rick Fenn (guitar) and singer Maggie Reilly. The former vocalist with the Scottish soul/rock band Cado Belle, Reilly was to remain an important member of the Oldfield team for the next five years.

The reviews for QE2 were mixed, with even some of Mike's strongest supporters in the press believing he was "marking time" rather than presenting new ideas. However, Mike's fans among the music paper readership struck back. One wrote to Record Mirror to attack "the critics who have not an inkling of his true greatness. In 50 years' time, his music will still be listened to and enjoyed."

Touring was now becoming an annual event. The 1981 tour of Europe and Britain was made by a much smaller band whose nucleus was Maggie Reilly, Tim Cross (keyboards), Rick Fenn (bass) and percussionists Morris Pert and Mike Frye.

If his more recent albums were no longer heading the charts, the phenomenal success of Tubular Bells continued In July 1981, Virgin announced that the ten-millionth copy of Tubular Bells had been sold, In the same month, Mike played a "free concert" as part of the City of London celebrations of the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. In recognition of this and his "services to exports" he was Later awarded the freedom of the City of London. Earlier he had joined such luminaries as Billy Idol, Phil Lynott and Noddy Holder as a judge for a national pop group talent contest,

To end a year in which it seemed that Mike had become part of the establishment, he was included in Who's Who, the exclusive guide to Britain's "top people": the only pop musician to appear there apart from Paul McCartney. When asked why Mike Oldfield had been chosen for the book, a Who's Who staff member said she wasn't too certain, "but he is someone everyone has heard of, isn't he?"

In his Who's Who entry, Mike listed his recreations as "aviation (light aircraft, helicopters)". He had gained his pilot's licence in 1979, and a flying incident a year later provided the inspiration for the title song of the 1982 album Five Miles Out. In August 1980, Mike was piloting a two-engined Piper Navajo over the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain when the aircraft was caught in a thunderstorm. "We were tossed about like a pancake and there was ice collecting on the propellers and rain on the windscreen and everybody was going aaargh!" he told an interviewer. The incident was also commemorated in a painting specially commissioned by Mike from a renowned aviation artist.

Like Platinum and QE2, Five Miles Out combined one long track with a series of individual songs. The long piece was Taurus II which included contributions from piper Paddy Moloney and a morris dance team. Among the songs was a highly contemporary pop tune, Family Man with vocals by Maggie Reilly. When it was issued as a single Family Man only got to the lower reaches of the UK charts. The next year, however, a version by Daryl Hall and John Oates was a Top 10 hit in America.

Family Man was an early example of another musical form which Mike has challenged himself to work within Moonlight Shadow, Family Man, Shadow On The Wall, Five Miles Out and Islands are very much pop songs but again they make use of dynamic change and texture.

Much of the Five Miles Out album vas recorded at a studio installed at Mike's home in Buckinghamshire. The house was chosen because of its easy access to London and to a local airfield from which Mike could fly his planes.

Five Miles Out was Mike's biggest UK hit since Ommadawn, and its success was achieved despite the fact that the reviews in the music press were turning negative. His single Mistake was dismissed by one writer as "mid-70s stadium rock" while another critic complained that "Oldfield still fiddles with himself for no conceivable rhyme nor reason." But Mike gave as good as he got. Asked for his "pet hates" by the New Musical Express, he replied, "I probably hate your decrepit newspaper more than anythng else in the world." He also told the NME that his favourite film was 2001: A Space Odyssey and his heroes were Sibelius and Captain Kirk (of the television series Star Trek).

In 1982 Mike undertook his biggest tour to date, playing in both Europe and North America. For the world tour he formed a new group which featured Maggie Reilly and ex-Gong drummer Pierre Moerlen with two keyboard players. A London concert was reviewed sympathetically by Ray Coleman in the Daily Express who described the audience as "young married couples who want to sit comfortably and absorb music for a night out".

May 1983 was the tenth anniversary of the release of Tubular Bells. Mike himself issued his eighth album, Crises and played a major concert in July at Wembley in London. His backing group for the Wembley gig included drummer Simon Phillips and Phil Spalding, the former bass player with Toyah.

Crises was the first recording made with Simon Phillips as co-producer. Its vocalists included Jon Anderson of Yes and Roger Chapman formerly of Family (on Shadow On The Wall) as well as Maggie Reilly. The outstanding track was Moonlight Shadow. Sung by Maggie Reilly it was widely understood to be a tribute to the late John Lennon and it became Mike's most successful single since Portsmouth seven years earlier.

1984 was one of the busiest years in his career. It began with the news that a donation of £300 from Mike to the town of Presteigne in the Welsh border country near his former home where Hergest Ridge had been written. The money was to pay for the town's church bell to be rung every night in compliance with the terms of a 1565 will of a local wool merchant.

His professional activities in 1984 included the release of a new album, a 50-concert European tour and the preparation of his first full-length film score. The film music was for The Killing Fields, Roland Joffe's highly-praised movie about the Cambodian civil wars Mike found it hard to compose for such a "harrowing and emotional film". To compose the music he used a video synchroniser linked to his Fairlight synthesiser. Much of the score was based around ethnic music from Cambodia. The haunting theme Etude, adapted from a piece by Francisco Tarrega, was issued as a single in December.

The 1984 album Discovery was the first to be made by Mike outside England. He built a studio in a house 2000 metres up on a Swiss mountainside overlooking Lake Geneva where, with Phillips, he co-produced a new selection of songs with an instrumental entitled The Lake. This time the vocals were shared between Maggie Reilly and a newcomer, Barry Palmer. Among the songs was To France, inspired by the life of Mary Queen of Scots. Although only moderately successful in the UK, To France was a big hit across Europe.

By now Mike's abilities as a rock guitarist were bringing him a new following among heavy metal fans. In the metal magazine Kerrang!, veteran journalist Chris Welch enthusiastically quoted the ancient Greek writer Thucydides in praise of Discovery: "For we are the lovers of the beautiful yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness."

Music from Discovery was strongly featured in the programme of the 1984 European tour by what had become a house band featuring Maggie Reilly, Simon Phillips, Phil Spalding and Barry Palmer.