manintherain
Group: Members.
Posts: 545
Joined: Mar. 2004 |
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Posted: June 02 2008, 17:09 |
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| Quote (moonchildhippy @ June 01 2008, 00:38) | About that Bells of Oldfield article, thanks for the scans MITR, but I found myself guessing at words, that would make sense as part of the text is chopped off. I'm wondering if the text could be made a little larger as it's a bit hard to read, makes my eyes go all sqiffy  . |
Just to make your eyes a little less sqiffy ...
July 21, 1973
The Bells of Oldfield
STILL APPARENTLY somewhat weary after the London performance of “Tubular Bells” — for which be selected and rehearsed a considerable number of prominent British musicians — Mike Oldfield perches on the edge of the sofa, staring into thin air and ruminating on the tiresome routine of trying to find somewhere to live.
As every interested spectator will know, Oldfield's first work as a solo musician has been one of the year's most remarkable achievements — not least due to the fact he accomplished something fresh within a sphere totally familiar to rock-conditioned senses.
Whatever had prompted him, I wondered, to write an almost wholly instrumental piece at a time when lyric content to some degree has become almost peremptory?
"I’ve always listened to instrumental music and very little vocal music, except for choral", he explains at a pitch only one decibel above a whisper.
"From the age of about ten, I was writing long instrumentals for acoustic guitar and recording them. Some of them are on the Transatlantic album I made with my sister which is very hard to get hold of. I’m so obsessed by them, although they're very complicated and I can't play them any more."
Oldfield explains that he first conceived the idea that led to "Tubular Bells" towards the end of his involvement with Kevin Ayers and The Whole World.
"When the group looked like it was going to break up completely, I got myself a tape recorder and borrowed an organ, funnily enough — although I had a few bits and pieces that I could use — when I switched on the organ the first thing I played was that sequence at the beginning. I built it up from there."
After completing a demo tape, Oldfield did the rounds of the major record companies, with conspicuous lack of success.
"I took it to Harvest, and to begin with they were very in¬terested, but something happened. Maybe somebody didn't like it or thought it was too big I a chance to take.
“Then I took it to CBS and they said it wasn't marketable. After that, I decided I wouldn't I go to any more, and got this call, forceful Scotsman to take it to WEA for me, Apparently they liked it but weren't too sure."
It was while on a visit to the Manor Studios, still under construction at the time, that the first hopes arose. The rehearsals of the group Oldfield was involved in were not going well and, in between catastrophes, he played the tape to the resident Virgin people who subsequently kept them for an entire year until their label had evolved.
He began the formal recording of "Tubular Bells" in September of last year in a climate of extreme caution.
"To start with, I had a whole week to myself, which was vaguely a trial period to see how it worked out We worked very hard that week and got most of the first side recorded and rough-mixed. They liked that, so things became a lot easier from then on."
Part of the ease lay in Oldfield becoming a resident at the Manor and simply utilising the studio when nobody else had booked it. By the time the mixing was completed, however, he could hardly focus properly on what he had done.
Did it still sound like some thing of substance to him, I inquire?
"Not at the very end", he mutters. "I was . . . ." Knackered, I suggest. "Yes, knackered", he smiles, "But I suppose it still sounded good in a way".
He need not have worried, of course, as amply evidenced by the reception the album received.
VIRGIN DECIDED to pro mote the release of "Bells' by organising a concert and Old¬field although reticent at first, agreed.
As far as selection of musicians was concerned, were they all personal friends who had offered their services as soon as the word was out, or was there a certain amount of elimination to be done?
"Mostly, it was a case of finding people who were capable of doing it. Steve Winwood had been recording at the Manor. I played it to him and he said he'd like to do it. He would've been very suitable, and I gave him the biggest part before it turned out that he couldn't make it.
"I was lucky in having met Henry Cow there; I engineered for them a couple of times and rubbed off a whole day's work in the process.
"It was also a question of getting musicians who could learn it quickly enough. I taught everybody their part individually, then got them all together for rehearsal.
"There was no doubt about whether they could do it, the only question was whether we'd be able to create any atmosphere. I know we did in the second half, I’m not sure about the first. I'm too frightened to listen to the recording of the concert.
"Mick Taylor was very good, he learnt it by ear, quicker than anybody else. And David Bedford was important because the piano was central in the music. He did a lot of work on his own, learning it off the. record. I only saw him a couple of times before the final rehearsal and he'd written it all out."
Bedford, a respected composer in the classical and avantgarde fields, has been commissioned to write a piece of music for electric and bass guitars which Taylor and Oldfield will perform at the Festival Hall some time next year.
HAD THE audience at Oldfield's own concert made their appreciation felt? "It's difficult to say," he replies. "Because I was very bound up in what was happening on stage. I'm sure I was conscious of an audience somewhere, but it was very bewildering when they actually began to applaud."
So "Tubular Bells", one assumes, is all over.
"Yes", he affirms rapidly. "When I find somewhere to live, I'm going to get another album going". Apart from one or two parts, it will again be largely instrumental, although Oldfield is well aware of the fact that he does not wish to produce a Tubular Bells Rides Again, however welcoming the market place might be to a Virtual facsimile.
"The ideas I've got at the moment are quite different", he explains, "I want the actual melodic structure of it to be more subtle and more continuous. I think the first side of the album was bitty and quite a lot of it was based on fairly ordinary rock patterns.
"The most important "part of the whole thing should've been the bit on the second side with just acoustic guitar and organ, but it didn't work because I wasn't in the, right frame of mind to do it properly. At the concert, that part was much closer to the mood I had intended".
"Still", he says by way of a post-mortem, "it's given me tremendous confidence. It's a good Start. I just hope I can keep going and get better. I don't know".
Mike Oldfield has got less to worry about than most.
AL CLARKE
Edited by manintherain on June 04 2008, 14:16
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, one of those quaint English type of words.