DarkFeline
Group: Members
Posts: 144
Joined: Oct. 2005 |
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Posted: Mar. 30 2007, 09:21 |
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Some video clips of Mike being interevied in Later with Jools Holland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcCGmKGahY (Part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mO5SNs1qWM (Part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVYNA_KCxjM (Part 3)
And for informational purposes, I took a bit under an hour to type up a transcript of this 4-minute interview. It can be put on Tubular.net or your own website. I was thinking of Wikipedia. Some parts aren't clear and might contain errors, so please forgive me for that.
JH: Well there we are then please now welcome a man that celebrates 25 years of Tubular Bells, Mr Mike Oldfield!
MO: [Quietly] Thank you.
JH: Welcome to say Mike, I got some routine inquiries and let's start of from the first piece you played from Tubular Bells 3, Serpent's Dream. What was the sort of inspiration from that?
Mo: Well you see I'm from the Chinese snake sign, and every seven years I kind of shed my skin and become something different and I always had a thing about snakes and I wanted to do a snakey piece of music and I was living in Ibiza at the time and I was working on my flamenco guitar playing and I always love the way that they clap. Y'know, the I-clap. [Mike claps and Jools Holland clap together] Well it's not exactly like that, it's something that goes "dagh-da-dagh-da-dagh-da".
JH: Think of baby claps right?
MO: I used to go to dinner and I would take my flamenco guitar along and play along, gradually this little tune evolved.
JH: You had a nice time in Ibiza?
MO: [Big sigh] You need a lot of stamina, and um by the end of it my liver begged me please get out of it.
JH: Now let's just go back, I believe you played in a duo with your sister, is that right?
MO: Yeap.
JH: And you played folk club in the 60s and then you were with Kevin Ayers.
MO: That's right I guess.
JH: And we got some footage of Kevin Ayers and you playing with him. Tell us a little about that time before we see the footage. Set the scene for us.
MO: I was 16 years old and I was looking for a job and I was actually a guitarist but the job was for a bass player and I though I can play bass and I got the job was a bass player.
JH: Let talk about that in a moment, let's see Kevin Ayers back in 1972.
[Clip of a young Kevin Ayers singing with a very hairy Mike, audience applauses.]
JH: That was a relatively short clip. Kevin was in the middle of course and you was the one with a beard.
MO: Yes I was the one with the hairy beard and I looked like a hairy old man, yeah.
JH: A beard at 16? Does that mean that...
MO: It's a fake one. I had to stick it on.
JH: Anyways, so then of course Richard Branson, he sort of organised the first record, and it was a huge success wasn't it?
MO: that's right yes. Well they were all getting the Manor House studio together, and that was the beginning of Virgin. they were getting this Manor House Studio together. Imagine this little hairy 16 year old was a pretty drunk by then cause Kevin kept giving me bottles of wine, turning up at the manor with my demo tape. As fortune would have it they liked my tapes. It took a year before I got to record Tubular Bells, and another year got success it all took a long time.
JH: You did start the show by playing, when did the tubular bells come from? Where did you first find it? Where did you first stumble across it?
MO: Actually I stumbled across in Abbey Road studios, cause when I was with Kevin we used to record in the same studio as the Beatles did and we would sort of do take be there on off days and early and this place would be as big as a studio with covered instruments and one of this instruments was tubular bells and I used to go around from instrument to instrument going "what does this do, what does this do?" I found the bells and like "BONG".
JH: 25 years of --- Tubular Bells, Tubular Bells 3 now, well I hope that we'll have you back here with 4 and 5... and 6.
JH: in the mean time...
MO: Can you play this?
[Plays opening notes of Tubular Bells.]
JH: No, but everyone knows that tune. Everyone knows that tune! Where did that tune come from?
MO: Well it's Bach's Toccata, it's the upside down version of that. See?
[Mike laughs, audience applause]
JH: there you go, never knew that! Now I tell you what. See, you see on this program, you learnt something! And we learnt where that very familiar piece of music came from.
MO: Thank you.
JH: Once again Mr Mike Oldfield!
Edit: Corrected mistake.
-------------- Who's your mummy, where she go?
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