Mike Oldfield

Vinyl Discography:

Biography:

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and producer Mike Oldfield achieved international fame with the success of Tubular Bells, an eerie, album-length conceptual piece used to stunning effect in William Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist. Since then, it has sold some 16 million copies and has become an indelible mark in the history of popular instrumental music. Oldfield holds a special place in pop history, not only as his most famous composition but also as a bridge between progressive rock, new age, mainstream pop, and film music. His other recordings from the 1970s (Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Incantations) are widely regarded as progressive rock classics, featuring sounds ranging from Celtic folk and guitar rock to jazz, spidery funk, and neoclassical. Besides Tubular Bells, Oldfield's music has been used extensively in films. He composed the Golden Globe-nominated score for The Killing Fields in 1984, while selections from other recordings have been used in film, television, and video game soundtracks. In the 1980s and 1990s, he pursued a progressive pop direction with chart-topping albums including Five Miles Out, QE2, and Crises. The 1992 20th anniversary Tubular Bells II topped the UK charts. Oldfield's prog and jazz influences resurfaced in the 21st century on albums such as 1999's The Millennium Bell, 2003's Tubular Bells, 2007's Music of the Spheres, and 2017's Return to Ommadawn. To commemorate Tubular Bells' 50th anniversary, EMI released Opus One, the original Tubular Bells demos, as a standalone album in April 2023. In addition to his own recordings, Oldfield is a prolific session player and arranger. He has collaborated extensively with Kevin Ayers, David Bedford, Robert Wyatt, Sally Oldfield, Michel Polnareff and Edgar Broughton.

Oldfield was born in 1953 in Reading, Berkshire, the youngest of three children. His father, Henry, was a doctor, and his mother, Maureen, a nurse. His siblings, sister Sally Oldfield and brother Terry Oldfield, are also professional musicians. Oldfield was a child prodigy—he could pick up almost any instrument and figure out what he needed. From 1967 to 1970, he and Sally Oldfield played in a folk duo, the Sallyangie. After they split, he took a gig backing Kevin Ayers in 1971.

Tubular Bells was originally called Opus 1. It grew out of studio time he received from Richard Branson, who at the time was running a mail-order business. After completion, Oldfield sold the record to several labels, but was rejected. Frustrated, Branson founded his own label to release it, and in 1973, Tubular Bells became Virgin Records' first release. The 49-minute instrumental piece (performed on nearly 30 different instruments, almost all played by Oldfield) was an atmospheric, complex composition that fused rock and folk motifs with the structures of minimalist compositions. It spent months at number one on the UK charts, topped the US charts, and ultimately sold over 16 million copies. Tubular Bells not only almost single-handedly established Virgin as one of the most important labels in the recording industry, but also created a market for what would later be called new age music, winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 1974.

The follow-up, 1974's Hergest Ridge (named after Oldfield's retreat in a remote area of Herefordshire), also proved a phenomenal success, knocking Tubular Bells off the top of the UK charts. With 1975's Ommadawn (written in the aftermath of his mother's death), he explored ambient textures and world music. The rise of punk, however, left Oldfield bewildered, and he retired three years after the LP's release.

He resurfaced with 1978's Incantations. Platinum, released a year later, remained club-oriented and featured a dance version of the Philip Glass composition "North Star." With 1980's QE2, Oldfield completely abandoned his epic pieces and moved into progressive pop territory, a shift typified by the album's cover of ABBA's "Arrival." He continued his pop music for much of the 1980s, while albums like Crises (1983), Discovery (1984), and Islands (1987) inched closer to mainstream appeal. Nevertheless, they all charted.

In 1992, Oldfield collaborated with producer Trevor Horn on Tubular Bells II, which returned him to the top of the UK charts on its 20th anniversary. The Songs of Distant Earth appeared two years later, followed by a third Tubular Bells update in 1998. The following year, Oldfield released two albums. On Guitars, all the generated sounds came from the instruments, including percussion. The Millennium Bell comprised a number of musical styles representing different historical periods of the past millennium. The long-form work was performed in Berlin for the city's millennium celebrations.

In 2003, Oldfield re-recorded Tubular Bells for its 30th anniversary, with John Cleese as master of ceremonies (replacing the late Vivian Stanshall). The album was released as a two-disc set and included a video disc. Light + Shade, a conceptual double-disc work of new studio material, was released in 2006. Oldfield's first classical album, Music of the Spheres, was released in 2008 with a full orchestra. Guests included Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang on six tracks and New Zealand soprano Hayley Westenra on the hit "On My Heart." Music of the Spheres was nominated for a Classical Brit Award in 2009. In 2012, he was a guest on Terry Oldfield's Journey Into Space.

After a four-year hiatus during which he hadn't recorded any original material, Oldfield returned to the studio and began working on a return to pop/rock music. He released 2014's Man on the Rocks. It received the best critical reception since the 1990s, and the album charted across Europe. Two years later, alongside the reissue of remastered scores from 1984, he released the vinyl-only The 1984 Suite, featuring a remix of highlights from Discovery and The Killing Fields.

In late 2015, Oldfield announced on Twitter that he had begun work on a sequel to 1975's Ommadawn. He completed it the following November. The composer described it as "handcrafted... a real piece of music rather than production: hands, fingers, fingernails." It features 22 instruments, including mandolin, guitars, acoustic bass, bodhran, African drums, and tin whistle. The only sample comes from a line from the children's choir in the 1975 song "On Horseback." Return to Ommadawn was released in January 2017. In April 2023, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Tubular Bells, EMI made Opus One available as a standalone vinyl release for the first time.

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