Tubular Bells

about this album

Tubular Bells is a record album, written and mostly performed by Mike Oldfield, released in 1973. The late Vivian Stanshall provided the voice of the "Master of Ceremonies" who reads off the list of instruments at the end of the first movement. The piece was later orchestrated by David Bedford for The Orchestral Tubular Bells version and it had two sequels in the 1990s, Tubular Bells II and Tubular Bells III. Significance Oldfield approached (and was rejected by) many other established record labels. Some of the rejections were because they believed the piece to be unmarketable. Oldfield then played his demos to some of the Engineers at The Manor; they along with their boss, Richard Branson decided to give Oldfield a chance. Virgin Records released Oldfield's debut album Tubular Bells as its first album; hence the catalogue number V2001 (although V2002 and V2003 were released on the same date). Mike Oldfield played most of the instruments on the album (see below), recording them one at a time and layering the recordings to create the finished work. Many of his subsequent albums feature this technique. Though fairly common in the music industry now, at the time of the production of Tubular Bells not many musicians made use of it, preferring multi-musician "session" recordings. Tubular Bells is the album most identified with Oldfield and the reverse may be true as well as he has frequently returned to it in later works. The opening passage of the title track on the album C

tracks

more from Mike Oldfield

The Mike Oldfield Collection

Crises

The Songs of Distant Earth

Elements (Mike Oldfield 1973-1991)

Man on the Rocks

Tubular Bells III