MIKE OLDFIELD

SID SMITH

Tubular Bells UMR Groundbreaking classic honoured with golden jubilee reissue. When Kevin Ayers sang, ‘It begins with a blessing/And it ends with a curse’ on Why Are We Sleeping as his band, The Whole World, played London’s Hyde Park in 1970, his words could almost be describing the future awaiting his then 17-year-old bassist after composing and releasing Tubular Bells. Inspired by Keith Tippett and Terry Riley’s long-form experimental works, Mike Oldfield obsessively distilled his avant-garde influences into an uncannily accessible formula, whose ensuing popularity and cultural cache were impossible to predict, not least of all by the composer himself. Bringing financial security, though not necessarily happiness, the reverberations of Tubular Bells throughout his career have variously come to be seen by him as a both blessing and a curse.…

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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 140

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