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10116 - ROLLING STONE - 50 GREATEST PROG ROCK ALBUMS OF ALL TIME, DISC 17 - MIKE OLDFIELD - TUBULAR BELLS (1973)

For close to a half century, prog has been the breeding ground for rock's most out-there, outsized and outlandish ideas: Thick-as-a-brick concept albums, an early embrace of synthesizers, overly complicated time signatures, Tolkienesque fantasies, travails from future days and scenes from a memory. In celebration of Rush's first Rolling Stone cover story, here's the best of the deliciously decadent genre that the punks failed to kill.

Compilation By Jon Dolan, Dan Epstein, Reed Fischer, Richard Gehr, Brandon Geist, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, Ryan Reed, Jon Weiderhorn for


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MIKE OLDFIELD
''TUBULAR BELLS''
MAY 25 1973
48:57

1 - Tubular Bells, Part One 25:30
2 - Tubular Bells, Part Two 23:20
All Tracks by Mike Oldfield, except "The Sailor's Hornpipe" (traditional, arranged by Mike Oldfield)

Mike Oldfield - Acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Farfisa, Hammond B3,[38] and Lowrey organs, flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, "honky tonk" piano, mandolin, piano, percussion, "taped motor drive amplifier organ chord", timpani, vocals, and tubular bells
Steve Broughton – drums
Lindsay Cooper – string basses
Mundy Ellis – vocals
Jon Field – flutes
Sally Oldfield – vocals
Vivian Stanshall – Master of Ceremonies
Nasal Chorus - Nasal Choir
Girlie Chorus - Mundy Ellis, Sally Oldfield

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ABOUT THE ALBUM/WIKIPEDIA

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REVIEW/AMG
Mike DeGagne [-]
Mike Oldfield's groundbreaking album Tubular Bells is arguably the finest conglomeration of off-centered instruments concerted together to form a single, unique piece. A variety of instruments are combined to create an excitable multitude of rhythms, tones, pitches, and harmonies that all fuse neatly into each other, resulting in an astounding plethora of music. Oldfield plays all the instruments himself, including such oddities as the Farfisa organ, the Lowrey organ, and the flageolet. The familiar eerie opening, made famous by its use in The Exorcist, starts the album off slowly, as each instrument acoustically wriggles its way into the current noise that is heard, until there is a grand unison of eccentric sounds that wildly excites the ears. Throughout the album, the tempos range from soft to intense to utterly surprising, making for some excellent musical culminations. Mandolins and Spanish guitars are joined by grinding organs and keyboards, while oddball bells and cranking noises resound in the distance. In the middle of the album, guest Vivian Stanshall announces each instrument seconds before it is heard, ending with the ominous-sounding tubular bells, a truly powerful and dominating instrument. The most interesting and overwhelming aspect of this album is the fact that so many sounds are conjured up, yet none go unnoticed, allowing the listener a gradual submergence into each unique portion of the music. Tubular Bells is a divine excursion into the realm of new age music.

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BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Jason Ankeny

Composer Mike Oldfield rose to fame on the success of Tubular Bells, an eerie, album-length conceptual piece employed to stunning effect in the film The Exorcist. Born May 15, 1953, in Reading, England, Oldfield began his professional career at the age of 14, forming the Sallyangie folk duo with his sister Sally; a year later, the siblings issued their debut LP, Children of the Sun. By the age of 16, he was playing bass with Soft Machine founder Kevin Ayers' group the Whole World alongside experimental classical arranger David Bedford and avant-garde jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill; within months, Oldfield was tapped to become the band's lead guitarist prior to recording the 1971 LP Shooting at the Moon. Tubular Bells, originally dubbed Opus 1, grew out of studio time gifted by Richard Branson, who at the time was running a mail-order record retail service. After its completion, Oldfield shopped the record to a series of labels, only to meet with rejection; frustrated, Branson decided to found his own label, and in 1973 Tubular Bells became the inaugural release of Virgin Records. An atmospheric, intricate composition that fused rock and folk motifs with the structures of minimalist composition, the 49-minute instrumental piece (performed on close to 30 different instruments, virtually all of them played by Oldfield himself) spent months in the number one spot on the U.K. charts, and eventually sold over 16 million copies globally. In addition to almost single-handedly establishing Virgin as one of the most important labels in the record industry, Tubular Bells also created a market for what would later be dubbed new age music, and won 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 phenomenally successful, and dislodged Tubular Bells at the top of the British chart. With 1975's Ommadawn, he explored ambient textures and world music; however, the emergence of punk left Oldfield baffled, and he retreated from sight for three years following the LP's release. He resurfaced with 1978's Incantations. Platinum, issued a year later, kept its eye on the clubs, and featured a dance version of the Philip Glass composition "North Star." With 1980's QE2, Oldfield moved completely away from his epic-length pieces and traveled into pop territory, a shift typified by the album's cover of ABBA's "Arrival." He continued in a pop vein for much of the 1980s, as albums like 1983's Crises, 1984's Discovery, and 1987's Islands encroached further and further upon mainstream accessibility.

In 1992, Oldfield teamed with producer Trevor Horn for Tubular Bells II, which returned him to the top of the U.K. charts. The Songs of Distant Earth appeared two years later, followed by a third Tubular Bells update in 1998. In 2003, Oldfield re-recorded Tubular Bells in celebration of its 30th anniversary, with John Cleese as master of ceremonies replacing the late Vivian Stanshall; the album was issued as a two-disc set including a video disc.

Light + Shade, a double-disc conceptual work of new studio material, appeared in 2006. An album-length classically influenced piece, Music of the Spheres, appeared in 2008, followed by a live offering. After a four-year break from his own work, Oldfield reentered the studio and began working on a return to pop/rock-influenced music. In early 2014 he emerged with Man on the Rocks.

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BIOGRAPHY/WIKIPEDIA

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WEBSITE

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