Tubular Bells
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- This article is about the Mike Oldfield album. For the percussion instrument (also known as chimes), see Tubular bell.
Tubular Bells is a record album, written and mostly performed by Mike Oldfield (and later orchestrated by David Bedford for the Orchestral Tubular Bells version). 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. It was the debut album for Oldfield as well as the first album to be released by Virgin Records. The opening theme was used in The Exorcist, gaining the record considerable publicity and is how most people have probably first heard the work. It was also used in the 1979 movie, The Space Movie, and in a television advertisement for Volkswagen in 2003. The cover design was by Trevor Key, who would go on to create the covers of many Oldfield albums, and was inspired by Magritte's "Castle in the Pyrenees".
Mike Oldfield played most of the instruments on the album (see below), often 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.
The coda at the end of Part Two, the "Sailor's Hornpipe", was originally created as a much longer production, with Vivian Stanshall providing comic narration as an obviously-inebriated tour guide showing the listener around the Manor House where the album was recorded. It was cut from the final version for being too strange to be put on an unknown artist's first album, though it can be heard "in all its magnificent foolishness" (from the liner notes) on the Mike Oldfield Boxed set, which features completely remixed versions of Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn and several shorter tracks.
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 Crises is clearly derived from the opening of Tubular Bells. The opening is also quoted directly in the song "Five Miles Out" from the album of the same name and the song also features his "trademark" instrument, "Piltdown Man" (referring to his singing like a caveman, first heard on Tubular Bells).
The "bent bell" image on the cover is also associated with Oldfield, even being used for the logo of his personal music company, Oldfield Music, Ltd.
Tubular Bells can be seen as the first of a "series" of albums consisting of Tubular Bells II (1992), Tubular Bells III (1998) and The Millennium Bell (1999), leading some critics to suggest that Oldfield was like Quasimodo — "chained to the Bells". Finally in 2003 Oldfield released Tubular Bells 2003, a re-recording of the original Tubular Bells with updated digital technology and several "corrections" to what he saw as flaws in the first album's production. This version is notable for replacing (the late) Vivian Stanshall's narration with a newly recorded narration by John Cleese. Other versions include a quadrophonic version in 1975 ("For people with four ears", as the sleeve said; the quad mix was later used for the multi-channel part of the SACD release), an orchestral version in the same year (the Orchestral Tubular Bells with David Bedford), and different live recordings; a complete one can be found on the double live album Exposed from 1979.
Tubular Bells stayed in the British charts for over five years, reaching the number 1 spot after more than a year and taking there for one week the place of his second album, Hergest Ridge, thereby becoming one of only three artists in the UK to knock himself off the first spot. It sold more than two million copies in the UK alone and according to some reports 15 to 17 million copies worldwide. The album went gold in the USA and Mike Oldfield received a Grammy Award for the best Instrumental Composition in 1975.
Contents |
Track listing
- Tubular Bells - part one (25:36)
- Tubular Bells - part two (23:20)
Mike Oldfield plays
Acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Farfisa, Hammond, and Lowrey organs; flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, "honky tonk" piano (piano with detuned strings), mandolin, piano, "Piltdown Man", percussion, Spanish guitar, speed guitar, taped motor drive amplifier organ chord, timpani, violin, vocals and of course, tubular bells.
The "lyrics" announcing the instruments are: "Grand piano; reed and pipe organ; glockenspiel; bass guitar; double speed guitar; two slightly distorted guitars; mandolin! Spanish guitar, and introducing acoustic guitar, plus... tubular bells"
There are listeners who hear it as" brass... tubular... bells!" (The actual instruments are brass tubular bells). This leads some to ponder if Vivian Stanshall (of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band fame) misread or mispronounced it as "brass" or "glass". It could also by this rationale be "...at last, Tubular Bells".
Other performers
- Steve Broughton - percussion
- Lindsay Cooper - string basses
- Mundy Ellis - vocals
- Jon Field - flutes
- Sally Oldfield - vocals
- Vivian Stanshall - Master of Ceremonies
- The Manor Choir (actually Simon Heyworth, Tom Newman, Mike Oldfield)
Cover versions
- Eduward Starink made an abridged cover for an album Synthesizer Greatest (the first album in a multi-volume series) that was released in 1989. Tubular Bells appears only on the CD-version as a "bonus track". Other tracks on the album are cover versions of famous synthesizer songs but the original Tubular Bells features no synthesizer.
- Finnish one man a cappella rock band, Paska, recorded an abridged cover version for his 2005 album Women Are From Venus, Men From Anus. Paska has also performed the song at his live performances. This number may be a parody of the original work, or perhaps it is mocking the whole genre of progressive rock or new age music.
- Book Of Love opened their 1988 album Lullaby with a danceable cover version.
- Duo Sonare, a German classical guitar duo, has made a complete rerecording of Tubular Bells for two guitars.
- Paul Hardcastle based his hit single Nineteen around the piano theme of Tubular Bells
Furthermore, many dance acts and other artists have used the intro to Tubular Bells as the basis for their songs. A long list can be found at Rainer Muenz' discography.
External links
de:Tubular Bells fr:Tubular Bells it:Tubular Bells pl:Tubular Bells sv:Tubular Bells