Mike Oldfield
In 1971, Oldfield was a musical prodigy and a lead guitarist at the age of 16 with band Kevin Ayers and The Whole World. When the group split up Kevin gave Oldfield a tape recorder which was the catalyst for Oldfield to experiment and create the original theme for Tubular Bells. Despite playing the initial bare track to numerous A and R men, nobody was impressed.
Oldfield by luck was working with a new band at Virgin's soon to be opened Manor Studios and played his demo to Tom Newman, the studio head, who was sufficiently impressed to give free studio time to work with the project. Oldfield played all the parts himself ordering each instrument through the studio as he needed it, almost as an after thought to the Tubular Bells. Many of the sounds were created using home made devices invented by Oldfield. The vocal track by Vivian Stanshall was added to give the album a vocal element. The completed track was played to Richard Branson, who too doubted its commercial appeal and was reluctant to release it.
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Eventually he relented and although it took quite a while, Tubular Bells went on to be a multi million selling album and it’s profits effectively started the Virgin empire.
Oldfield continued his musical career and still performs today although he has regularly returns to Tubular Bells to rerecord or remaster the original.
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