Logically, the album ended up taking the name of those percussion instruments. Oldfield had thought of a possible title for his first album: Opus One, but by chance while collecting the instruments that John Cale had used for a recording, Oldfield noticed the tubular bells and decided to incorporate them into his project. Today we can listen to some of the material from that time on streaming portals, such as the original demos or an unappreciated first mix of Tubular Bells from 1972. Although he only had the few moments available on The Manor's production schedule, it took him a single week to record the first part of the album. Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells at breakneck speed. Failing to do so, he decided to publish the album himself, which would become the first for the Virgin Records company. What all of them did not suspect is that they were supporting the making of one of the most influential works in the history of contemporary music.Īt first Branson tried to find a record company that would believe in the project. Newman was so impressed that he convinced Branson and his partner, Simon Draper, to pursue the project. When the introverted Oldfield warmed up to Tom Newman, The Manor's sound engineer, he showed him the demo. The studio, called The Manor, was owned by Richard Branson, a young entrepreneur who also have a record shop in the center of London. The project was put on hold for a year while Oldfield worked as a session musician in a new recording studio near Oxford. Today we know that those companies did not know how to assess the economic viability of the proposal, the artistic value of Oldfield's music or the capacity of the society of his time to appreciate music of that complexity. In 1971 Ayers gave him a tape recorder and thanks to it he was able to record a demo with which he visited some record companies, but he only received refusals due to the apparent lack of commerciality of the project. While his musical activity was linked to Kevin Ayers' group The Whole World, the young British musician composed his own music with the hope of recording it one day. The gestation of Tubular Bells began when Mike Oldfield was just a teenager.
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