{"id":24522,"date":"2023-01-19T05:30:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T10:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24522"},"modified":"2026-02-23T07:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:28:22","slug":"album-review-mike-oldfield-tubular-bells-50th-anniversary-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/19\/album-review-mike-oldfield-tubular-bells-50th-anniversary-celebration\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Mike Oldfield \u2013 Tubular Bells 50th Anniversary Celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When Mike Oldfield debuted with his album-length 1972 work Tubular Bells<\/i>, it was a momentous occasion. The piece \u2013 essentially instrumental save for a bit of emceeing by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band\u2019s Vivian Stanshall \u2013 was a remarkable work. Rooted in the experimental and progressive musical idioms, Tubular Bells<\/i> was accessible, playful and ambitious all at once. It also built upon the then-somewhat-new practice of one-man projects: like Paul McCartney, Todd Rundgren and Stevie Wonder, Oldfield conceived and executed the entire project largely on his own. He played all manner of instruments (helpfully enumerated by Stanshall) and worked them into the arrangement layer by layer. Tubular Bells<\/i> is an engaging, exciting work, and it signaled that Oldfield had Arrived.<\/p>\n

In fact, Tubular Bells<\/em> was such an auspicious debut that it tended to overshadow most everything Oldfield would do afterward. It was something of a two-edged sword when William Friedkin\u2019s 1973 motion picture T<\/i>he Exo<\/i>r<\/i>cist<\/i> used an edit from the track as its theme song. The spooky, vaguely sinister piece of the larger work has now become inextricably linked with the most notorious horror film of that decade. (I jokingly refer to it as \u201cLove Theme from The Exorcist.<\/i>\u201d It\u2019s no such thing, of course.)<\/p>\n

Oldfield\u2019s subsequent releases would be quite compelling, too; of particular interest is 1975\u2019s Ommadawn<\/i>, but all of his releases have merit. He even enjoyed a reprise of commercial success (albeit on a smaller scale) when pop-soul duo Hall and Oates released a cover of his \u201cFamily Man\u201d in 1983 on their double-platinum H<\/i>2<\/i><\/sub>O<\/i> album. (Oldfield\u2019s 1982 original on Five Miles Out<\/i>, with vocals by Maggie Reilly, is far superior.)<\/p>\n

And while Mike Oldfield has never seemed to want for new and creative ideas, he has revisited Tubular Bells<\/i> with alacrity. In 1992 he released Tubular Bells II<\/i>, a conceptually similar work this time featuring Alan Rickman as Master of Ceremonies. In 1998 Oldfield returned with \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Tubular Bells III<\/i>. This iteration used then-current musical technologies and instrumentation to give it a more contemporary character. And rather than being a single work, it would be comprised of 11 individual songs.<\/p>\n

And then there was Tubular Bells 2003<\/i>. Listeners might have begun to wonder if the world really needed so many additional entries in the series. In fact the 2003 release is a digital re-recording of the original work, boasting improved sound and whatnot. As an exercise is re-creating a classic work, it stands alongside Brian Wilson\u2019s 2004 SMiLE<\/i> reconstruction; that era seems to have been the time for such projects. Released to positive reviews, in retrospect it feels a bit redundant. By the way, John Cleese was tapped for the Master of Ceremonies role that time \u2018round.<\/p>\n

So finally here we are in 2022-23. Tubular Bells<\/i> celebrates its 50th(!) anniversary of release on May 25. So, hey, why not record yet another version of the epic piece? Apparently Oldfield thought it a good idea, and he did just that. This time he goes as far in the opposite direction from the original concept as possible: instead of playing all<\/i> of the instruments, he plays exactly none<\/i> of them. Instead, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is on hand to re-create the classic work, joined by an ensemble credited as the orchestra\u2019s Session Band. (The two-CD package does not provide personnel listings.)<\/p>\n

The RPO does a fine job. The recording is, as expected, crystalline. The arrangement breathes, and is meticulously faithful to the original. Shakespearean\/pop culture actor Brian Blessed (Flash Gordon<\/i>, Henry V<\/i>) is on hand for the MC part, and while his delivery doesn\u2019t attempt to clone Viv Stanshall\u2019s style, he\u2019s quite well suited for the gig.<\/p>\n

Tubular Bells<\/i> runs a mere 49 minutes, something of a shortish piece by CD (not to mention concert performance) standards. As such, this program adds \u201cSailor\u2019s Hornpipe\u201d to the first disc, and the second disc showcases pieces of both Ommadawn<\/i> and Oldfield\u2019s 1974 work, Hergest Ridge<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Though it would be reasonable to assume so, Tubular Bells 50<\/i>th<\/i><\/sup> Anniversary Celebration<\/i> is in fact not a live album. It\u2019s a studio recording, and an extremely polished one. There have been some live performances already, in anticipatory commemoration of the work\u2019s half-century anniversary, but Oldfield is pointedly not directly involved in those, either. As far as whether or not anyone actually needs<\/em> this new set, well, that\u2019s up to the individual. It doesn\u2019t really offer anything new, and isn\u2019t designed as such. But it\u2019s consistently enjoyable, and other than acknowledging its inescapably redundant nature, I can\u2019t level a single criticism at it. Tubular Bells 50<\/i>th<\/i><\/sup> Anniversary Celebration<\/i> is quite lovely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Mike Oldfield debuted with his album-length 1972 work Tubular Bells, it was a momentous occasion. The piece \u2013 essentially instrumental save for a bit of emceeing by The Bonzo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,56,62,65],"tags":[5027,5028],"class_list":["post-24522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-instrumental","category-prog","category-rawk","category-review","tag-mike-oldfield","tag-tubular-bells","cat-40-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30806,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24522\/revisions\/30806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}