Chime Warp
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday November 19, 1992
IT'S been widely suggested that Mike Oldfield hasn't got both oars in the water, that he possesses the eccentricities prevalent among those who discovered themselves in the early '70s and then spent too many years locked away in cottages in the remote British countryside.
For the benefit of the celebrated multi-instrumentalist, and as a kind of test of his sharpness, I whip out a crisp $10 note and, by scrunching and unscrunching it like a piano accordian, deliver a rippling version of the main theme from Tubular Bells.
Mike is momentarily unimpressed, then laughs like Muttley from The Wacky Racers.
Within seconds, his thumbnail is belting out the same familiar motif (or perhaps it was a Mills Brothers tune?) on his teeth.
I imagine the dulcet tones, the timbral voice of Viv Stanshall, who talked us through Tubular Bells: "The Guitar ... The $10 Bill ... The Teeth ..."
The beginnings of Tubular Bells III, perhaps?
Not likely. My recital was being humoured. Mike Oldfield is, predictably, a soldier of the old guard - a nightwatchman for the musical morality of 1973, his halcyon day.
It was the time of "progressive rock", of music as an expression of talent and expansion of the mind through technical prowess.
Tubular Bells was the apogee of this era, heralding the dawn of New Age music with such symphonic impact (it remained in the British charts for a staggering five years) that there was every reason to suspect we'd be spending the rest of the '70s strapped into headphones and "digging" the cosmos.
Alas, it was not to be. And boy, does Mike Oldfield hate punk rock, which came along to stop such a future.
"God, it was so-o-o boring |" he insists. "Everything was fine, when suddenly my record company hits me over the head with a load of kicking, screaming arseholes."
Oldfield sincerely believes himself to be punk's great casualty, and it's tempting to believe him. Ommadawn, Oldfield's fourth and last album to gain tenancy in the British Top Ten, exited the charts in November '76, two weeks before Anarchy In The UK took up residence.
Within six months, The Sex Pistols had reached No 2 with God Save The Queen, their first release on Virgin Records (the label inaugurated by Tubular Bells ) and the ensuing rumpus frog-marched New Age music to the isolation of float-tanks, where it flounders to this day.
Being that Oldfield was obviously troubled by his failure to emulate the impact of Tubular Bells (he attempted a disco hit in 1978 - entitled Guilty, for the information of all), why didn't he simply jump the punk gravy train?
"Arrgh |" he shrieks.
"When I pick up a guitar I want to be able to play it. If you're going to make music, you've got to be able to play your instruments.
"Music is like a novel and you can't have 500 pages without a story or a point or a message. It'll be boring."
And therein lies the answer to why Mike Oldfield's career could never maintain its initial momentum, why it's silly to blame punk or Virgin or anyone, and why Tubular Bells 2 will probably not see the Top Ten in the '90s
Tubular Bells was a solo recording so ambitious that it completely consumed it's creator. Requiring more than 1,000 overdubs, written, arranged, produced and recorded by one man, and possessing a central motif so simple and breathtaking it's a wonder Oldfield survived its discovery, the finished work was a product of such gargantuan gimmickery that it had become a cliche before the last bell went "dong".
After playing his wildest trump-card first, Mike Oldfield was destined to never amaze us again.
Naturally, Tubular Bells 2, while more exuberant than the original, can only be uneventful. Time has not been good to Mike Oldfield's cosmic grandeur
"Music is an escape from reality for me," he says. "Not mass-produced stuff you hear on the radio - if you took away the videos they hide behind, there's not much there at all. And the average video, sheesh | You've got to shoot it on film so that it looks grainy. You've got be inside a dirty garage with a spunk.
"It's like the product of a factory. It's like the mincing machine in The Wall (Pink Floyd, 1979). Instead of schoolkids going down the mincing machine and being turned into all this pulp, you've got musicians going into the mincing machine and coming out pop stars."
Tubular Bells II is released through Warner Records.
© 1992 Sydney Morning Herald
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