Mike Oldfield
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Michael Gordon Oldfield (Reading, Engeland, 15 mei 1953) is een Britse popmusicus. In zijn jeugd maakte hij muziek met zijn zus Sally, die ook in zijn latere werk nog te horen zou zijn. Reeds op jeugdige leeftijd werd hij lid van The Whole World, de band van Kevin Ayers (ex-lid van Soft Machine), waarin hij bas en gitaar speelde en soms ook zong.
Oldfields grote doorbraak kwam in 1973 met de LP Tubular bells, waarop alle instrumenten door hemzelf worden bespeeld. Evenals Oldfields latere werk bestaat deze plaat uit gecompliceerde symfonische muziek, hoewel hij ook hits scoorde met eenvoudige liedjes als Moonlight shadow (1983) en To France (1984). Tubular bells werd uitgebracht door Virgin Records, de toen nog beginnende platenmaatschappij van Richard Branson. De albums die in de jaren '70 volgden waren Hergest ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975), The orchestral tubular bells (1975), Incantations (1978) en Platinum (1979).
Tubular bells was in grote haast opgenomen, wat te horen is aan het simpele arrangement en hier en daar een valse noot. Omdat hij contractueel binnen 25 jaar geen nieuwe opname ervan mocht maken bracht hij Tubular bells II (1992) uit, een succesvol, analoog aan zijn debuut opgebouwd album. In 2003 werd een nieuwe opname van Tubular bells uitgebracht onder de titel Tubular bells 2003.
Het openingsthema van Tubular bells is een van Oldfields bekendste nummers geworden. Het is nog steeds razend populair, mede door het gebruik ervan in de horrorfilm The Exorcist en de Nederlandse kindertelevisieserie Bassie en Adriaan.
Officiële website
http://mikeoldfieldofficial.com/
Facebook pagina
https://www.facebook.com/MikeOldfieldOfficial/
wikipedia link
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oldfield
[ Bericht 9% gewijzigd door ExperimentalFrentalMental op 16-01-2017 09:55:53 ]
Mike Oldfield releases new album Return To Ommadawn through Virgin EMI on January 20
http://teamrock.com/featu(...)-returns-to-ommadawn
He's endured divorce, death, disaster... and a feud with Richard Branson. Now Mike Oldfield's back – and he's plotting a gleaming new Tubular Bells
Gazing out onto the deep turquoise ocean, Mike Oldfield is in a reflective mood. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be up for a knighthood,’ sighs Britain’s most successful multi-instrumentalist composer, whose 16 million-selling Tubular Bells remained on the UK album charts for a record-shattering 280 weeks. ‘Nobody’s ever offered me any kind of award. I’m like the black sheep of British music.
‘I’m still very patriotic. I’m very proud of being British. I was watching the Brexit vote live and I was hoping Britain would get out of the EU.
‘I admire the Queen greatly. And I’ve met Prince Charles a couple of times. Unluckily, I made the mistake of speaking to him without being spoken to. I asked him how his cello-playing was coming along. You’re not supposed to do that. Stupid me. So I think I’ve blown my knighthood there.’
Music has always meant escape to Oldfield. As his mother¿s alcoholism and mental condition deteriorated throughout the Sixties, he would remain in his room patiently practising the acoustic guitar
Last October, Hurricane Matthew blew through the Bahamas, toppling trees and power lines, causing nearly £500 million worth of damage. Oldfield’s sturdy, bunker-like house in Nassau held out, but the musician has also had to survive his own personal storm.
In 2014, the musician’s 11-year marriage to Fanny Vanderkerckhove, a French horse breeder, and mother of his youngest sons Jake, 12, and Eugene, eight, ended, taking its toll emotionally and financially.
Then in May last year, his eldest son Dougal Oldfield, one of three children Oldfield had with PR woman Sally Cooper, died suddenly of natural causes, aged 33.
‘My son tragically passed away,’ he says in a small, distant voice. Oldfield’s own father Raymond also died last year, at 93.
Asked if Oldfield will divide his money between the children when the time comes, his response is surprising.
‘I’m not sure if there’s going to be anything to leave, to be honest, after the past four years,’ he exhales. Oldfield lost much of his fortune through divorces and poor property deals, so reluctantly sold his 68ft yacht Sea Dragon, and now sails a modest 17-footer. In the boat-conscious Bahamas, which subtly discriminates between the haves and have-yachts, it was a humbling exercise.
Oldfield grimaces and leads the way to his ramshackle recording studio, which comes with a soothing sea view.
He’s a Bahamian citizen now. ‘I feel as if the Bahamas is an outpost of Britain,’ he declares. ‘This used to be a British colony – it still is part of the Commonwealth. It reminds me of Britain back when I was growing up in Reading – there aren’t cameras everywhere watching everything you do.’
Oldfield has opened his shuttered doors to talk about Return To Ommadawn, a companion piece to 1975’s original Ommadawn, recorded in the wake of the phenomenal Tubular Bells.
'Nobody’s ever offered me any kind of award. I’m like the black sheep of British music'
Such was the insanity that followed the global success of 1973’s Tubular Bells, it seemed almost normal when its eccentric young creator, then living in Gloucestershire, adopted a year-old male lion named Clyde who had free rein around the house and even slept in Oldfield’s bed.
‘I suppose he was an extraordinary pet,’ says Oldfield, now 63. ‘He was dangerous beyond belief and so strong and fast. He could shunt you aside with one paw. Eventually I told his keeper to take him into Virgin Records offices. “Bad Clyde! Go and see Richard!” ’
Sir Richard Branson, whose empire Tubular Bells effectively kick-started, managed to avoid the beast, having heard the shrieks emanating from reception upon Clyde’s unscheduled arrival.
The irony is not lost on Oldfield that Branson gobbled up the lion’s share of Tubular Bells’s considerable profits.
‘I worked it out one day,’ Oldfield says of their unequal fiscal arrangement. ‘I made about £180,000 from the first five years of Tubular Bells.’
When asked how much Branson collected, Oldfield lets out an agonised yelp, unsettling his snoozing Bahamian potcake (mixed breed) dog, Mac.
‘But there’s no argument with Richard any more,’ he adds calmly. ‘We’ve long since buried the hatchet.
‘He came here a couple of years ago. I’d written Tubular Bells for solo on piano and there was a premiere at my boys’ school. He flew in to see it in his jet and he stayed here. We had a nice meal, he drank a little bit too much and then he wanted to listen to some music. But only all the silly things I’d done, like Blue Peter [Oldfield rearranged the show’s theme tune in 1979].’
He is reticent to divulge whether Branson has ever mentioned the message he buried 48 minutes into his left-field 1990 album Amarok (a morse code sequence spelled out ‘F*** off RB’)?
‘We don’t talk about that little bit,’ Oldfield says coyly. ‘But I do get free flights on Virgin Airlines, first class, wherever and whenever I want. The only trouble is they don’t fly here so I don’t get a chance to use it any more.’
The last time Oldfield flew anywhere was to perform at Danny Boyle’s Olympic celebration in 2012. ‘That was such a high,’ he recalls. ‘I got stage-fright beforehand, obviously, but once we started playing it was just the most wonderful feeling. I felt free.’
Music has always meant escape to Oldfield. As his mother’s alcoholism and mental condition deteriorated throughout the Sixties, he would remain in his room patiently practising the acoustic guitar. Maureen Oldfield died in 1975.
‘I had childhood problems with my parents, my mother,’ he says. ‘I was depressed and I created an alternative reality in music that was everything my life wasn’t. There’s one bit of Tubular Bells that has got these ethereal mandolins. It sounds like you’re in heaven, which was the complete opposite of how I really felt. All I can imagine is that I was doing it to compensate for the misery at the time.’
Relief from Oldfield’s depression came in 1978 from Exegesis, a controversial programme briefly popular in the late Seventies, where subjects would undergo a dramatic psychological reboot. ‘Bit by bit, I got to the root of all my problems,’ he recalls. ‘The big thing that was blocking me in my early days was so simple. Basically, the moment of my birth, coming through the birth canal into the real world, was still there in my mind.
Mike Oldfield in 1994. Oldfield¿s film music includes the haunting soundtrack to The Killing Fields and his eerie contribution to The Exorcist, a musical segment of Tubular Bells
‘Reliving that moment freed me of the panic attacks for the rest of my life,’ he asserts.
Inside the house, where Oldfield lives with Eugene and Jake, the small arsenal of nerf guns suggest that Oldfield enjoys reliving his youth in a less traumatic manner these days. His days of staying out all night and drinking all the time are long behind him. ‘I haven’t been drunk for years,’ he says.
He also has older grown-up children: Molly, 36, Luke, 29 (siblings of the deceased Dougal) with ex-partner Sally Cooper, and Greta, 27, and Noah, 26, with Norwegian singer Anita Hegerland, 54.
Soberly assessing his life, Oldfield says he’d like his ashes scattered over the water in the Bahamas. And were a movie to be made of his remarkable career, he suggests that Eddie Redmayne could play the lead.
‘What an amazing actor he is,’ Oldfield enthuses. ‘He was incredible as Stephen Hawking. Maybe we should ask Danny Boyle to direct it and I could do the music.’
Oldfield’s film music includes the haunting soundtrack to The Killing Fields and his eerie contribution to The Exorcist, a musical segment of Tubular Bells that has become the go-to music for anything frightening ever since.
‘I get a few bob for it every Halloween,’ he chuckles. ‘It’s not huge sums of money but the royalties do spike around that time of year.’
He lets slip that there will be a Tubular Bells IV (sequels II and III went to No 1 and No 4 in the UK in 1992 and 1998 respectively), which brings us inevitably back to Branson.
I ask Oldfield if he believes the grinning billionaire will make it into space with Virgin Galactic. ‘In the end,’ he smiles. ‘He has a way of achieving these things. But what do I know? I thought he was mad when he told me he was getting into trains. I’m absolutely useless at business.
‘I just wish I had a bit of his business acumen. I’d like to say to him, “If I could swap you half my music ability for half your business acumen, would you agree?” ’
Branson might take his old friend up on that deal but surely he would want to negotiate terms. The musician claps delightedly, his eyes sparkling like the sea before him. ‘Knowing Richard, he would probably try to get my percentage down,’ Oldfield hoots, and for the first time today appears truly relaxed.
Mike Oldfield’s new album, ‘Return To Ommadawn’, is out on January 20
http://www.dailymail.co.u(...)-Bells.html#comments
Ik ben hier zo benieuwd naarquote:Op maandag 16 januari 2017 09:48 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
Oldfield gets back to his acoustic origins
Mike Oldfield releases new album Return To Ommadawn through Virgin EMI on January 20
http://teamrock.com/featu(...)-returns-to-ommadawn
[ afbeelding ]
Ommadawn heeft altijd wel een speciaal plekje bij mij gehad 
please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck
nog 2 nachtjes slapenquote:
[..]
Ik ben hier zo benieuwd naar
please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck
(o.a. over Return to Ommadawn)
https://www.facebook.com/(...)os/1349831948372476/
https://www.facebook.com/(...)os/1350672648288406/
https://www.facebook.com/(...)os/1351807081508296/
Mike Oldfield - Return to Ommadawn album review: Long playing from long ago
Album:
Return To Ommadawn
World Music
Returning to Ommadawn (1975), his third acoustic album, for inspiration, Mike Oldfield takes that beloved long-playing format that he made his own to create this latest acoustic album of two suites.
Unsurprisingly playing every instrument himself, he still picks a mean melody line, with what feels like a very natural harking back to the original for inspiration.Oldfield opts mostly for a spacious, dream-like sound, and his guitar playing is the star of both suites. The two set pieces are unquestionably rooted in the 1970s, where their roots in prog-rock lie.
Oldfield hasn’t lost that uncanny ability to release an earworm of a melody line into the ether, which will likely please his considerable fan base no end. Whether it will extend his appeal to a new audience is unlikely.
http://www.irishtimes.com(...)m-long-ago-1.2935901
nog steeds niet?quote:
quote:Hello everyone,
I’m delighted to say that Return To Ommadawn is available at my official store now: https://MikeOldfield.lnk.to/ReturnToOmmadawn
I hope you will enjoy listening to the new album as much as I have enjoyed making it.
All the best for now!
Mike Oldfield
Nopequote:
[..]
nog steeds niet?
Dan moet je het nog even hiermee doen:quote:
Op 
De eerste stukjes staan op Youtube dus. Ben nog niet heel overtuigd hierdoor eigenlijk
Thanksquote:
De eerste stukjes staan op Youtube dus. Ben nog niet heel overtuigd hierdoor eigenlijk
straks even checken, ben er nog niet aan toegekomen om iets te luisteren
quote:
Gisteren was het 36 jaar geleden dat deze geweldige plaat uitkwam