It's OK not to love Tubular Bells.......

Like many others, the first Mike Oldfield record I ever heard was Tubular Bells. I didn’t buy the album when it came out as it was released the same year I was born. In fact, I didn’t buy it at all. Back in the 80’s when CD players were first becoming popular; manufacturers would bundle in free CD’s with a new player. One of my five (yes five) freebies was Tubular Bells. Initially I had no idea what the album was or that it was so popular. When I first played it I was totally bemused by it and rarely listened to it again.

It wasn’t until I saw the premier of Tubular Bells II on TV a few years later that I thought this Oldfield guy might actually be quite good. I went back to Tubular Bells but still found it a bit too odd and gritty for my taste. The sequel however, was a glistening and fluid journey through a magnificent musical landscape. I decided to blindly venture into Oldfield’s extensive back catalogue and see what else came up (not something I would recommend without assistance).

Now, if the next album I had bought had been Discovery or Islands my Oldfield odyssey might well have ended there and then. Happily my next purchase was Crises. As a fan of the Fairlight the title track was an immediate favourite. If you couple that with Moonlight Shadow and a few other less well known but interesting songs, you have a great album. In fact Crises (the track, not the album) remains my favourite Oldfield composition. Suddenly I was a Mike Oldfield fan.

When The Songs of Distant Earth was released I was stunned. For some reason I found it a quite affecting piece of music and the more I revisited the album the better it seemed to become. I still like to listen to the whole album rather than selected tracks as it is such a cohesive and moving piece of work. It remains my favourite Mike Oldfield album by quite some way.   

Fast forward twenty years (surely not...*checks*…yes twenty) and Oldfield has just released some nonsense remix album that is barely worth the entrance fee. I started reading some reviews online just to check that my opinion of Tubular Beats isn’t too out of step with fellow fans. As a devotee of electronic, rather than acoustic or guitar driven music, I always assumed my opinions on Oldfield albums were often contrary to the majority of his fans. But the more opinions I read online the more I realised my destain for Tubular Beats and love of Crises and The Songs of Distant Earth is shared by many.

So if you are a Mike Oldfield fan; I’d just like to say, it’s OK not to love Tubular Bells. You are not alone.