Did Tubular Bells make Richard Branson rich

A.As the first release on Richard Branson's brand new Virgin Records label, this album's success was the start of the multi-million pound music business empire created by Richard Branson.

Q. The first album on Virgin Records, there must be a story behind that fact.

A. The story is the stuff of musical legend - a combination of far-sighted business acumen and blind luck, in more or less equal measure! The Virgin connection comes from the company's ownership of The Manor, a combined country house and recording studio in rural Oxfordshire. Richard Branson had started a mail order record business from a local phone box while a student, and was successful enough to have expanded into retail outlets, and ownership of a recording studio.

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Rock band Kevin Ayers and The Whole World booked in to record some material at The Manor, including their precocious guitarist, seventeen-year-old Mike Oldfield. The group was in the middle stages of disintegration, but while the sessions were under way, Oldfield played the resident engineer Tom Newman some demos he'd recorded at home- the concept of a major instrumental work, with instruments being layered one on top of another in the classical 'bolero' format was his idea, and he wanted somewhere to record his music properly.

Q. So Richard Branson signed and sealed the deal, and the rest is history, as they say!

A. Not quite. Newman quite rightly assumed that his enthusiastic risk-taking chief would be interested in the project. Branson was indeed interested, and had talked of his intention to form a record label, but had yet to do very much about it. Not wishing to hold young Oldfield back, Branson gave him a list of likely record labels to shop around, and sent him on his way.

When Branson's finally formed record label was ready to sign its first artists, a whole year later, Branson was amazed to find that Oldfield was still trying to get his concept album (itself a novel new idea at the time) a deal. With the kind of flying-blind instinct that has made him such a success, Richard Branson took a chance on the idea, and signed Oldfield, recording the material at his Manor studio, and releasing Tubular Bells as the inaugural album on his new record label.

Q. And the rest is history

A. Now it is. The album was an instant massive success, and has sold in excess of sixteen million copies, assisted by sequels, an orchestral version, and the theme's inclusion on the soundtrack for The Exorcist one of the biggest grossing films of the 1970s.

Q. OK, but what is really 'ground-breaking' about the album itself

A. The album has to be viewed in the context of the musical climate at the time: glam rock was at its height, and albums were full of virtuoso progressive bands. Then along comes a musician who virtually single-handedly constructs a single musical theme and expands it to two sides of an album, incorporating a variety of instruments, some of which have not been used in rock music recording, before or since. The flageolet for example (it's a type of metal whistle), bagpipes, and the some-would-say-indispensable Farfisa organ. The huge sub-genre of modern ambient music, or 'trance as it is called these days, can be traced back its origins in the impact of this one single album.

Q. But surely it's a solo album with Oldfield playing everything

A. That's a popular misconception. Apart from the wonderful voice-over provided by Viv Stanshall from surreal art rockers The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, who were recording at The Manor at the same time; the album includes Oldfield's sister Sally on vocals; as well as Jon Field who played flute, some keyboards and guitar; and Steve Broughton who played drums.

Other legends have been spun around the recording: most famous is the length of the recording sessions due to the (insert your own figure here) thousand overdubs, which were used to make up the complex sound of the recording. The album is layered, but the thousands of overdubs are the stuff of legend, and never actually existed. The recording was completed between autumn 1972 and spring 1973, and the length of time can be attributed to the fact that sessions were completed at night, when the main studio business was finished, to save money.

Q. Any other 'ground-breaking' ideas on the record

A. Oldfield had proved himself something of a studio wizard, skill that saw him in gainful employment as a recording engineer before his own success as a recording artist. When working on the demos for Tubular Bells, Oldfield used a basic tape recorder and masked the erase head with sellotape and cardboard in order to dub extra instruments onto the master tape. This was due less to some kind of purist instinct, than the fact that anything more sophisticated in terms of recording technology was simply not available twenty-eight years ago!

The myth of synthesisers used on the album can be debunked for the same reason: synthesisers at that time were single-note studio-based monsters, well beyond the interest, or budget of a teenage unknown like Mike Oldfield. Instrumentation was basic, Oldfield used only one electric guitar, a Telecaster which used to belong to Marc Bolan, and he used his own studio tricks to speed up, slow down, and treat the sounds he made to give the album its distinctive guitar sounds.

Similarly the 'honky tonk piano' was simply a standard piano with its strings loosened to give the 'pub piano' sound. It is this willingness and ability to experiment with musical sounds, combined with the theme concept of the album that has made Tubular Bells a landmark record in popular music, and multi-millionaires of Mr Oldfield and Mr Branson.

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By:
Andy Hughes.