Reflecting back on his remarkable ascent, Oldfield is quoted in the official press release for this 50th Anniversary Tubular Bells reissue by saying, “Listening again to the musical outpourings of an angst-ridden teenager, it is hard to believe that was actually me, 50 years ago. 3 in the U.S., and eventually selling more than 16 million copies worldwide. A single edit of the song itself was released featuring those mesmerizing opening-movement melodies, and then the album started building steam, eventually winning a Grammy Award, topping the UK charts, reaching No. It was initially a slow-building process for the album’s take off until the opening strains of “Tubular Bells – Part 1” were used in the seminal December 1973 hit horror film, The Exorcist. The only thing sadly missing from the new edition is the original Virgin Records label that was designed by the great Roger Dean, a label that some of us - well, at least I did, at age 13! - initially thought was a custom label for Oldfield’s album back in the day. (Hopefully, my copy is just a one-off anomaly.) My copy was well-centered and virtually perfect with only one small, strange glitch on an otherwise pristine pressing, resulting in an audible tick on the last five-or-so super-hushed seconds of Side 1 of Record One. The pressing quality on this new Tubular Bells reissue is generally excellent, having been manufactured in Germany (probably at Optimal), and its discs arrived packed in audiophile-grade plastic-lined inner-sleeves. The SRP for the new 2LP set is $39.98, and you can order your copy here. For one thing, I’ve been particularly impressed comparing this edition to my 1970s UK pressing, hearing lots of details and fine separation that is not present on even that edition. And, as we’ve learned over the years, Showell’s mastering efforts typically sound wonderful, so listeners should not be automatically be deterred by the fact that a digital stage has been employed here. The new 180g 2LP edition was half-speed-mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios from hi-res digital transfers of Oldfield’s original studio recordings. Let’s run down some of the key stats you’ll want to know when considering whether to obtain a copy of the subject of our review here today, Tubular Bells – 50th Anniversary Edition, for yourself. This album sounded like nothing else before or, really, since. That a song like “Roundabout,” the broadstroke opening track of Yes’s November 1971 LP Fragile, could become a Top 20 international smash hit single in the following years says quite a lot.Īmidst all this free-form activity, in May 1973, the then-twentysomething entrepreneur Richard Branson took a chance by making the very first release on his then-new Virgin Records label a truly longform epic by 19-year-old Mike Oldfield - then a new, young, unknown musician - and his first composition, Tubular Bells. These more progressive sounds even began to hit the Top 40. Just as FM became a powerful influencing radio format, longer-form and higher-fidelity music productions from expansive artists like Pink Floyd, Yes, and Led Zeppelin started to infiltrate and stimulate new and open-minded listening audiences. It was a crossroads time where almost anything was fair game for open-minded listeners - post-psychedelia, back-to-the-roots Americana, glam, bubble-gum pop, horn-based jazz fusion, acoustic-leaning singer/songwriter odes, proto-metal, and wildly progressive rock epics were all on the table. These days, it must be hard for some people to fully comprehend what was going on in the early 1970s with popular music.
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