Tubular Bells is the debut studio album by the British musician Mike Oldfield, released on 25 May 1973 as the first album on Virgin Records. It comprises two mostly instrumental tracks. Oldfield, who was 19 years old when it was recorded, played almost all the instruments.

Key technical features

• Dolby noise reduction to avoid the build up of hiss from large scale analogue multitrack recording
• Use of sped up / slowed down tape to produce creative effects
• Extensive use of overdubbing as Oldfield layers up textures and plays a variety of different instruments
• A variety of different distortion effects use to create contrasting guitar sounds
• The extensive use of overdubbing and production techniques meant that the album was difficult to recreate live and needed a number of musicians to do so
• Creative freedom due to the increased number of tracks available – large scale analogue multitrack recording.

The recording process

The album was recorded on an Ampex 2-inch 16-track tape recorder with the Dolby noise-reduction system. To create his work Oldfield asked Virgin for various instruments to be hired, which included guitars, various keyboards and percussion instruments.

Oldfield has recounted differing stories over the years regarding the inclusion of the tubular bells, variously saying he asked for them and that they were left behind after another recording session

Oldfield played the majority of the instruments on the album as a series of overdubs, which was an uncommon recording technique at the time. Despite various guitars being listed on the album sleeve, such as “speed guitars”, “fuzz guitars” and “guitars sounding like bagpipes”, the only electric guitar to be used on the album was a 1966 blonde Fender Telecaster which used to belong to Marc Bolan. All the guitars were recorded via direct injection into the mixing desk. To create the “speed guitar” and “mandolin-like guitar” named in the sleeve notes, the tape was simply run at half speed during recording.

An actual mandolin was only used on the final track, the “Sailor’s Hornpipe”. Oldfield also used a custom effects unit, named the Glorfindel box, to create the “fuzz guitars” and “bagpipe guitars” distortion on some pieces on the album. The Glorfindel box was given to David Bedford at a party, who then subsequently gave it to Oldfield. Instruments that feature on the album are grand piano, glockenspiel, Farfisa organ, bass guitar, electric guitar (including “speed guitar”, “fuzz guitar”, “mandolin-like guitar” and “guitars sounding like bagpipes”), taped motor drive amplifier organ chord, assorted percussion, acoustic guitar, flageolet, honky tonk piano, Lowrey organ, tubular bells, concert tympani, Hammond organ, Spanish guitar, vocals (“Piltdown Man” and “Moribund chorus”). Vivian Stanshall was due to use the Manor after Oldfield. Oldfield was a fan of the way in which Stanshall had introduced the instruments one at a time for their song “The Intro and the Outro”. Newman agreed to do the same thing for “Tubular Bells”. It was the way in which Stanshall said “plus… tubular bells” to introduce the last instrument in the finale that gave Oldfield the idea for the album’s name.

Producing the sound that Oldfield wanted from the tubular bells proved problematic: he wanted a loud note from them; in the end, Oldfield used a claw hammer, cracking the bells in the process

Richard Branson, co-founder of Virgin Records

“After setting up the first Virgin record shop in London, we scraped together some money and bought a rundown country house and converted its squash court into a recording studio called the Manor. One day, an engineer from the Manor rang me and said he’d heard this incredible instrumental demo tape by a teenager called Mike Oldfield. It was some of the most beautiful music I’d ever heard. When Mike was 14 or 15, he shut himself in the loft and composed. He played every instrument himself. His expression came out in the music. He was an absolute genius.”

“By the time I heard the tape, he was the second reserve guitarist in the musical Hair, and was frustrated and desperate to get an album out. I took the tape to record companies: Mercury said they’d release it if Mike added vocals, which he didn’t want at all. Eventually, we decided to just set up our own record company. We borrowed a contract from the only artist we knew, Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention, scrubbed her name off and wrote in “Mike Oldfield”. Then we sent Mike to live at the Manor for a week to record it properly – and Tubular Bells became the first release on Virgin.”

“John Peel announced that he’d come across something extraordinary and played the entire album on his radio show. Mike agreed to do one concert, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and we persuaded Mick Taylor from the Rolling Stones and Steve Winwood to perform with him. But on the way, he panicked and suddenly said he couldn’t go on. I had an old tumbledown Bentley and pulled over and said: “If I gave you the keys to this Bentley, would you change your mind?”

“He did. The concert was an astounding success – standing ovations – but Mike immediately went back into his shell. He wouldn’t do interviews or tour. Fortunately, the music spoke for itself. Tubular Bells and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon vied for top chart positions, and Virgin became the world’s biggest independent label, signing the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones. We’ve named one of our Virgin aircraft Tubular Belle and we are going into space this year. I doubt any of that would have happened without Tubular Bells. I’ve listened to it so much, my wife won’t let me play it any more.”

Mike Oldfield, composer

“I suppose I was advanced for my age. I started playing acoustic guitar in folk clubs at about nine years old, making up instrumentals. I had the kind of brain that remembers and absorbs things. All those years, these ideas were building. I listened to everything from hard rock to what’s now called world music and didn’t see why they couldn’t exist in the same piece of music.”

“Tubular Bells had been in my head for ages. I made the original demo in a flat in Tottenham, on an old tape machine lent to me by [Soft Machine’s] Kevin Ayers. I played organ, bass, electric guitar and two little percussion toys. But later, when I was recording some session guitar for Kevin at Abbey Road, there were all these wonderful instruments around: harpsichords, timpanis, tubular bells – so I would experiment on them before every-one else arrived. That’s how I came to play 20 instruments on Tubular Bells.”

“The iconic cover featured a chromium-plated bent tubular bell set up in a photo studio. Later, when I asked what happened to it, they said: “We threw it out, mate.”

“I didn’t feel I could reproduce the album on a stage. Richard gave me his Bentley so I would do it, but I later discovered the car cost more to repair than it was worth. Having been seen as some village idiot, I was suddenly everyone’s greatest hero. So I went to live in the Welsh hillsides, surrounded by sheep.”

“But I’d always had an inkling that if someone gave me the chance I could make something really special. If someone had told me in 1970 that the little melody I was playing in my flat in Tottenham would be the trumpet fanfare that opened the 2012 Olympic Games, I’d have told them they were out of their mind.”