5. Mike OldfieldTubular Bells
My mum got it for me because a mate had a tape with Mike Oldfield on it. It wasn’t Tubular Bells but I liked it, so when my mum asked me what I wanted for my 15th birthday, I said ‘Mike Oldfield’. She went to Andy’s Records in Bedford, and got the first thing she saw in the Mike Oldfield section. The cover looked incredible. Compared to everything else at that time, nothing looked like that. I was in, and then I listened to it, and it just changed everything. I was only slightly younger than he was when he recorded it, and that was a huge inspiration, not just for music but for everything I’ve done since. It was like, if he can do that, just a couple of years older than me, then there’s no excuse for me to sit on my arse. He’s learned to play the instruments because he wants to control the whole thing, and he’s learned to be an engineer because he doesn’t want to rely on anyone else. As a result, I learned to play everything I could and I learned how to mix and master for the same reasons as him, because I didn’t want to have to wait to rely on someone else. I think I would be right in saying that there was no one else in my class listening to this. People at school were confused as to why I would choose to listen to it. ‘If you want to listen to old stuff, just listen to Jimi Hendrix!’.
I like the music itself for the same reason that it caught everyone else’s attention, it’s just like nothing else. It’s a totally strange statement and it mirrors the person. It sounds like chaos, it’s disconcerting, and I’m still not sick of it. There’s always something new about it. He’s said he can’t listen to it now because it makes him cringe that there are things that are out of time and out of tune, but that’s what makes it interesting. It’s got this really human feel that’s missing in digital music. It sounds like they’re all sat in a village hall somewhere, tuned slightly differently.
