3. Mike OldfieldTubular Bells
I guess this is something that a lot of people have a connection to via a certain film, but when did you first discover it?
I didn’t watch The Exorcist until quite recently because I thought it would be completely terrifying. Actually, the first time I saw it, I fell asleep during it because I thought it was quite boring. I was like, ‘I thought this was going to be terrifying’, and then I watched it again a second time, I was like, ‘Oh, this is legit horrifying’. But yeah, I didn’t come to it from that and when I hear Tubular Bells, I don’t hear that context in it. I got into Mike Oldfield around the same time that I was getting into a lot of other British prog stuff, and obviously I had heard of Tubular Bells.
I don’t know if it’s in a recording, but there is a video on YouTube of a performance of it where Fred Frith is playing guitar, and I studied with him at Mills. So maybe it was just out of interest of what he was connected to that I bought a reissue version of the CD of Tubular Bells. There were these demos on it from the recording that are just some of my favourite music that I’ve ever heard. I think they’re just so interesting, in terms of the structure, the songwriting and the production. Hearing the massive scale of the album, with it consisting of these two side-long tracks, and hearing all the different places that they go to, the instrumentation and the fact that he does it all himself is really inspiring.
