Mike Oldfield - The Minstrel of the Tubular Bells

Mike Gordon Oldfield was born in Reading on May 15, 1953. His passion for music began to show itself as early as age seven, when, after seeing virtuoso Bert Weedon on TV, he convinced his father to buy him a guitar. Music soon became his favourite pastime, as well as the refuge that allowed him to escape an unhappy family situation, with an alcoholic mother afflicted by bouts of depression. His difficult relationship with his mother contributed overwhelmingly to shaping an introverted personality, one that would cause Mike Oldfield no small number of problems in the early part of his career.

Having left behind first his family and then school, Oldfield began playing in clubs and formed the folk duo Sallyangie with his sister Sally; the pair recorded two singles ("Lady Go Lightly" and "Two Ships") and an album ("Children Of The Sun"), which met with little success and brought the project to an end. A brief chapter in his artistic life was also the subsequent group The Barefeet, formed together with his brother Terry. Far more significant, however, was his entry in 1969 as bassist-guitarist into The Whole World, the band formed by Kevin Ayers after he fled Soft Machine, right in the middle of the Canterbury era: alongside Ayers, Mike recorded the studio albums "Shooting At The Moon", "Whatevershebringswesing", "Confessions Of Dr. Dream And Other Stories" and the live album "June 1, 1974" (also worth mentioning are the compilations "The Kevin Ayers Collection" and "Odd Ditties"), before the band split up in 1971. During his time in the band, Oldfield struck up a friendship with keyboardist and conductor David Bedford (who would play a fairly important role in the early stretch of his career), came into contact with unconventional musical ventures such as Keith Tippett's Centipede (Tippett being a pianist who, among other things, collaborated with King Crimson), saw his reputation as a guitarist grow and, above all, began thinking about a solo album of his own.

A crucial turning point for Oldfield was just around the corner: fiddling with a tape recorder lent to him by Ayers, covering the erase head, he managed to create overdubs that let him better capture the ideas for his debut work; at the same time, his stay at Abbey Road Studios also gave him access to a rich arsenal of instruments with which to flesh out the bare-bones tracks he had begun recording. Little by little a demo finally took shape — a project that, over the course of its making, would go through several names such as "Breakfast In Bed" and "Opus One", before settling on the definitive Tubular Bells — and Mike pitched it to various record labels, only ever meeting with rejection, due to doubts over the commercial prospects of an album featuring several minutes of unconventional, entirely instrumental music.

Unable to record his work, Oldfield made a living however he could: playing guitar for the musical Hair and bass for soul singer Arthur Lewis.

And then came his stroke of luck: while on tour with Lewis, Oldfield was invited to do some recording at The Manor, a studio owned by Richard Branson (then a mail-order record seller with his Virgin Mail Order Record Company) and built on the advice of sound engineers Tom Newman and Simon Heyworth. The friendly atmosphere at the studio stirred the painfully shy Oldfield into action, giving him the courage to play his precious tape for Newman and Heyworth. The two were deeply struck by what they heard and decided to persuade Branson to release the record Oldfield was still privately working on — though it still had to stay "on ice", since Branson (though himself impressed by the work) had neither the money nor the experience needed to put it out.

With the arrival on the scene of Simon Draper, a new business partner with whom he'd decided to found a record label, Branson remembers Oldfield and gets in touch with him, even though deep down he's convinced some other label must have already snapped him up; instead, luckily for him (and for us), Oldfield is only committed to Hair. The Manor is finally fitted out with all the necessary equipment and made available to Oldfield for a week, during which time the English musician (with invaluable help from Newman and Heyworth) manages to complete the first side of the album (the rest of the work would be finished in later recording sessions), for a grand total of more than twenty different instruments played by Oldfield (with little outside help, for instance on drums and backing vocals), more than two thousand overdubs (the final tape is so worn it's at risk of snapping) and extremely high levels of paranoia among the three of them (keeping track of what each track was supposed to be, as the overdubs piled up, was a titanic undertaking). Alongside Tubular Bells, a session with Elkie Brooks is also recorded, titled "The Manor Live".

Once the recordings are finished, Branson and Draper head to Midem in Cannes (the music industry and trade fair) to pitch them to executives from various record labels, who show interest only in the negligible "The Manor Live", completely ignoring the far more deserving suite. Disgusted by the situation, the two realize that the only way to get the album released is to put it out themselves.

Tubular Bells (1973), inspired by Ravel's Boléro, thus becomes the first release on the fledgling Virgin label, acclaimed by critics (even though it couldn't be pinned down to any genre) for its groundbreaking nature, and an extraordinary commercial success, first in the UK alone (number one for 15 weeks) and then across Europe too, helped along by the inclusion of the album's intro in the soundtrack to The Exorcist. Tubular Bells remains to this day the best-selling record in the entire Virgin catalogue, despite the label's roster boasting other giants such as Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Simple Minds.

This is where Oldfield's fairy tale begins. A deserved success for a complex but far from inaccessible album, one its creator always believed in unconditionally: a sequence of musical fragments, built from the layering of instruments played for the most part by the same English musician, some of which have rightfully entered the history of music. Above all, the already-mentioned opening theme, or the close of the first part, where master of ceremonies Viv Stanshall announces the entrance of each instrument, which gradually pile up and lay the groundwork for the triumphant arrival of the Tubular Bells, which, without any real break in continuity, make up roughly 50 minutes (split into two parts) of overwhelming, evocative music full of shifting moods. Striking (and, for the time, thoroughly unusual) is the absence, for almost the whole record, of drums and sung parts, which only appear in one stretch of the second part known as "The Piltdown Man Section", where Oldfield, after knocking back half a bottle of whisky, vents all his frustration at the world through caveman-like grunts. The album's conclusion is also tongue-in-cheek, entrusted to the traditional tune "The Sailor's Hornpipe" (better known, for those who need a reference point, as the theme tune from the "Popeye" cartoons).

A work of genius, a bridge between progressive rock and the new age sound of two decades later, Tubular Bells is an album that no respectable record collection can afford to be without.

Oldfield isn't prepared for the success he had so badly wanted: post-recording stress and his mother's suicide drive him, plagued by hallucinations and panic attacks, to take refuge in alcohol and LSD. In this rather precarious state, and under constant pressure from Branson, who wanted to ride the wave of the previous album's success (and therefore demanded a new record in short order), Oldfield begins work on the follow-up to Tubular Bells.

Meanwhile, there's also a collaboration with Robert Wyatt on his masterpiece, "Rock Bottom" (1974), on which Oldfield plays guitar in fine style.

On Hergest Ridge (1974), the hallmarks of its predecessor aren't lost: a suite split into two parts (taking its name from the hills near his new home), the usual pile of instruments played by the man himself, the absence of drums, voices used as just another instrument, and so on. The sound of Hergest Ridge is less "mysterious" than its predecessor, and Oldfield does a fine job of conjuring up the green of the English countryside through these new compositions. The album proves very pleasant to listen to, but there are very few moments where it actually manages to surprise the listener (one of them is undoubtedly the central section of the second part, where, although stretched out a bit too long, we find a sonic assault of undeniable charm, driven by ninety overdubbed guitars).

It's a renewed success nonetheless, proof that Mike Oldfield is no passing phenomenon.

1975 sees the release of two Oldfield works: first comes the orchestral version of Tubular Bells (performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with arrangements and conducting by David Bedford), on which the only instrument played by Oldfield is guitar, and then his actual third album, bearing the odd title Ommadawn (a nonsense word that roughly means "the fool" in Gaelic). The record revisits the now-familiar formula of the instrumental suite split into two parts, though a few variations start to emerge: the harp often takes centre stage (particularly in the introductory section, which rivals that of Tubular Bells for sheer beauty), Celtic influences begin to surface (with guest Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains), African percussion appears courtesy of Jabula, and, closing out the record, there's an excellent sung piece ("On Horseback"). More varied than Hergest Ridge and less fragmented than Tubular Bells, Ommadawn stands as one of the high points of Oldfield's output.

Oldfield would then release the Christmas single "In Dulci Jubilo". Meanwhile, his reserved nature gets the upper hand, leading him to cut interviews down to a minimum and to stop performing live altogether.

1976 brings the release of Boxed, a box set with unreleased material that collects the first three albums remixed in quadraphonic sound. This is followed by the Christmas single "Portsmouth", a solid hit; a return to live performance with a staging of Bedford's "The Odyssey"; and two singles that fail to make much impact: an overture from Rossini's "William Tell" and an English traditional tune, "The Cuckoo Song".

In practice, what Mike is actually doing is recharging his "batteries", turning to Exegesis, a therapy that allows one to confront their fears and strengthen the more positive sides of their personality. Alongside the therapy, Oldfield devotes himself to composing his new record, Incantations (1977), a double album offering a single suite split into four parts, in which, instrumentally speaking, he no longer takes the lead role he had on previous albums, preferring instead to rely mainly on strings, flutes, vibraphone and guest vocals. Compositionally, the album is of the highest order and sets itself apart from its predecessors, not only in terms of sound but also through the extensive use of odd time signatures (a fairly unusual trait for Oldfield); its considerable length unfortunately doesn't leave the album free of dead spots, but fortunately such moments are fairly rare, and in any case easily forgiven when faced with, say, the wonderful "Part I" (where Oldfield's artistry comes close to achieving absolute perfection, and where Jabula's African percussion weaves an unmatched rhythmic backdrop) or the ending of "Part IV", pure magic translated into music. The special guest is Maddy Prior, vocalist of Steeleye Span, who takes centre stage for a (far, far too long) vocal passage in the second part, singing verses drawn from Longfellow's poem "The Song of Hiawatha".

Unfortunately, Incantations, despite its astonishing quality, has the sole flaw of being released right in the middle of the punk explosion; as a result, it's dismissed by many as a needlessly conservative work, achieving far less success than its predecessors.

By this point Oldfield has emerged from his personal crisis: he gives a flood of interviews, records a fine "disco"-flavoured single ("Guilty"), treats himself to a whirlwind marriage to Diana Fuller, daughter of the leader of Exegesis (the two were already separated after a month), and above all launches into a huge world tour, backed by a crew of around a hundred people between musicians and technicians. Despite sold-out shows at nearly every stop, the tour turns out to be a financial failure. So, to recoup some money, Oldfield releases the excellent double live album Exposed (featuring Incantations, Tubular Bells and "Guilty") and, a few months later, his new studio album, Platinum (1979). It's undoubtedly a break with the past, showing Oldfield's desire to reinvent himself and move away from the complex instrumental works that had begun to show their age, commercially speaking. For the first time, we find the suite-plus-short-tracks structure that would recur on many of his later albums too. The suite (also the title track) is the album's masterpiece: hugely catchy, compelling, and far, far easier for the average listener to take in compared to his earlier compositions, complete with a horn section and effective choral arrangements. Noticeably weaker is the second side: good tracks include the atmospheric "Woodhenge" (where Gong's Pierre Moerlen's vibraphone takes the lead) and the driving "Punkadiddle" (a live-show must), while the record could easily have done without the saccharine "Into Wonderland" (trivia: most CDs in circulation list this track as "Sally", a piece Mike dedicated to his new girlfriend, which was removed from the album's running order at the last moment — perhaps due to its poor quality) and the cover of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm": the sparkling tune we're used to hearing is inexplicably turned upside down and transformed into a syrupy ballad, to poor effect.

Although criticised for its commerciality and for the underlying simplicity that led many to accuse Oldfield of regression, Platinum remains an album worth your attention, and a very good starting point for anyone venturing into the Oldfield universe for the first time.

Platinum was followed by a Christmas single, “Blue Peter”, a new tour with an extremely stripped-down line-up, and the new QE2 (Queen Elizabeth 2nd), a purely transitional record that works only intermittently (despite the presence of musicians like Phil Collins and Maggie Reilly, who we'll get to know better on later albums). Here Oldfield sets aside his usual experimental streak, and the record comes across as a mere (and lacklustre) continuation of the previous Platinum. This is especially noticeable on the two decent opening tracks, “Taurus I” and “Sheba”, also marked by extensive (and, for Mike, unprecedented) use of the vocoder; next comes “Conflict”, a decent blend of Bach (!), percussion, distorted guitars and folk influences. The forgettable “Arrival” (Abba) is the album's first cover, while the other reworking, “Wonderful Land” by the Shadows (a band Oldfield loved dearly as a teenager), turns out to be decidedly better. Echoes of Platinum also surface in the decent “Mirage”, with its forceful vibraphone, while the bucolic atmospheres of the title track are distinctly flat. Finally, the closing “Celt” and “Molly” are run-of-the-mill. In short, not a bad record, but one that lacks the spark we'd come to expect from him. Buoyed by the album's success, however, Oldfield spent much of 1981 on tour (also celebrating the ten-millionth copy sold of Tubular Bells) while preparing his next record.

Five Miles Out (1982) has a structure very similar to Platinum's, namely a suite on side one and shorter pieces on side two. It's a record with very few lulls, marked (like its predecessor) by a “band” sound, with Oldfield's usual painstaking overdub work pushed somewhat into the background. It opens with the second chapter of the “Taurus” trilogy, and it's magic from the off: an unbroken string of superbly realised themes (handed in turn to Oldfield's guitar, guest Paddy Moloney's uilleann pipes, and the delicate vocals of the fantastic Maggie Reilly) that keep the listener's attention alive for almost 25 minutes. Next comes “Family Man”, an excellent pop song sung by Reilly, which wasn't a big hit as a single at first, but the following year Hall & Oates' cover version became a top-ten hit in America. The album's third track is “Orabidoo”, a mini-suite in which a sweet vibraphone intro gives way to a vocoder theme over a sturdy bed of percussion (pleasant at first, but quickly wearing), followed by striking keyboard flourishes, before a very subdued finale. The record closes, still at a high level, with “Mount Teidi”, an instrumental of disarming beauty dominated by gorgeous synth embroidery, and the title track, a short piece (inspired by a plane incident Oldfield himself lived through) that revisits melodic lines already heard on “Taurus II”, enriching them with effective vocal interplay (filtered through the vocoder when needed) between Reilly and Oldfield himself. A highly recommended record, which achieved the success it deserved and sent Mike touring around the world once again.

The following Crises (1983) is another fine fruit of Oldfield's renewed creative streak: an excellent compromise between quality and commerciality, an aspect that didn't fail to draw sharp criticism from reviewers. The album's structure is unchanged from its predecessor: suite plus short tracks. The suite is the title track: a largely instrumental piece (save for a few sporadic vocal interjections from Oldfield himself), still operating at an extremely high compositional level, where Oldfield's synths — he'd fallen in love around this time with the Fairlight, a hugely powerful digital workstation — and the earth-shaking drumming of veteran Simon Phillips (who'd already played with Who, Toto and many others) create an explosive sonic blend. The short tracks are all excellent too: four sung pieces (featuring three different vocalists) and one instrumental. It opens with the hugely famous hit single “Moonlight Shadow”, sung by Maggie Reilly, one of the greatest pop songs of all time, whose undeniable catchiness is matched by a thrilling guitar performance from Oldfield, who also crafted an excellent arrangement (the use of echo on the vocal is inspired). The equally angelic (and historic) voice of Jon Anderson of Yes takes on the following “In High Places”. Reilly returns for “Foreign Affair”, another famous hit single, perhaps a bit one-note but brilliantly arranged. The penultimate track is the Spanish-flavoured instrumental “Taurus III”, in which Oldfield can both unleash his full guitar mastery and have fun overdubbing track upon track of guitar, at times building a genuine “wall of sound” that will put your stereo system through its paces. The record closes with the biting “Shadow On The Wall”, yet another hit single, this time sung by Roger Chapman (Family), whose gruff vocals go hand in hand with equally hard-edged guitar work.

The album's release was followed by a mini-tour, which wrapped up with the celebration of Tubular Bells's tenth anniversary.

The follow-up to the hugely successful Crises, namely Discovery (1984), is also a good album, one that sticks to Oldfield's usual standard, straddling catchiness and experimentation, and showing his customary knack for pleasing both long-time fans, with the usual suite (placed this time at the end of the record), and audiences drawn to his pop output. The attempt to ride the wave of the previous album's success is fairly obvious. Worth noting is the small number of musicians involved (besides our man himself, only drummer Simon Phillips and vocalists Maggie Reilly and Barry Palmer appear) and the pronounced pop streak running through pretty much the whole record. Reilly's magical timbre is used on three tracks: the gorgeous “To France” (whose masterful central riff is also used in the equally excellent “Talk About Your Life”) and the more upbeat “Crystal Gazing”. Palmer's powerful voice, meanwhile, suits “Poison Arrows” well (listen for the wall of guitars Oldfield raises halfway through the track), the title track (with its driving vocal line and an anthology-worthy guitar solo) and the ballad “Saved By A Bell” (perhaps the only underwhelming track on the record). We only hear the two singers duet on the excellent “Tricks Of The Light”, the most upbeat track on the album. The eighth and final track is the joyful “The Lake”, the inevitable instrumental suite, this time much shorter than usual (12 minutes) but still rich with the usual atmosphere. All in all, Discovery represents the peak of Oldfield's creativity in the Eighties, before a declining creative phase set in.

The second record Oldfield released in 1984, The Killing Fields, is the soundtrack to the film of the same name, released in Italy under the title “Urla dal silenzio”. While it doesn't reach the heights of the English musician's best work, the record isn't bad, and shows Oldfield grappling with mostly orchestral scoring (pushing guitars and synths largely to one side), though it's afflicted by the same problem that plagues most other soundtracks out there: once detached from the images they're meant to accompany, most of the pieces lose their power and make for a rather listless listen. There are a few notable tracks nonetheless: the almost industrial sound of “Evacuation”, the intense “Pran's Theme 2” and “Pran's Departure”, and the closing “Good News” and “Etude” (the latter featuring a brilliant arrangement of flutes and marimba — surely the most quintessentially Oldfield-esque track on the record). Still, a record to recommend only to the most devoted fans.

The 1985-86 period is fairly quiet: the rich anthology The Complete Mike Oldfield comes out (packed with tracks that had previously only appeared on singles), along with the wonderful video single “Pictures In The Dark”, the result of Mike's new passion for the visual side of music-making, which served as a prelude to a planned video album project (“The Wind Chimes”) intended for release exclusively on VHS and LaserDisc; finally, in 1986 a new single came out featuring Jon Anderson, “Shine”.

After the creative peaks reached with Discovery, Oldfield begins to show a worrying dip in quality with Islands (1987), a record inferior even to the much-criticised Earth Moving that followed it. Was it down to the English composer's growing resentment towards his record label (particularly towards boss Richard Branson)? Or did his love for his new partner, the blonde Norwegian Anita Hegerland (a worthy replacement for Maggie Reilly on vocals), have a detrimental effect on his creativity? That's for posterity to judge. There's very little worth salvaging on this record: a few flashes of inspiration can be glimpsed in the suite “The Wind Chimes” (a track recovered from the aforementioned video album, which works only “intermittently”, with memorable moments alternating with others that are flat and self-indulgent), in the icy atmosphere of “North Point” (perhaps the only track on the record that lives up to Oldfield's best work) and in the riff of “Magic Touch”. Beyond that, we get a handful of FM-radio pop trifles born of scant inspiration (“When The Nights On Fire” and “Islands” — vocals by Bonnie Tyler) or none at all (“Flying Start”, “The Time Has Come”). Dragging things down further is a plasticky production, truly disappointing by Oldfield's standards, one that we'll unfortunately find again on the following record.

And so we arrive at the most criticised and hated record in Oldfield's entire output: Earth Moving (1989). That hostility isn't entirely unwarranted: Oldfield sends his creativity into hibernation (perhaps deliberately) to churn out, under pressure from a Virgin desperate for more hit singles, a 100% pop record, where most of the tracks come across as flat both melodically and in their arrangements. Fortunately, it's not all throwaway: the title track is dominated by Nikki Bentley's splendid voice; “Innocent” lodges itself in the listener's head on first listen, thanks to a melody that's catchy in just the right way and a lovely performance from Hegerland; “See The Light” is the record's most energetic track and recalls “Discovery”, from the album of the same name. But the track for the ages is “Blue Night”: Mike Oldfield + Maggie Reilly + soft, acoustic atmospheres + a gorgeous melody = a standing ovation.

In just two years, Oldfield swings from one extreme to the other. While Earth Moving was an openly commercial record, utterly undemanding and devoid of any suite, Amarok (1990) is without doubt the most experimental record the English composer ever released: at once a gift to long-time fans and a two-fingered salute to Virgin. It's practically impossible to describe an album like this: a single suite running exactly sixty minutes, where genius, wild abandon and (above all) unpredictability go hand in hand, where gentle English folk influences (think of Ommadawn, for instance) collide with sweeping flamenco passages and mysterious African atmospheres that recall Incantations somewhat; where Oldfield's usual sonic arsenal is enriched by “instruments” such as spoons, glasses or pieces of a model aeroplane; where the legendary Caveman and Margaret Thatcher (skilfully impersonated by an actress, of course) stage sudden interruptions; where Oldfield sends out Morse code messages, first issuing an S.O.S. and then literally telling the now thoroughly despised Richard Branson, Virgin's boss, where to go. In short, a minor masterpiece, aimed above all at the most attentive fans hungry for experimentation, since many listeners may well be thrown by the record's monolithic nature, as well as by its “oddities”. After all, Oldfield himself states on the album's back cover: “This record could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops. If you suffer from this condition, consult your Doctor immediately”. Consider yourself warned...

With Heaven's Open (1991), Oldfield returns to more conventional territory, after the extremism of the previous album. It's a record that Oldfield himself saw at the time as a genuine liberation, since it was the last one owed under his contract with bloodsucking Virgin, and one that, despite being of a high compositional standard, has gone unjustly unnoticed (just as its magnificent predecessor Amarok had). For the last time (so far) we find the suite-plus-songs structure that had accompanied us across several albums: indeed, on subsequent releases Oldfield would return to his roots, focusing on purely instrumental works. Also curious is the fact that the record came out under the name “Michael Oldfield”: there are various theories as to why, but none has ever actually been confirmed — did the author consider this record unworthy of standing alongside the others released under the name “Mike Oldfield”? Or did he consider it all too personal, and so signed it with his “real” name (Michael, that is)?

If the first theory were indeed correct, Oldfield would have little to be ashamed of. The pop tracks (five in all) are very well written and arranged — genuinely impressive for a record said to have been put together in a great hurry — featuring highly autobiographical lyrics focused largely on his artistic frustrations of recent years (titles like “Make Make” or “Mr. Shame” leave little room for doubt), and, above all, sung by Oldfield himself with pretty decent results, helped along by six months of singing lessons with the teacher of such illustrious pupils as Peter Gabriel and George Michael. The production is excellent too, and especially graces the schizoid closing suite, “Music From The Balcony” (just listen to the drums — played by His Majesty Simon Phillips — to believe it), which alternates unmistakably atmospheric sections with sudden bursts of energy.

Oldfield is finally free of Virgin and, as a kind of superstitious ritual, decides to inaugurate his contract with Wea with a sequel to his greatest commercial success (and also the first record he'd made for his old label). Tubular Bells II (1992) is a record whose release the English composer had announced long in advance but which, confident of the success it would bring, he had until then kept in a drawer so as not to hand yet another triumph to the hated Virgin. Oldfield reworks the first Tubular Bells in its entirety (and therefore fully respecting its structure), appropriately altering its melodic themes so as to create a record that simultaneously gives the listener the sensation of hearing both a brand-new album and the first Tubular Bells replayed with modern instruments. From the original, suitably and masterfully revisited, we find the hypnotic piano intro (“The Sentinel”), the master of ceremonies introducing the instruments (“The Bell”), the slow restart of the suite's hypothetical second part (“Weightless”, perhaps the most successful track on the record alongside “Tattoo”), the entrance of the drums and the Caveman's vocal part (“Altered State”), and so on.

Riding the sales success of Tubular Bells II, Virgin releases the compilation Elements, as a single CD or in a 4-CD box set. Meanwhile, Oldfield puts out a new record, The Songs Of Distant Earth (1995), inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name, again entirely instrumental (made up of short pieces blended together to form one long suite). It's a return to Oldfield at his best, and also the first album in history to include an interactive CD-ROM track. Listen to this record in the dark, through headphones: thanks to excellent sound-design work built around rarefied synthetic atmospheres and sampled electronic rhythms, Oldfield will plunge you into a fantastic futuristic world, where your only guide will be his guitar, which often rises above the layers built up by the synths. Let yourself be captured by the magnetic opening of “Let There Be Light”, wrap yourself in the magical cocoon of “Hibernaculum”, explore the “Tubular World”, and above all, ignore anyone who dismisses this album as bland new-age: they fail to understand that making music is, above all, about creating emotions, and here Oldfield achieves that perfectly, precisely because this is a record that goes straight to the listener's heart, without trying to dazzle with virtuosity or overwrought harmonies.

The follow-up Voyager (1996) is a transitional album, entirely inspired by Celtic music and (in small part) Spanish folk – Oldfield had recently moved to Ibiza –, with only four original pieces (the remaining six are reworkings of traditional tunes). The single-mindedness of this album is both its virtue and its flaw: a virtue because the charm of these timeless melodies is undeniable, a flaw because the record is too repetitive and leaves little room for surprises. Among Oldfield's own pieces, the best is without doubt "Voyager", with an excellent percussive bed vaguely reminiscent of Incantations; "Celtic Rain" and "Wild Goose Flaps Its Wings" are decent but nothing special, while the long closing track "Mont St. Michel", complete with orchestra, turns out too pretentious and monotonous. Among the other tracks, the most successful are the opening "The Song Of The Sun, She Moves Through The Fair" (which also inspired Simple Minds' "Belfast Child") and above all the magnificent "Women Of Ireland", which became famous in Italy as the soundtrack to a Peroni beer commercial.

In 1997 came the compilation XXV, which offered a preview excerpt of the imminent third part of the Tubular Bells saga. Meanwhile, during his stay in Spain (and with the complicity of his young new partner), Oldfield led a rather wild life: frequenting the most exclusive clubs and never missing a rave, until the abuse of alcohol and ecstasy left him in precarious psychophysical condition. After yet another mishap – a car accident that cost him his driving licence for a year – he left Ibiza, firmly resolved never to set foot there again. The Spanish experience nonetheless left its mark on much of the mood of his new album.

Tubular Bells III (1998), the third chapter of the saga, is an album with no dead spots, where Oldfield made just one big mistake: the choice of title. Sure, there's no shortage of references to the two previous Tubular Bells albums, but the attempt to exploit the appeal of the name to sell a few more copies is obvious – a move that proved fairly counterproductive for Oldfield, since much of the critical establishment turned against him on principle, without actually assessing the musical worth of the record. The opening track is "The Source Of Secrets", the third reworking – after "The Sentinel" – of the iconic opening theme of the first Tubular Bells, grafted onto a heavily pumped-up rhythmic base (and here Ibiza's nights surely left their mark). A moment of relaxation comes with "The Watchful Eye", and the electronic rhythms return, albeit more subdued, in "Jewel In The Crown", where the guitar takes centre stage. Guitar is again the protagonist in the mighty, metallic "Outcast" and in the flamenco of "Serpent Dream"; closing what could be considered the first part of the work is "The Inner Child", which strongly recalls some of Ennio Morricone's work.

We start again with the bone of contention: "Man In The Rain", dangerously similar to "Moonlight Shadow". What can you say? The similarities are there, but as I see it, Tubular Bells II is to Tubular Bells what "Man In The Rain" is to "Moonlight Shadow": a good rereading of the original.

The Celtic influences of "Voyager" return in the engaging "The Top Of The Morning", and things slow down a little with "Moonwatch", before the work reaches its powerful conclusion with "Secrets", which revisits the opening theme, and "Far Above The Clouds", which winds sinuously over the previous track and brings in the legendary Tubular Bells to mark the album's final moments. A must: listen without prejudice.

Three years on from Voyager, Oldfield repeats the "concept album" experiment with Guitars (1999). The title is self-explanatory as to its content: ten entirely instrumental tracks, where the guitar rules supreme (though limited to a finishing role – don't expect any virtuoso displays), and the rare synth or sampler notes were actually generated by MIDI guitars. As had already happened with Voyager, the record is pleasant but, overall, never really takes off; its best moments come in the more atmospheric, melancholic pieces such as the opening "Muse" or "Embers", while the electric bursts of tracks like "Cochise" or "Out Of Sight" miss the mark, lacking any meaningful rhythmic support. A fairly forgettable record, all things considered.

Just six months after the previous Guitars, with The Millennium Bell (1999) Oldfield delivers his fourth record to feature the sacred word "bell" in its title, conceived as a musical celebration of the defining moments of the millennium drawing to a close. An album that doesn't really come together overall, its main flaws being an excessive stylistic fragmentation and a rather slow start: "Peace On Earth" and "Santa Maria" are pseudo-spiritual pieces genuinely lacking in bite, while "Sunlight Shining Through Cloud" and "Pacha Mama" slip by without leaving much of a trace. Things improve considerably with the triptych that follows, offering a rather singular alternation of styles. It opens with the spot-on "The Doge's Palace", essentially a 2000s version of Rondò Veneziano; next come the delicate orchestral atmospheres of "Lake Constance" and the strange but effective "Mastermind". The orchestral mood returns (this time with piano taking the lead) in "Broad Sunlit Uplands", while "Liberation" at first sounds like Enya, before an effective percussive bed and (above all) a magical guitar stamp the Oldfield trademark on the track. The penultimate piece is the triumphal march of "Amber Light", while the title track closes hostilities, a collage of various tracks from the record interspersed with instrumental sections set to an unusual (but effective) dance rhythm.

Oldfield ushers in the new millennium with Tr3s Lunas (2002), a double CD (the album plus a 3D video game), which can conceptually be seen as the successor to The Songs Of Distant Earth: the same simple but effective melodies, the same evocative mood, an overwhelming predominance of instrumental over vocal content. A feature common to almost all the tracks is the use of hypnotic rhythms (typical of chill-out music, a modern musical movement of which Oldfield is considered one of the forerunners), which, combined with Oldfield's deft synth and guitar lines, create relaxing atmospheres. The record is fairly consistent in quality (the sung single "To Be Free" and "Thou Art In Heaven" are slightly weaker than the rest), offers highly catchy melodies without ever becoming cloying, and reaches its best moments in the delicate piano sketch of "Daydream", in "Return To The Origin", with its exceptional organ embroidery, in "Turtle Island" and in the title track, where the acoustic guitar calls the shots.

For the thirtieth anniversary of the first Tubular Bells, Oldfield ventures into a project that is perhaps profitable but certainly not very honourable: re-recording the tracks of the historic album note for note, and selling it again at full price. The result is a duplicate that has practically no reason to exist.

The return to the studio for Light + Shade (2005) produces a double album lasting a little over 80 minutes of music. The first disc, "Light", features predominantly acoustic sounds with light touches of technology, while on the second, "Shade", electronics take the lead instead. Essentially the record can be seen as a continuation of Tr3s Lunas, with the difference that here we also find a cover, as well as a few "sung" tracks: the quotation marks are necessary, since the voices we hear are the work of vocaloids (synthesizers that reproduce the human voice), programmed by Oldfield himself: we are a long way from the glory days of a flesh-and-blood Maggie Reilly, but the result isn't entirely disappointing. Some of the tracks, moreover, were part of the soundtrack to the "MusicVR" video game bundled with Tr3s Lunas, and had already circulated in various bootlegs easily found online.

There's no shortage of spectacular missteps: the unbearable digital-voice choral piece "The Gate", and "Romance", the dreadful techno-trance cover of "Giochi Proibiti", probably the ugliest thing Oldfield has done in so many years of an otherwise honourable career. The record, however, also offers a few gems: for instance the suite "First Steps", which revisits the theme of the Tr3s Lunas title track, the magnetic "Tears Of An Angel", where Oldfield treats us to a splendid solo, or the triplet-driven, organ-led rhythm of "Ringscape".

The album benefits from the usual care given to the sound and Oldfield's skill on electric guitar. The trouble is that, with today's technology, almost anyone could make a record like this. All you need is a decent PC with some music software: work out a couple of interesting melodic lines, stick a pleasant sampled rhythmic bed underneath, and the job's done.

Oldfield no longer seems to feel the urge to astonish his audience; his flashes of genius are ever rarer, and he seems content to churn out pleasant records and nothing more. What he would need to shake him out of his torpor is to work with a band again, but that's pure fantasy: by now Oldfield has settled into a comfortable old age – and, all things considered, he's earned it…

After unwisely putting his name to a record, Tubular Beats (2013), which inflicted a devastation on his classic repertoire courtesy of the King of the Ibiza lounge bars, York, there wasn't much cause for great questions. The most one could do was note how the burning passion between the (former?) genius of "Hergest Ridge" and the God of Money had, in old age, found a source capable of keeping the flame remarkably alive. But artistically the whole thing had limited value: in the end, beyond yet another desecration of Tubular Bells, the damage had, all in all, been fairly contained, and the hope that the agony had ended there seemed plausible. Instead, the new "rock album" Man On The Rocks, released in 2014, is another false step.

The single is titled "Saling", and in the video an aged and visibly heavier Oldfield appears in beach attire, in the company of a curious character – somewhere between the gay community's idol next door and a poor man's Julian Casablancas; we later discover this to be one Luke Spiller, singer of the Struts – with whom he busies himself in what amounts to a tourism ad for the Bahamas, strumming an acoustic guitar and smiling at the beauty of life amid the tropical forest, aboard a yacht. Something whose sheer trashiness is enough to cover up the embarrassment. The shock this time is considerable, and hard to recover from, so much so that the song itself – a geriatric pop-rock song with a fake, forced optimism, adorned with the usual mid-song solo that, if it recalls anything, recalls "Earth Moving", and no, that's no compliment – barely registers. The only things that make the record easier to approach, then, are the evocative return to the Virgin home (though only as a distribution brand, since the label is now Universal-controlled) and the handsome if predictable cover art, which introduces a work that turns out to be surprisingly more pointless and insubstantial than outright bad. True, the big ballad that gives the record its title is a genuine manifesto that could fairly be called adult-contemporary, the plastic "Moonshine" might appeal only to the odd nostalgic for the worst of the new-romantic era, "Minutes" in its pacing almost sounds like a slowed-down version of Lunapop's "50 Special", the William McDowell-penned gospel of "I Give Myself Away" curdles the blood by the third second, and "Nuclear", in terms of epic scope, doesn't even top the worst of Ron's output.

There's no valid reason not to view Man On The Rocks as a new chapter in Oldfield's ongoing campaign of merciless self-destruction, both artistically and image-wise. Yet, between the smiles forced out by one of the trashiest videos in history and the unconditional love for the masterpieces born in a now-distant past, forgiving this handful of harmless, middle-aged-post-Christ little songs is (for the last time) a duty that must be paid.

After plundering Tubular Bells to the point of absurdity, Oldfield also reclaims his legendary suite-form and conjures up a sequel to Ommadawn, one of his most pan-ethnic compositions. Return To Ommadawn (2017), however, contradicts the maximalism of the first instalment, relying mostly on the composer's own guitars instead. This lays bare some folk-Celtic trinkets that expose their limits in terms of both performance and composition (first part), along with melodic ideas used only as increasingly epic variations stretched out far too long (second part). Vain and self-referential, the record is really only suited to the hardcore faithful.

Contributions by Rotter's Club – "Mirrormaze", Matteo Meda ("Man On The Rocks"), and Michele Saran ("Return To Ommadawn")

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