Trivia / Mike Oldfield

• Better Export for You:
  • The original UK CD of Incantations truncated Part Three by just over three minutes; the US CD features the full track, which would carry over into subsequent reissues.
  • The US release of The Songs of Distant Earth added a video game onto the CD in which the player tours a virtual city and solves puzzles that unlock songs from the album. The game was carried over to later European releases of the album as well.
• Breakthrough Hit: Tubular Bells, obviously.
• Bury Your Art: In 1976, Oldfield remixed Hergest Ridge for the Boxed Set Boxed due to his dissatisfaction with the original 1974 mix, which was rushed. He then made sure that the new version was the only one used on future reissues across formats until the 2010 remix, which featured the original mix on a bonus disc.
• Channel Hop: Oldfield was originally signed to Virgin Records as their first artist. Virgin distributed his work worldwide, save for a brief period in 1980-1982 where he was licensed out to Epic Records in the US, encompassing QE2, Five Miles Out, and a reissue of Tubular Bells. Thanks to his relationship with the label growing increasingly strained over the years, Oldfield jumped ship to WEA in Europe and Reprise Records in the States as soon as his contract was completed in 1991. He would remain on the labels until 2003, when he moved over to Mercury Records, then went back to Virgin in 2014 during its stint as "Virgin EMI," having reconciled with CEO Richard Branson. Oldfield would then be shifted over to EMI when the label was revived in 2020.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Amarok and Heaven's Open were made primarily to fulfil the remainder of Oldfield's contract with Virgin Records, as his relationship with CEO Richard Branson had grown increasingly strained over the years. To ensure that he would have the last laugh, both albums were loaded with jabs at Branson and Virgin, with the former album being made as uncommercial as possible (following Earth Moving, in which Oldfield adhered to Branson's demands to the letter by making a pop album with no instrumentals).
• Colbert Bump: Has been on the giving and receiving end of this:
  • The Bonzo Dog Band probably wouldn't be half as well known if a severely drunken Vivian Stanshall hadn't introduced the instruments on "Tubular Bells (Part One)" and narrated the "Sailor's Hornpipe/House Tour" finale on the Boxed version of Tubular Bells.
  • On that note, Tubular Bells (and Oldfield's entire career) wouldn't have been nearly famous as it was if it hadn't been used in the soundtrack for The Exorcist. The single edit for the song was even made without Oldfield's permission by Virgin in order to capitalize on the success of the film. It's likely that the sales bump from The Exorcist led fans to seek out the Bonzo Dog Band as well.
  • This very page wasn't created until Mike was mentioned in a Cracked article about musicians making elaborate jabs at the music industry^note the article, for those curious, covers the "fuck off R.B." Morse code message in Amarok.
  • He had another one thanks to having one of his new songs, "Nuclear", featured in the E3 2014 trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
  • Of all the albums related to artists who played in the 2012 Olympic Games' opening ceremonies, Tubular Bells had the biggest short term surge in sales afterward.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Notably averted for his entire discography. Even Tubular Bells, which is basically the only thing he's known for outside of Europe at least, is exempt. In his words: "It's a great song, I don't mind if people know me for it."
  • Also played with re: Heaven's Open, which Oldfield has called "a turkey of an album" and "a nightmare to produce", though he does appreciate fans who enjoy it.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Amarok is this to Ommadawn, as Oldfield had started work on Amarok with this in mind.. And of course the actual successor, Return to Ommadawn.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Just to check what's the material that in his words he considers his best, check his compilation Two Sides. He states of it: "This collection is my own personal choice of what I consider to be my best instrumental and songwriting works to date. These tracks may or may not have been my most critically or commercially successful at the time, but in my heart of hearts and in my judgement, they represent the closest I have come to my best creativity."
• Creative Differences:
  • While Virgin and its owner Richard Branson pressured Oldfield to compose and record a sequel to Tubular Bells for two decades, Oldfield resisted as he did not want to a) make such an obvious career move and b) suffer from creative burnout from it. Pressure from Branson died down for the first half of the 80s but resumed after the success of Oldfield's soundtrack for The Killing Fields.
  • Shortly after Branson heard a rough cut of Incantations in the late 70s, Virgin began underpromoting Oldfield in their branding change to promote Punk Rock and New Wave Music artists over Progressive Rock ones. They also began pressuring Oldfield to write commercially viable songs to keep up with the times. This resulted in albums made in compromise such as Five Miles Out and Crises, with one longer piece and several shorter ones; or in the case of Earth Moving, all pop rock tunes.
• Executive Meddling: "Sally", a goofy song about Oldfield's then-girlfriend in which he calls himself a gorilla, was removed from Platinum based on Richard Branson's disgusted reaction to it, and was replaced with "Into Wonderland". This switch happened so late in the process that all of the dust jackets were already printed; the original UK vinyl had even already been pressed with "Sally" on it. This led to "Into Wonderland" erroneously referred to by the name of "Sally" for decades, until the 2010 remaster set the record straight. This remaster did not include "Sally", not even as a bonus track; it has since become a sought-after fan favorite, either by that lone UK vinyl pressing or via bootlegs.
• Flip-Flop of God: Oldfield initially denied claims that Ommadawn was titled after "amadán," the Gaelic word for "idiot," stating that it was simply a nonsense word that he liked. However, he went back on this in his 2007 autobiography, stating that the album title did indeed mean "idiot."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The North American pressing of Crises, which swapped the side order and added the non-album single "Mistake" to the start of the pop side, never saw wide release outside of original LP & cassette copies and remains unreleased on CD. Ditto for Airborn, the American-oriented compilation that originally stood in for Incantations and Platinum until the latter two's CD releases in the early '90s.
• Late Export for You:
  • Incantations, Platinum, and Discovery went unreleased in the US until the early '90s when they were given CD releases through Caroline Records and Caroline Blue Plate. A modified version of Platinum with "Guilty" in place of "Woodhenge" was originally released Stateside as Airborn in 1980, while Discovery was simply hampered by Oldfield's European comeback not carrying over to the US market.
  • Amarok and Heaven's Open went unreleased in the US until the remastered HDCD releases of Oldfield's back-catalog in 2000.
• Multi-Disc Work:
  • Incantations was a double-LP release that ended up being short enough to fit on one CD. Initial CD releases cut down Part Three from 17 minutes to just under 14, but the full song would be restored from the US CD release onwards. According to Oldfield, the double-album configuration was chosen to compensate for the three-year gap that followed the release of Ommadawn.
  • Initial releases of Airborn included a second LP containing a live version of "Tubular Bells (Part 1)" and an alternate mix of "Incantations" that blended together studio outtakes and a live rendition.
  • Light + Shade was released as a two-CD work.
• No Export for You: As Oldfield's '90s success translated more spottily to the US market, Tubular Bells III, Guitars, The Millennium Bell, Tr3s Lunas, Light + Shade, Man on the Rocks, and Return to Ommadawn all went unreleased in the region.
• One-Hit Wonder: Despite his clout as one of the only solo prog acts to receive major attention, Oldfield only had one charting single in the US, that being the Tubular Bells intro (which wasn't even released with his permission). It went to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, largely off of the popularity it gained from The Exorcist, but later single releases failed to crack the American market; the closest he got was Daryl Hall & John Oates' cover of "Family Man" reaching No. 6 and "Nuclear" becoming the subject of memes after being featured in a trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (and even then it didn't chart, even after its picture disc release off the heels of the game's publicity).
• Orphaned Reference: On Platinum, "Punkadiddle" abruptly begins with Oldfield in the middle of a guitar solo, providing a jarring contrast with the previous track, the tranquil "Into Wonderland". This solo is actually meant to be a segue from "Sally", a track that was replaced by "Into Wonderland" at the last minute due to Virgin Records CEO Richard Branson's hatred of it.
• Referenced by...: A henchman of Funny Valentine in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run is named Mike O. after Mike Oldfield himself, whereas his Stand is named Tubular Bells.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Amarok was originally conceived as a sequel to Ommadawn, right down to featuring many of the same collaborators, only for it to be retitled after its direction ended up veering away from the original concept. Oldfield wouldn't make a proper sequel to Ommadawn until the aptly-titled Return to Ommadawn in 2017.
  • Jean-Michel Jarre was interested in collaborating with Oldfield in The New '10s, being a fan of his work, only to back out of the idea almost immediately on the grounds that their styles were incompatible with one another, specifically describing Oldfield's work as "too acoustic." This statement became a motivator for the creation of Return to Ommadawn, combined with a fan poll on social media that indicated audience interest in a return to the style of his first three albums (of which the original Ommadawn was the third).
    "This got me thinking. If someone like him believes I'm an acoustic musician, then it showed how important that part of my career has been. So with all this overwhelming evidence, I felt it would be very exciting to do a project again along those lines."
  • Shortly after the release of Return to Ommadawn, Oldfield expressed his intention to make Tubular Bells IV. When the 50th anniversary edition of Tubular Bells was announced in 2023, it was revealed that the project was scrapped back in 2018, that Oldfield had retired from music, and that a demo of what would've been the fourth installment's intro (billed as "the last-ever recording from Mike") would be included on the 50th anniversary edition of the original Tubular Bells.
• Writer Revolt: Virgin Records' persistence on trying to get Oldfield to record a Tubular Bells sequel for well over a decade led Oldfield to instead record Amarok, who as listed on the main page is full of Take Thats against the label. Only after he left Virgin did he finally make Tubular Bells II.

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