Retuned Tubular Bells
Mike Oldfield wants us all to know that he's rejoined the human race. 'Tubular Bells', the cult hit of the psychedelic Seventies, mede him a star and sent Richard Branson's Virgin into Orbit. Twenty years on, will a new generation tune in and turn on to the sequel? Susan Ellicott reports

During the 20 years since bell-bottoms, Richard Branson has turned from a budding entrepreneur with big ideas into one of Britain's favourite tycoons. When he sold Virgin Records last March for a reported £510 million to Thirn EMI, his admirers marvelled at the stable of money spinners (including Janet Jackson and the Rolling Stones) signed to his music label.

What they probably forgot , however, was that Branson owes his success to more than just hard work, brainwaves and good timing. Without Mike Oldfield, in 1973 a painfully shy 19-year-old from Reading, Virgin might never have left the drawing board in Branso's houseboat. Not only that, but Tubular Bells was the launch pad for the whole Branson story. "Without it Virgin Atlantic most likely wouldn't exist today," Branson says with typical candour. "It got the whole ball rolling."

The album eventually sold 16 million copies worldwide. College students smoked dope to it; their parents played it at parties and thought they were hip. One section became the soundtrack to The Exorcist and Oldfield has held to have inspired the New Age "lite" music movement. "It was easy to listen to," Oldfield says almost apologetically. "It wasn't challenging. It was tuneful."

Two decades later Branson is out of the music business altogether. Oldfield, by contrast, is about to launch a sequel, on August 31, and even dedicated fans are asking why. To them Tubular Bells is a quaint reminder of the days of flares and vinyl LPs. Times change. These days Branson is experimenting with long-distance hot-aire balloons. So what's the matter with Mike?

Oldfield says there is less the matter these days than at any other time in his life: in fact, he's a changed man. Years of psychotherapy have prised him from his shell and helped hium understand the rage he felt towards an alcoholic mother. Now he has made contact with his family after a break of eight years, divorced the woman he married on a whim several days after meeting her, and separated from another, the mother of his children. He has also set up a foundation in England to give psychotherapy to people unable to pay for it.

"Music was my escape, virtually my only reality when I was a boy," he says, licking the paper of a hand-rolled cigarette. "Later I played the guiatr the whole time. I had no friends. I becane obsessed. I had severe problems communicating and with relationships. I had panic attacks and I only felt safe when I was making music."

Today there is something both subdued and refreshingly normal about him. Sitting in the conservatory of his rented Beverley Hills home, the scent of jasmine wafting in from the garden, he is every bit the Englishman abroad, from the patterened socks worn with trainers to his delight in the Californain weather. Perhaps his biggest indulgence recently has been singing lessons from George Michael's voice teacher. His quirks include barrelling down through the Hollywood Hills to a local diner on mountain bikes with Billy Connolly, and the rescue of a 420-year-old bell-ringing tradition in a small Welsh mining town. Feeling flush, he guaranteed a five-fold pay-rise to the toller - some £300 a year.

What makes Oldfield think he is any different from the many ageing rock musicians attempting mid-life comebacks? Chiefly, he insists, he has a message. To him, Tubular Bells II is far from a return to the past. It's the missing bookend to more than a dozen albums - none of which achieved the success of the first - that form a painful emotional odyssey. Number one was lonely and sombre, he says.Two is about energy. "Rather than being an escape from reality - the new album is more a celebration of it," he enthuses. "The main thing is to try to be connected to the human race again."

Standing nervously in his recording studio Oldfield plays a sample. he paces uneasily around the black carpet as a huge sound belts from the speakers. A loud, happy dance-beat, heavey on bass guitars, slows to a female choral piece, then comes a tribal drum, tinkling rain, the sounds of rockets and growls, then back to a romantic mood. It is a mix of science-fiction, blues, folk, rock, heavy metal and bluegrass. Ultimately, it will emerge as 52 sections, lasting an hour. and ideally, it will yank Oldfield out of the kiss-of-death New Age box in music shops.

"I hope this will give New Age music a kick up the arse," Oldfield says. "I want to show what you can do with all the technology available. Music doesn't always have to be calm. You can have agression in it. You can have a full range of human emotions: sadness, inspiration, anger - the panorama."

Oldfield was "desperately unhappy" when he made the original Tubular Bells, he says, reflecting for so long on a question that it seems he will never answer. "Parts of it are happy simply because I was repressed for so long - or at least not given the opportunity to make music - and suddenly I had a whole studio to myself with every instrument I wanted. There was a lot of joy in that."

Today he has instruments he never even knew he wanted. The large Beverley Hills drawing-room is stripped of all furnishings except a large carpet. Around the parquet floor stand two dozen guitars and a cluster of ethnic drums. Some may appear on the forthcoming album only for a few seconds, but Oldfield relishes the painstaking work of assembling his music. Like the original, number two is a mixture of live recording and computer playback. The female singer, for instance, sings "eeh" or "aah" in the choral section, depending on how hard Oldfield presses a computer key. He lovingly records his experiments in a dog-eared notebook. Among the components are "ghostbells", "mad pianos" and "bagpipes". across each page he has printed the categories he uses to judge what he hears: Rubbish/Some life/So so/Good/Brill.

The complexity of his work has often flummoxed traditional critics, unsure where to draw the line between innovation and Muzak. Take a review in The New York Times after his US debut in 1982: "Mr Oldfield's music had a curiously static quality," the befuddled critic wrote. "With his skilful intermingling of bagpipelike somorities, Celtic themes and martial drum patterns, however, [he] occasionally succeeded in evoking heroic mythological struggles."

Even today Oldfield is sensitive about perceptions of his instrumental work as wallpaper music. yet he cannot run from the fact that he made his name as a background hum. "It was lovely music to have on, whatever you were doing," is Branson's backhanded compliment.

To some degree, Oldfield's decision to make Tubular Bells II is a stab at Branson. Their relationship soured when Oldfield felt his mentor had lost interest in him and spread his attention over about 400 other recording artists. Oldfield also resented serving out a 17-year-contract signed when he was 19 and naive. Indeed he once described Virgin's ownership of his 13 albums as "like owning Mayfait in Monopoly." "I was getting paid £25 and luncheon vouchers when I started," Oldfield recalls. "I'd have signed anything."

This time around, if Tubular Bells II fails, it won't be for want of effort by publicists, for the album has the full weight of Warner Bros behind its release. And presumably the massive media hype preceding Batman Retuens this summer means the company knows a thing or two about sequels. Warner is blitzing the public with Bells II, including a charity premiere on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle on September 4, which will be covered live on BBC2.

Fortunately for his promoters, Oldfield appears at last to have conquered the aversion to touring that cost him recognition in Britain and America. In fact, he almost missed stardom altogether. were it not for an old Bentley, he might never have appeared on stage for the most important concert of his career.

It was June 1973 and Branson, the young impressario, was about to follow the release of Tubular Bells with a live performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Hours before the show, however, Oldfield spiralled into a panic. His nerves were raw. His hands, usually so confident on a bass guitar, were shaking. Sorry, he told his ambitious mentor. No go.

Branson groaned. He had nurtured the musician for a year at his studio in the Oxfordshire countryside on the strength of a catchy hand-delivered demo tape and was unwilling to seed his investment fold. He offered Oldfield his £1000 Bentley as a bribe if he would appear. To date, Branson has never regretted the deal.

But even with all the marketing whizz of Warner, Bells II could be a flop. After all, the biggest buyers of modern music were in anppies when the first Bells came out. Oldfield, however, says he will not mind if the new album is not a big success. "No problems," he interrupts before the question is properly out. "I've really enjoyed making it."

For an instant his face lights up and he orders a fresh pot of PG Tips from the housekeeper. His voice drops to a murmus: "Instead of making albums like I did, dredging something up from inside me and saying, 'There you go, listento me being miserable, grumpy and unhappy,' I'm saying, 'Hey, listen. Look at me. I'm happy. I feel great. Mmmmmm.'"