Born on 15 May: Mike Oldfield, the man of "Tubular Bells" for over half a century

He was born in 1953 in Reading (England), alongside his sister Sally and his brother Terry, he's the youngest of a family of three musicians. 

A father who was a doctor for the Royal Air Force and an Irish-born nurse mother didn't necessarily suggest such a family passion for music. As a music lover, his father Raymond was as passionate about classical music as he was about the secrets of the human body. He was the one who offered little Mike his first guitar at the age of 7. Although he played in a few short-lived folk groups at the end of the 60s, sometimes with his sister, sometimes with his brother, it was undoubtedly the acquisition of a Fender Telecaster guitar that had belonged to Marc Bolan that marked a turning point at the start of his career. At 17, he began composing the drafts of his first album (and his greatest success) "Tubular Bells". Not yet a billionaire but already an entrepreneur, Richard Branson, who was starting to build his Virgin record store chain at the time, offered him the use of his studio, The Manor, for free in order to entirely record this completely instrumental record on his own. The record in question celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. The album was released on the Virgin label on 25 May 1973 just as Mike was celebrating his twentieth birthday.

A few months after its release, the main theme of the record was included in the original soundtrack of the film "The Exorcist," which helped make "Tubular Bells" one of the best-selling records in history with more than 15 million copies sold.

With a few exceptions, notably for "Moonlight Shadow" with the Scottish singer Maggie Reilly in 1983, the English artist never evoked the same enthusiasm from the public ever again. His significant discography, with countless digressions around "Tubular Bells," deserves to be (re)discovered.

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Mike Oldfield on stage at Forest-National in Brussels (Belgium) on 21 June 1981