The latest episode of John Diliberto’s Echoes podcast reflects on the 50th anniversary of Mike Oldfield‘s Ommadawn.
Oldfield was one of the earlier musicians to create orchestral-scoped recordings, largely single-handedly, in the studio.
While he’s best known for his break-out hit Tubular Bells, Ommadawn is arguably a mature release. Oldfield recorded the album using a huge range of instruments – guitars, synthesizers, traditional Irish instruments and more.
With Ommadawn, Oldfield leaned into his personal heritage.
“I listened to music, Irish music, and there’s something in your blood,” explains Oldfield. “If I hear something Celtic, my ears perk up and just, I identify with it. So it’s always been part of me.”
In the podcast, Diliberto shares a historical perspective on Ommadawn and it’s follow up, Return To Ommadawn. Along the way, he weaves in his interview with Oldfield about the album.
You can listen below, or at the Echoes site.
Big-time fan here. Oldfield rivals Vangelis for bringing classical soundtrack-level music to rock and making it work. Don’t forget that its not at all easy. Oldfield almost had a nervous breakdown recording “Tubular Bells” by hand at night, when the studio was empty. All tape, no Pro Tools back then.
I recommend “Amarok,” his hour-long nose-thumb at Richard Branson of Virgin. You can’t make a single of any of it, but its an amazing, inclusive statement of everything Oldfield.
Ommadawn is awesome and Amarok is awesome — a quirky masterpiece. I wasn’t aware of the nose-thumb to Branson, can you tell me more?
“About 48 minutes into the song you can hear a morse code playing by guitar, spelling out “F*ck off, RB”, a farewell to Richard Branson of Virgin on one of his last releases for this record company.”
source: https://eeggs.com/items/3297.html
Also:
“Things were going badly with Virgin, but they wouldn’t let me leave. I was on low royalties with bad advances and getting a fair deal waslike fighting a war.I wasn’t even talking to them but I had three more albums to make. I was very resentful but, instead of making a rubbish album, I made an angry, protest album, pulling out all the stops of my musical techniques. It’s ridiculously complicated and the guitar parts are virtually impossible to play, but it has a cheekiness which I love. I was imagining Simon Draper of Virgin driving his Lamborghini with the music up loud, so I put these enormous brass stabs in there, obscene amounts of volume just to irritate him.”
source: https://tubular.net/articles/1998_11/Mike-Oldfield-10-Favorite-Tracks
Hah, nice 😀 Did not know about this, thanks for sharing!
Those stabs are pretty aggressive indeed… My favorite quirky bit is the toothbrush 🙂 It is an excellent composition though and I do like the ”experimental” sounds and huge contrasts. Keeps you on your toes for the whole hour 🙂