Mike Oldfield: Ibiza parties and his 1973 Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield: from 1973's Tubular Bells to the Ibiza party

The forum celebrated Mike Oldfield —whom one poster says is 75— amid congratulations and memories of a night in Ibiza. The musician is alive, something more than one person had given up for lost, and some maintain that he “is holding up more or less well.” The party, the Mercedes and the company he was keeping at a 1999 concert have taken up more space than any serious analysis of his work. That an artist with that career should provoke that double response—musical devotion and island gossip—says a lot about how his career has been told.

Tubular Bells, the album that made Virgin

Tubular Bells remains the key to everything. The 1973 album didn't just launch him: it cemented Virgin's fortune to the point that the running joke in the thread is that without Mike, Richard Branson would be homeless today. In 2003 a revised version of the album was released on the grounds that it was “how Oldfield would have liked the original to sound,” something that couldn't be done technically in 1973. In time came similar revisions of Ommadawn and Hergest Ridge, and some grew up with Platinum at home.

Ommadawn and a guitar that doesn't get its due credit

Of his early trilogy, Ommadawn (1975) has the most defenders: some consider it, without qualification, the best of the “holy trinity.” The underlying argument, as maintained in the thread, is that Oldfield suffers from chronic underappreciation: as a composer, as a multi-instrumentalist and as a lyricist of pop songs. The other thesis circulating is that his style is related to the vibrato of Paul Kossoff, the Free guitarist, something audible on Five Miles Out and surprising to anyone who has been listening to him for decades.

On that same album, Five Miles Out, there are two facts that often go unnoticed. Mount Teidi was played by Carl Palmer, the drummer who later played in Asia, and the title track recounts a troubled flight on which Oldfield himself was aboard and was frightened. The backstory to his records is almost as dense as his discography.

The Mercedes crash in Ibiza and the house that changed hands

The most cited episode in his recent biography is the March 1997 accident: he crashed into a wall in Ibiza in his Mercedes, at excessive estimulante ilegal and, according to the story in circulation, possibly also after a few too many drinks. No one else was involved, he emerged practically unharmed and the car ended up in the scrapyard. The fine for speeding or drunk driving, it is argued, would have been the equivalent of leaving a tip for him.

From that period people also remember the sale of his house on the island. The information available suggests the buyer was connected to a British band of the nineties, although no one confirms it with full names and the matter remained in the realm of conjecture. A prerecorded 1999 concert and the company in the Mercedes complete the partying narrative, which sits badly with the image of a meticulous composer.

200-euro vinyl, divorces and the collection that gets lost

The material side of the story also has figures. Reassembling the vinyl reissues of his early records now costs between 200 and 220 euros on the second-hand market, according to the prices Discogs lists, and some people acquired four editions between 2012 and 2013 and keep them as a small asset. The counterpoint comes from someone who lost almost his entire collection in a divorce and has adopted a particular life philosophy: “I need little, and the little I need, I need little of.”

The Oldfield who supports Trump and Brexit

The fact that breaks the hagiographic narrative is recorded in his Wikipedia entry: in 2017 he expressed support for then US President Donald Trump and said he would have played at his inauguration if invited, as well as taking a favourable stance on Brexit. This is the uncomfortable Oldfield, the one who doesn't fit with the fanbase that grew up with his instrumental records and who, that same year, released an album that some of his trinc call a masterpiece outright.

The music that leaves with no replacement

His name is always mentioned alongside Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Giorgio Segarro, and the list also includes Mark Shreeve, “the English Jean-Michel Jarre,” and the Japanese artist Himekami, behind the album Zipangu. Listening to that music today carries a certain melancholy: Ennio Morricone, Basil Poledouris and Vangelis himself are gone, and some see no generational replacement for that way of composing. In 2015, moreover, one of his children died.

The biography doesn't fit a single headline. The story of the Mercedes crashed in Ibiza coexists with the philosophy of someone who, in the thread, maintains that he needs little; and anyone who wants to rebuild his discography on vinyl will spend between 200 and 220 euros trying. The contrast remains.