- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- After rejections from numerous labels, future billionaire Richard Branson started his own label; and Tubular Bells became the very first release on Virgin.
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Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (1973): Tubular Bells is a startling, album-length, mostly instrumental performance that amalgamates sounds from dozens of musical instruments into a cohesive whole having a multitude of moods and textures. Future billionaire Richard Branson provided studio time for Mike Oldfield for this album, and Oldfield plays every instrument himself. After rejections from numerous record labels, Branson started his own label in response; and Tubular Bells became the very first release on Virgin Records. The original 1973 film The Exorcist famously used the quiet opening of Tubular Bells in the soundtrack; as a result, an edited version of portions of Side 1 of the album was released as a single in the U.S., eventually reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Mike Oldfield did not authorize the edited “Tubular Bells” single and was displeased with the result for a variety of reasons; he refused its release in the U.K. Instead, he came up with his own edited version of Tubular Bells that he called “Mike Oldfield’s Single”. Tubular Bells is often called one of the earliest albums in the “new-age music” genre, although the term was controversial from the beginning, and most recording artists identified as new-age musicians resist that labeling.