This article is about the Mike Oldfield album. For the single, see Mike Oldfield's Single. For the instrument, see Tubular bells.
Tubular Bells
Studio album by
Mike Oldfield
Released
25 May 1973 (1973-05-25)
Recorded
November 1972 – April 1973
Studio
The Manor, Oxfordshire
Genre
Progressive rock[1][2]
instrumental rock[3]
new-age music[4]
Length
49:18
Label
Virgin
Producer
Tom Newman
Simon Heyworth
Mike Oldfield
Mike Oldfield chronology
Tubular Bells (1973)
Hergest Ridge (1974)
Tubular Bells series chronology
Tubular Bells (1973)
The Orchestral Tubular Bells (1975)
Singles from Tubular Bells
"Mike Oldfield's Single" Released: 28 June 1974
Tubular Bells is the debut studio album by the British musician Mike Oldfield, released on 25 May 1973 as the first album on Virgin Records. It comprises two mostly instrumental tracks. Oldfield, who was 19 years old when it was recorded, played almost all the instruments.
Tubular Bells initially sold slowly, but gained worldwide attention in December 1973 when its opening theme was used for the soundtrack to the horror film The Exorcist. This led to a surge in sales which increased Oldfield's profile and played an important part in the growth of the Virgin Group. It stayed in the top ten of the UK Albums Chart for one year from March 1974, during which it reached number one for one week. It reached number three on the US Billboard 200, and number one in Canada and Australia. It has sold more than 2.7 million copies in the UK and an estimated 15 million copies worldwide.
An orchestral version produced by David Bedford was released in 1975 as The Orchestral Tubular Bells. It was followed by the albums Tubular Bells II (1992), Tubular Bells III (1998), The Millennium Bell (1999), and a re-recorded version, Tubular Bells 2003, for its 30th anniversary. A remastered edition was released in 2009. Its contribution to British music was recognised when Oldfield played extracts during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. In 2010, Tubular Bells was one of ten classic album covers from British artists commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail.[5][6]
^Hardy, Phil (1995). The Da Capo Companion to 20th-century Popular Music. Da Capo Press. p. 705. ISBN 978-0-306-80640-7. The album became a progressive rock sensation in Britain, where it remained on the charts for nearly five years and in America, where its success was aided by the inclusion of extracts on the soundtrack of The Exorcist (1973).
^Donnelly, Kevin J. (2002). Pop Music in British Cinema: A Chronicle. British Film Institute. p. 61. ISBN 0-8517-0863-3.
^Stanley, Bob (13 September 2013). "Progressive Rock (And Simpler Pleasures)". Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop. Faber & Faber. p. 363. ISBN 978-0-571-28198-5.
^Birosik, Patti Jean (1989). The New Age Music Guide. Collier MacMillan. p. 138. ISBN 0-02-041640-7.
^"Royal Mail unveil classic album cover stamps". The Independent. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
^"Royal Mail puts classic albums on to stamps". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
as The Orchestral TubularBells. It was followed by the albums TubularBells II (1992), TubularBells III (1998), The Millennium Bell (1999), and a re-recorded...
carillons, or a bell tower; the original tubularbells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within an ensemble. Each bell is a metal tube...
TubularBells II is the fifteenth studio album by English guitarist and songwriter Mike Oldfield. It was released on 31 August 1992 by Warner Music UK...
TubularBells 2003 is the 22nd studio album by English musician Mike Oldfield, released on 26 May 2003 by Warner Music Spain. It is a digital re-recording...
TubularBells III is the eighteenth studio album by English guitarist, songwriter, and producer Mike Oldfield. It was released on 31 August 1998 by Warner...
musician, songwriter, and producer best known for his debut studio album TubularBells (1973), which became an unexpected critical and commercial success....
The Orchestral TubularBells is an orchestral version of Mike Oldfield's album TubularBells, arranged by David Bedford and recorded in 1974 by the Royal...
alongside TubularBells 2003. This box set includes TubularBells 2003 (a re-recording of the original TubularBells), TubularBells II and TubularBells III...
TubularBells III, The Premiere Performance is a live concert video by Mike Oldfield released in 1998. It was released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1998, and...
being the fourth installment of Oldfield's TubularBells series. It is the most recent entry in the TubularBells series to feature all-new material. It was...
TubularBells for Two is a music-theatre production created and performed by Australian multi-instrumentalists Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth. In...
TubularBells II, The Performance Live at Edinburgh Castle is a live concert video by Mike Oldfield released in 1992. The video is a full faithful performance...
tube Tubular people, a former ethnic group in Russia The adjective is often applied to items which are somewhat tubular in shape: Tubularbells, musical...
English multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield. It was included on the album TubularBells III and released as a single on 5 October 1998 by Warner Music. The...
hammer, or—in small bells—by a small loose sphere enclosed within the body of the bell (jingle bell). Bells are usually cast from bell metal (a type of bronze)...
different edit. The UK version was featured on the 2009 reissue of TubularBells. "Froggy Went A-Courting" was only released as a single in the Netherlands...
large bells, often hung in a tower. It is not usually applied to assemblages of smaller bells, such as a glockenspiel, a collection of tubularbells, or...
rototoms, tubularbells, the gong, snare drum and timpani. Cooper is known to have played tambourine, congas, maracas, bongos, cymbals, wind chimes, bell tree...
unexpected critical and commercial success of his debut studio album, TubularBells (1973). He followed it with Hergest Ridge (1974), which generated a...
Global Information