Tubular Bells

[paulsherwin]

Listening again to Mike Oldfield's classic first album this evening, I was very impressed by it as a technical achievement. Presumably The Manor studios were using the standard 16 or 24 track Dolby A setup of the time, but the amount of tape hiss is incredibly low given the amount of overdubbing involved. I don't know who the tape jockeys were, but I'd like to shake their hands.

I also noticed what sounded like clipping on the actual tubular bells in the Viv Stanshall section. Does anybody have any info about this?

There weren't many student parties in 1974 that didn't have this playing. Happy days.

[alanworland]

In the last couple of weeks I have digitised my copy and like you I was impressed with the recording, although I also think the bells went into the red!
I had forgotten how long the original track was which made a refreshing change to hear all of it rather than what the presenters allow us to listen to.
Great recording.

Alan

[ITAM805]

SOS have some info here Paul

[Richard_FM]

I remember I bought an Issue of Q magazine that had a feature in the 25th anniversary of it's recording.

It had some quite interesting anecdotes including as Mike Oldfield played the tubular bells with actual hammers & drank half a bottle of whisky to perform the Piltdown Man vocals.

[paulsherwin]

I understand a fair bit of drinking went on during the TB sessions. It's amazing it sounds as good as it does artistically, though Oldfield's musicianship is questionable at times. Of course, he was just a young man at the time.

One of the ideas behind rural studios like The Manor was to get 'the talent' away from bad influences selling them drugs etc. That certainly worked

[Ted Kendall]

Phil Newell, now a studio consultant, was one of the engineers on the sessions. The bells were heavily compressed through some antedeluvian valve limiters, which may account for some of the distortion, but the coal-hammer incident came later and wrecked the bells, This, and the fact that the limiters had long since departed in the direction of Lisle Street, meant that subsequent re-inventions of the album were stuck with the original bell tracks.

[Outrun_uk]

I’ve got this on vinyl ( original pressing, was my brother's - well worn!), first issue CD, remastered CD and SACD. The remastered CD is great but the SACD really is awesome, unfortunately my SACD setup isn’t a patch on my friend’s system where I first heard it....

Kev

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

The bells were heavily compressed through some antedeluvian valve limiters, which may account for some of the distortion.

I thought The Manor was built from scratch as a vanity project by Branson in the early 70s, so that's surprising. I know Branson paid for a complete refit in 1975 using some of the TB profits.

[cliff2903]

Snippet from a Coventry newspaper a while ago__
An even stranger connection concerns the Hillmorton radio masts, now sadly due to be decommissioned.

When the late great Vivian Stanshall introduced the roll call of instruments on the classic 1973 album Tubular Bells, he omitted one item that is rather peculiar to say the least.

For strange as it may sound he could also have said "Morse Code from Rugby radio station". For hidden on that album is indeed the ID message signal of the station.

But don't go cranking the volume up and getting your headphones out, you see it's not audible to the human ear.

Gerhard Kircher, from Austria, is the guy who discovered it, while testing a spectrum analyser, a clever piece of hi-tech equipment that can detect the very make-up of frequencies in a sound source.

He put on Tubular Bells (as it was handy) as a sound source, and purely by coincidence he suddenly could detect a rather regular frequency signature. He was able to work out it was the Morse coded ID for Rugby - VVV GBR.

These transmissions were not of course put on the recordings deliberately, far from it, the answer lies in Rugby's powerful transmissions being picked up on sensitive studio recording equipment.

Guitar pick-ups and microphones being the main culprits. Interestingly Rugby Radio Station is only 37 miles north of The Manor Studio at Shipton on Cherwell, in Oxfordshire (once owned by Virgin's Richard Branson), where Tubular Bells was recorded.

[Ted Kendall]

Exactly - Tubular Bells was the game-changer. The original Manor rig was put together on a budget, to put it mildly. Newell's skills, acquired at Pye, were stretched to the limit to make a workable studio. At that time, Branson was a man with a record shop and big dreams.

[Radio Wrangler]

Branson at least still remembers where his success came from.

One of his 747s is named "Tubular Belle"

It was a clean sounding recording compared to some of that era.

David

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

Phil Newell, now a studio consultant, was one of the engineers on the sessions. The bells were heavily compressed through some antedeluvian valve limiters, which may account for some of the distortion, but the coal-hammer incident came later and wrecked the bells, This, and the fact that the limiters had long since departed in the direction of Lisle Street, meant that subsequent re-inventions of the album were stuck with the original bell tracks.

I've talked several times to Phil. Last time we talked he was living and working in Spain, and bemoaning the low standard of installations that many studios were now specifying.

Being involved in the early days of Virgin, he got a whole shed load of founder price stock. I asked him why he was installing studios, since he must be as rich as Croesus. He explained that after selling his stock he developed a liking for buying and flying aircraft, and blew the lot.

He recounts that anecdote that in his excellent book, co-authored with Keith Holland (from ISVR at Southampton University) "Loudspeakers for Music Recording and Reproduction"

Craig

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

Exactly - Tubular Bells was the game-changer. The original Manor rig was put together on a budget, to put it mildly. Newell's skills, acquired at Pye, were stretched to the limit to make a workable studio. At that time, Branson was a man with a record shop and big dreams.

That makes the album an even more impressive technical achievement.

[David Simpson]

My direct link to "Tubular Bells" - - The percussionist in the group - a chap called Pert, bought our old house up in Sutherland off us in '85. Sadly, he died some years later, I believe.

Regards, David

[Kentode]

Originally Posted by Outrun_uk

I’ve got this on vinyl ( original pressing, was my brother's - well worn!), first issue CD, remastered CD and SACD. The remastered CD is great but the SACD really is awesome, unfortunately my SACD setup isn’t a patch on my friend’s system where I first heard it....

Kev

Ah, but have you got the Quadrophonic vinyl, remixed by Phil Newell, assisted by Alan Perkins?

Apologies for the sideways pictures!

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

That makes the album an even more impressive technical achievement.

A point Newell has made with some force is that the man driving the kit has more influence on the quality of recording than is commonly supposed, by project studio owners at any rate. The home studio industry, and to an increasing extent the professional sector, is geared to solving problems, real or perceived, by buying another box rather than acquiring knowledge and consequently getting better results out of existing equipment.

[Welsh Anorak]

Seeing a pictuire of the quad re-issue reminds me of the alternative 'Hornpipe' in that box. Viv Stanshall, folllowed by Oldfield wandered through the Manor where microphones had been strategically placed to record, well, whatever came into his head. Clearly blotto, it still shows what an eccentric talent that man was. He lived near a friend of mine in Greenwich and apparently in later life dressed like a tramp. Sadly, though perhaps appropriately, he died by accidentally setting himself on fire.
Interestingly, in the less impressive (musically, if not technically) Tubular Bells 2, the introductions are spoken by an uncredited Alan Rickman, who just happened to be around well after even the artwork had gone to press - it's 'a travelling player' in the credits.

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

At that time, Branson was a man with a record shop and big dreams.

This links into the rationale behind his business name.

He sold virgin records....ones which hadn't been opened and played in the shop.

David

[ColinTheAmpMan1]

As no-one has said so far, "Tubular Bells" wasn't Virgin's first record. There was a loss-leader album called "The Faust Tapes" which went for the princely sum of £1. Faust was a German Band and was one of the "Krautrock" members. It was a weird album for sure - I have an original vinyl copy, which I bought without a sleeve.

Following that up, I don't think Branson used the name "Virgin" because all of the records hadn't been opened and played in the shop, as my sleeve-less copy of The Faust Tapes seems to prove. I recall visiting the Virgin shop in Manchester and there were several listening booths, so the records were being played in the shops. I wouldn't argue against the suggestion that if a customer decided to buy the album that s/he had been listening to, it would be exactly the same one, not a pristine, new, "Virgin" copy.

Colin.

[Ted Kendall]

I think the story is that Branson was acknowledging his business inexperience when he opened the first Virgin shop - at that time his CV amounted to one student magazine, if memory serves. There was also an element of wanting to do things differently, and you could argue he has done just that.