Three decades on, will Mike Oldfields new non-violent computer game make the tills ring again?
Slow down. Chill out. Stop leaping around, raiding tombs and shooting people. There’s a new computer game to play, in which you get to have a nice time in an idyllic landscape and nobody gets hurt. It’s epic in scale and ambition, weirdly beauitful, rich in melody and texture, and has been painstakingly put together by a multi-talented composer called Mike Oldfield. Ring any bells? Thirty years ago, the same man started recording an album that moved the rock goalposts and launched the career of one of Britain’s toothiest multimillionaires. Despite being songless, almost drumless, and consisting of just two very long pieces of music, Tubular Bells topped the LP charts and turned Oldfield into a pop icon and guitar hero, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Records into a fabulously fertile business. Since those days, 40m Mike Oldfield albums have been bought around the world. Back in 1972, he was a timid, bearded, long-haired 19-year-old laying down endless overdubs on primitive equipment in an
