Sándor Gerebics: Good evening! The cast of Flash reports this time from Valencia where we watch the world-famous British musician, composer Mike Oldfield's exclusive premiere. The arrangers promised rich spectacles and excellent music. We'd like to hand the same to you. Have fun!
SG: Mike Oldfield's name means unique sounding, complex music of high standard for nearly 30 years. It would be hard to determine his style but it may not be worth. He became suddenly famous in 1973 when he was just 20 years old with his album called Tubular Bells. Anyway it's worth mentioning that it wasn't his first released work because with her sister they already made an album as children. The secret of the early success could be inherent in that the young musician mixed the symphonic stringed elements with the instrumentation of contemporary rock music and the precise and exciting vocal sounding neatly. In Valencia at first we asked the guitarist musician about the early period.
Mike Oldfield: We really had a revolution between string players and rock musicians. There was a determinant trend at the beginning of the 70s. It could be called experimental keyboard music with artists such as Soft Machine, Terry Riley, Renvent Curvey (?). I think even artists like Philip Glass started that time. And there was also Pink Floyd. These bands came near to originate a movement, especially Centipede which contained rock musicians, classical musicians and jazz musicians. They had fantastic live concerts. I loved going to these events. Then this kind of music practically died out, I'm a great survivor of it after all. However, later on a new style came into existence, it's called new age or ambient, more hundreds of musicians stand for it even today. To do the mixture of ethereal and dynamic music is rarer unless we think of people who make film music. I made Tubular Bells between 1972 and 1973 and it was a huge success. While the next one, Hergest Ridge was a big failure. Then came Ommadawn which was big success again. So I was quite confused in those days. My record company - who had thought about me as its number one musician - discovered Sex Pistols and punk rock. While I was making the new album, my publisher changed and instead of my music they supported punk. At the time I completed the album, they were absolutely untaken by it. So it was a difficult time in my life. The first three albums took so much emotional work that I wasn't even in a humour to make another album. I could have waited five years before starting a new project. During recording the double LP Incantations I entered into relations with Druids, the company of ancient priests because I needed spells. So these strange Druids came to my house and gave me spells, incantations so that I could get inspiration from the spiritual world with their help. It's eerie but one of the most beautiful part of the composition was just like a prophecy. It evoked the spirit of Diana who appeared five years later as Princess Diana. There's something weird in this all.
SG: What changed in the musical conception of 80s?
Mike: At the time I was interested in vocal music, working with singers. The success of Moonlight Shadow was very surprising to me, I didn't count on it. Making that record took plenty of work. We made wonderful live backing track with fine musicians. I tried to find the proper lyrics for three months. I worked together with scripters but at the end it was still me who wrote the lyrics. On a stormy night the rain came pouring down, I sit down with a first-quality bordeaux and a rhyming dictionary, and it was completed at 2 or 3 o'clock at dawn. But there were still breakers ahead. I had to get the white-skinned, brown-voiced [?] singer, Maggie Reilly to sing in a completely different way. I asked her to sing softly, with bated breath, as never before. And even then, I had to work by syllables, word by word with it for hours to reach the correct sounding, but I heard inside my head how it should sound. Then I had to find the right echo and the proper tone-colour for mixing the guitars. It's similar to the way how a master cook makes Gordon Bleu, a wonderful meal from a piece of meat. After that came the mixing, working 24 hours straight on end, still a little guitar, a tiny reverb, work, work, work. At the end it sounds as if the band played it "la la la la" at one go, and it avoids notice how much work there is behind it. I love this work. I devoted my life to it. I have much experience with the sounds, I know the proper microphones, the right sound processing, the proper equalizing, the right echo, I know how to get singers to sing with correspondent attitude, as I can't sing myself, I can explain it to the singer what emphasis, what tone she should sing with. When the vocal recording is ready, I still work on it with a cutting software. I edit, attune, cut it to many tiny pieces, in the end it's not like the natural vocal performance.
Mike: I can't do anything if I don't know the technique I use. With a new technique I have to work, I have to practise till it becomes invisible to me, till the whole thing is in my mind. We used to work with mixing desks and other equipments, while nowadays we only use software. So at first, I have to know the technical accessories I work with completely then I have to find the music. Lately I use a new way of composing. The first tune I play on the keyboard is the proper one. I don't like playing all day to try to find the best tune, I keep right the first sounds. After that I work on it for two or three days, I add a little bit of bass, a little bit of guitar, a little bit here, a little bit there, until I have something that is rough yet but it has spiritual energy, it has life, emotions. Then I work on the tiny details, I blend all the sounds, some reverb here, something there. After that, I create a list containing the things I have to do with the song. Then I cross them off one by one till three things remain, then two, then one, and at last I cross the last one off and the track it's ready. In the latest album, Tres Lunas, I worked by and large two weeks on every song. To me, it's not the melody that matters but the way how it's played, how it's expressed. In my opinion the same goes at actors. For example, I never understood Shakespeare, I thought "what is he talking about?". But then I saw a fantastic actor onstage and suddenly I understood it. The same words but it's in the performance, you know. To take a melody, "da da dam" you say that: "Hmm, it's quite good." But if you sing like "doo doo doom", you give life to it, energy to express something with it, and then it's your performance. The performance is that matters, how you play the melodies.
SG: How does your private life, love affect your work?
Mike: I think that my private life doesn't have much to do with my compositions. I know a lot of artists make love songs when they're in love and that reflects their private life. My case is different, the two things are separated. The music was very important to me when I was a child. It was the only safe place where I could be happy, where I felt myself out of the wood, it was some kind of refuge, a sanctum to me. My compositions aren't affected by my private life, it's rather the experience of human being, how it feels to live, and not the happenings in my life. I wrote the most beautiful tracks in the second part of Tubular Bells at the age of 14 or 15. It's really beautiful music that was written in one of the most horrible period of my life. I don't want to explicate what happened to me. But the opposite situation could be also true: when I am very happy, I can write terrible music. (laughs)
SG: How does a sensible person receive today's seemingly silly world?
Mike: Well... (long pause while thinking on the answer) ...By continuing working, founding out new ideas. I love my work, and I still get excited when I go to my workroom in the morning and start creating things. Hm, the world is really silly nowadays, especially the entertaining part of it. But at the same time wonderful things happen in the world at science, medical science. I'd also recommend my children not to enter the upset music industry because it's really over. They should rather choose science or something similar or quite good movies are created nowadays. They should go this way but pop music, it's dead.I think you don't know much about the virtual reality part of the new Tres Lunas album before the premiere. This is something I worked very hard on, and I'm proud of it, I started a quite new way. I transformed the rock music into landscapes. It's just as real to me as this reality, and it's only the beginning of this technology. The computers will be hundred or thousand times faster ten years later. Then we can explore a wonderful world that will help us to evolve our spirituality, and then perhaps the world won't seem that silly.
SG: What kind of movies do you like?
Mike: I love science-fiction movies. Actually I like the movies with special effects - like Artificial Intelligence. It got bad reviews but I think it's a fine film.
SG: Mike Oldfield gifted his fans not only with a fine album but he thought of those who wish to take pleasant trips with the help of their computer on the different, existing and imaginary landscapes of the world. These possibilites are offered by Mike Oldfield's virtual reality game suggesting harmony and being free of violence. On the world premiere, Mike himself controlled the attention of the audience to different places with the mouse of his computer. You can here look into this nice Oldfieldian world at the first time, your guide is the creator himself.
Mike: The music could be compared to the Café del Mar series.
SG: Do you like these albums?
Mike: No but it's nice if you're in the Café del Mar. It's a real café on the beach, you're sitting there drinking your beer, the sand is flowing. It has a nice atmosphere, you know. But I don't like music (laughs) anymore, I don't listen to music, I like to play the guitar, but I don't like listening to music, I like silence.
Mike: I felt all through my life that the possibilities of visual expression attract me. When I was very young, at the age of 9 or 10 I believed that I would be a painter. I was always fascinated by the endless fecundity of visual interpretation. I tried to make videos but it wasn't my cup of tea. But when I discovered the possibilities of three-dimensional computer graphics, I felt that that was what I wanted to do. And it was taken four years of work, four very hard years to realize it. You're in a virtual desert, in a landscape where you can travel miles, there are things all around which you can discover or collect, you can fly. With the different computers in the world you can control all sorts of flying objects, you should simply try it out, it's available through the Internet. I suppose that we have to find new ways, new manifestations of the creativity, new areas to be discovered, and this is what I work on all through my life. And even if I don't succeed, I may inspire others to do something. We have to progress, the music goes round and round. It repeats itself, the same songs, the same tunes, it's time to find out new things.
Hopefully I will be able to continue but it takes plenty of time and my life is not endless. (laughs)