the Royal Mail for a set of “Classic Album Cover” postage stamps issued on 7 January 2010. Significance Virgin
Oldfield approached (and was rejected by) many other established record labels. Some of the rejections were because they believed the piece to be unmarketable. Oldfield then played his demos to some of the Engineers at The Manor; they along with their boss, Richard Branson decided to give Oldfield a chance. Virgin Records released Oldfield’s debut album Tubular Bells as its first album; hence the catalogue number V2001 (although V2002 and V2003 were released on the same date).
The significance of this album to the Virgin empire is not lost on Richard Branson, who named one of his first Virgin America aircraft, an Airbus A319-112, N527VA Tubular Belle,. Prior to this Virgin Atlantic had named a Boeing 747-4Q8 , G-VHOT Tubular Belle, in 1994.
Virgin reissued the album a number of times including in 2000 for a HDCD release, and in 2001 for a SACD release. The HDCD release contained liner notes by David Laing, and the SACD release notes were by Phil Newell and Simon Heyworth.
The 50th Anniversary edition of the music magazine Music Week features the album in the official Top-Selling UK albums 19592009 at No. 35, noting it as the only entry that did not yield a hit single. In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock, the album came #9 in its list of “40 Cosmic Rock Albums”. The Mail on Sunday free edition
On 22 April 2007 a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, gave away 2.25 million free copies of the full original Tubular Bells to its readers; this came in a card packet displaying the original artwork.
EMI (owners of the Virgin Records label) earned between 200,000 and 500,000 from the promotion. The
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