returned to it in later works. The opening passage of the title track on the album Crises and the piece “Harbinger” on the album Music of the Spheres are clearly derived from the opening of Tubular Bells. The opening is also quoted directly in the song “Five Miles Out” from the album of the same name, and the song also features his “trademark” instrument, “Piltdown Man” (referring to his singing like a caveman, first heard on Tubular Bells). Charts and awards
Tubular Bells stayed in the British charts for 279 weeks. It climbed the charts slowly but steadily, and did not reach number one for over a year. In doing so it displaced Oldfield’s second album, Hergest Ridge, which had been at number one for three weeks. This made Oldfield one of only three artists in the UK to beat himself to the top of the album charts.
The album sold more than 2,630,000 copies in the UK alone (making it the all-time 34th best seller in the UK), and according to some reports 15 to 17 million copies worldwide. The album went gold in the USA and Mike Oldfield received a Grammy Award for the best Instrumental Composition in 1975. In popular culture
The opening theme, which was eventually chosen for the 1973 film The Exorcist, gained the record considerable publicity and is how many people have probably first heard the work. Along with a number of other Oldfield pieces it was used in the 1979 NASA movie, The Space Movie. The opening theme has been sampled by many other artists such as Janet Jackson on her song “The Velvet Rope”. The opening theme has also gained cultural significance as a ‘haunting theme’; partly due to the association with The Exorcist.
In television it was also used in several episodes of the Dutch children’s series Bassie en Adriaan, an episode (“Ghosts”)
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