MIKE OLDFIELD
Hergest Ridge (50th Anniversary) UNIVERSAL/ISLAND8/10
Revisiting the multi-instrumentalist’s mission impossible: the follow-up to Tubular Bells.
By Terry Staunton
Taking flight from the capital: Oldfield on Hergest Ridge, Herefordshire, 1974
MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES
THE phrase “difficult second album” might have been coined specifically for Mike Oldfield, such was the success of his Tubular Bells debut in 1973. A soon to be iconic calling card, it squatted in the UK Top 10 for close to a year, its longevity partially due to a signature passage featuring prominently in The Exorcist that same year; a high profile that (initially, at least) sat awkwardly with its reclusive maker.
His paymasters at Virgin Records were still counting the not-inconsiderable cash from their out-of-leftfield runaway success when Oldfield jumped in his car and drove off to find somewhere conducive to writing a follow-up. He alighted upon Kington, a Herefordshire town of 3,000 inhabitants close to the border with Wales, and in the shadow of the elongated hill that would ultimately give the new LP its title.