Michael Gordon Oldfield was born in Reading on the 15th May, 1953, where he also went to school and played in local folk clubs as a teenager. When he was 13, his parents moved to Essex, shortly after which he moved out following a disagreement with his parents about his long hair.
Mike was 15 when he and sister Sally started the folk duo The Sallyangie. Two singles, "Lady go lightly" and "Two Ships" and an album "Children of The Sun" were released before going on a national tour. The project only had limited success, resulting in its downfall. In 1968, almost immediately after that, Mike formed the folk group Barefoot which also faded away within a year. Barefoot was a band Mike and his brother Terry set up, during which time they wrote a song with grunting lyrics which were to become the Piltdown Man section of Tubular Bells in later years.
In 1969, Mike joined Kevin Ayers and the Whole World as guitarist. The band featured, as well as Kevin himself, David Bedford, who Mike was to often to work keenly together with in the following years. Mike worked on the albums "Shooting at the Moon", "Whatevershebringswesing", "Confessions of Dr. Dream and other stories" and "June, 1, 1974" (live) as well as appearing on the compilation LP's "The Kevin Ayers Collection" and "Odd Ditties". The Whole World split in 1971, although Ayers continued with other musicians.
Mike was already thinking about Tubular Bells in 1970, whilst still with the Whole World and a rough demo was ready by 1972, after many unsocial hours at the Abbey Road studios. Mike was so pleased with the result that he sent copies to all the major record companies, all of which rejected it as uncommercial ... until he came upon Richard Branson, who ran a chain of budget price record stores. Richard was very impressed, but didn't have the resources to fund its release.
A year later, he decided to launch the record label and rang Mike, expecting him to have already sold "Tubular Bells" to another record company. Instead, Mike was second reserve guitarist in the musical "Hair" and thoroughly depressed. Richard immediately drew up a contract with Mike, copied from that of a session musician, Sandy Denny, because neither knew what a recording contract should contain!
It was Tom Newman who suggested to Richard that they build a recording studio, for which they borrowed £25,000 and bought The Manor near Oxford. A squash court was converted to a studio, but they couldn't get permission to use it at night. Because of a neighbour who kept ringing the police, they took it in turns to sit at the gate and press an alarm button to alert the studio. By the time the police arrived, everyone was in the kitchen drinking coffee! After a while the police got fed up and didn't bother any more!
Mike moved into the Manor for the next year, learning how to be engineer and producer, whilst making "Tubular Bells", which they then took to the Cannes music festival together with a jam session called "Manor Live", featuring Elkie Brooks. Executives from many record companies listened to them, showing greet interest in "Manor live", which was completely forgettable in the long term run of things, but not in "Tubular Bells".
The only company to show any interest was the American Mercury records, who said they'd be interested if Mike put vocals to it, so Richard decided they weren't getting anywhere and after 2 days put a sign on their stand: "VIRGIN RECORDS - GONE SKIING". The only way forward was to release "Tubular Bells" themselves.
Source: http://www.mikeoldfield.org/info/biography/index.htm
