麦克·欧菲尔德

Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is a retired English musician, songwriter and producer best known for his debut album Tubular Bells (1973), which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield played a range of instruments, which included keyboards and percussion, as well as vocals. He had adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient and new age music. His discography includes 25 studio albums, nine of which have reached the UK top ten.

Oldfield took up the guitar at age ten and left school in his teens to embark on a music career. From 1967 to 1970, he and his sister Sally Oldfield were a folk duo, the Sallyangie, after which he performed with Kevin Ayers before starting work on Tubular Bells in 1971. The album caught the attention of Richard Branson, who agreed to make it the first-ever release on his new label Virgin Records. Its opening was used in the horror film The Exorcist, and the album went on to sell over 2.7 million copies in the UK. Oldfield followed it with Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978). Like Tubular Bells, these albums consist of longform, mostly instrumental pieces.

In the late 1970s, Oldfield began to tour and release more commercial and song-based music, beginning with Platinum (1979), QE2 (1980) and Five Miles Out (1982). His most successful album of this period was Crises (1983), which features the worldwide hit single "Moonlight Shadow," with the vocalist Maggie Reilly. After leaving Virgin and signing with WEA, the 1990s saw him release Tubular Bells II (1992) and Tubular Bells III (1998) among other albums, and he experimented with virtual reality and gaming content with his MusicVR project. In 2012, Oldfield performed at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, while 2017 saw the release of his final album, Return to Ommadawn. Oldfield's label announced his retirement in 2023.

Early life

Michael Gordon Oldfield was born in Reading, Berkshire, on 15 May 1953, to Raymond Henry Oldfield (1923–2016), an English general practitioner, and Maureen (née Liston; 1919–1975), an Irish nurse from Charleville, County Cork, who emigrated to England to pursue a career in nursing. Oldfield has two elder siblings, sister Sally and brother Terence. In 1959, when Oldfield was six, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, David, who had Down syndrome. The parents dropped off David in an institution and lied to Mike, Sally and Terence that the baby had died in infancy. His mother was prescribed barbiturates, to which she became addicted, and developed mental health problems. She spent much of the rest of her life in mental institutions and died in early 1975, shortly after Oldfield had started writing Ommadawn. Oldfield attended Highlands Junior School, followed by St. Edward's Preparatory School and Presentation College, all in Reading. When he was thirteen, the family moved to Harold Wood, Essex, and Oldfield attended Hornchurch Grammar School where, having already displayed musical talent, he earned one GCE qualification in English.