Tubular Bells – Played just like the record, but different

It felt like a bad omen. Two bad omens, in fact. First, the advertised start time of 7 turned out to be 8, which meant that the lobby of the Bruce Mason Centre was full of punters by 6.30. I guess the venue would have made a bit of extra money on the bar. Second, as the show got underway the grinding sound of the dry ice machine was for a time nearly as loud as the music. More ominous still was the music selection in the first half.

It might have helped if keyboardist/music director Robin A. Smith had introduced the band near the start and explained their intention to play a selection of Oldfield’s compositions prior to the second half, which would comprise the epic Tubular Bells in its entirety, but that happened too late in the piece to break the (dry) ice.

I’m sure some members of the audience were Oldfield completists who recognised at least seven of the eight songs played (the eighth being one of Robin A. Smith’s own compositions), but to these ears they mostly sounded like dreadful film-type music with more than a few new age trappings. Oldfield’s output in the ‘90s and ‘00s had largely eschewed rock, and as much as his ear for melody never left him, I felt that it lacked the quirk of his 1970s work, and that little bit of angular rock that gave it just that bit of edge.

And Smith’s band somehow amplified the schmaltz factor on pieces like ‘Theme From Tubular Bells II’, a couple of tunes from Ommadawn and ‘To France’ and ‘Summit Day’ (from ’84 and ’99 respectively). The least satisfying moments, however, were the band’s attempts to capture the spirit of the ‘80s hit ‘Moonlight Shadow’ rendered vocally by bassist Lisa Featherston and especially guitarist Jay Stapley’s gruff rendition of ‘Family Man’, originally a minor hit in ’82 and again when covered later by Hall & Oates. Stapley was a longtime member of Oldfield’s band and plays a mean guitar, but has a dishevelled demeanour that reminded me of ancient UK TV characters like Steptoe & Son or Wurzel Gummidge.

My dear friend Steve, who kindly accompanies me to these old man progressive rock-era shows, was just as depressed as me at intermission. Was the second half going to be as desperate and disappointing? Thankfully, it was an almost note-perfect and complete rendition of the Tubular Bells album, and the band thoroughly redeemed itself. Of course, nothing could quite capture the special aroma of that album, with its imperfect but fantastic overdubs of Oldfield playing something like 16 different instruments. But Smith made the right decision to both keep religiously to the album while sometimes taking liberties with the instrumentation. This was most evident on a section carried by the Kwesi Edman’s electric cello, notation perfect but allowing new sounds to give us a touch of the 21^st century.

My one criticism of the presentation was that occasionally things were busier than they needed to be, with ghostly traces of an opera singer in the mix. (In fact, opera singer Daisy Bevan was supposed to appear but didn’t, for reasons that were never explained, so I can’t help but wonder whether those recorded vocals were intended as backing tracks for her performance). One of my favourite things about the original Tubular Bells is Oldfield’s subtlety. Despite the fact that he ladles layer upon layer of instrumentation there are exquisite quiet moments and even when it gets noisy there’s a great degree of care taken not to crowd the mix. Tubular Bells In Concert is necessarily a different thing but it could have done with a little more restraint from time to time.

That’s a relatively small criticism, however. I don’t consider myself a nostalgic person, but I do adore the original Tubular Bells album and my admiration for the recording has only grown over the years as many other favourites fade away. I didn’t need to see a slavish replication of that record and they didn’t give it. Instead, the show was much like a classical performance where it was true to the dots on paper, but there was room for some interpretation of those notes.

Ultimately, seeing and hearing Tubular Bells performed live just increased my love of the album, because it increased my awareness of what an extraordinary thing it was and is as a piece of composed music reflecting on both a time and a place in the UK (early ‘70s) but also stylistically, the so-called minimalism of modern classical composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich but also carrying a strong yearning emotionalism redolent of ancient British and Celtic heritage. We walked out happy.

PS, I could carp about the ban on photos, which wasn’t advertised. One of the unfortunate ushers seemed to spend much of his time with the thankless task of chasing down members of the audience who unwittingly got their phones out without knowing that simply taking a photo of the performance wasn’t allowed. Promoters, get your times right and if there’s a photo ban, tell the people in advance. It’s pretty basic.