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''Tubular Bells'' is the debut record album of English musician Mike Oldfield, recorded when he was 19 and released in 1973. It was the first album released by Virgin Records and an early cornerstone of the company's success. Vivian Stanshall provided the voice of the "Master of Ceremonies" who reads off the list of instruments at the end of the first movement. The opening piano solo was used briefly in the soundtrack to the William Friedkin film ''The Exorcist'' (released the same year), and the album gained considerable airplay because of the film's success. The following year the piece was orchestrated by David Bedford for ''The Orchestral Tubular Bells'' version. It had three sequels in the 1990s, ''Tubular Bells II'' (1992), ''Tubular Bells III'' (1998) and ''The Millennium Bell'' (1999). Finally, the album was re-recorded as ''Tubular Bells 2003'' at its 30th anniversary in 2003. A newly mixed and mastered re-issue of the original album appeared in 2009 on Mercury Records, with bonus material. For the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, Oldfield rearranged segments from ''Tubular Bells'' for a segment about the National Health Service. This rendition appears on the soundtrack album, ''Isles of Wonder,'' and is included on the official BBC DVD release. == Significance == Mike Oldfield played most of the instruments on the album (see below), recording them one at a time and layering the recordings to create the finished work. Many of his subsequent albums feature this technique. Though fairly common in the music industry now, at the time of the production of ''Tubular Bells'' not many musicians did it, preferring multi-musician session recordings. Oldfield approached (and was rejected by) many established record labels, who believed the piece to be unmarketable. Oldfield then played his demos to some of the engineers at The Manor; they, along with their boss, Richard Branson, decided to give Oldfield a chance.〔 The newly founded Virgin Records released Oldfield's debut album ''Tubular Bells'' as its first album; hence the catalogue number V2001. (In fact V2002, Gong's ''The Flying Teapot'', and V2003, the compilation ''Manor Live'', were released on the same date.) The significance of this album to the Virgin empire is not lost on Richard Branson, who named one of his first Virgin America aircraft, an Airbus A319-112, N527VA ''Tubular Belle''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=N527VA )〕 Prior to this Virgin Atlantic had named a Boeing 747-4Q8, G-VHOT ''Tubular Belle'', in 1994. Virgin reissued the album a number of times including in 2000 for an HDCD release, and in 2001 for a SACD release. The HDCD release contained liner notes by David Laing, and the SACD release notes were by Phil Newell and Simon Heyworth. The 50th Anniversary edition of the music magazine ''Music Week'' featured the album in the official Top-Selling UK albums 1959–2009, listing it at no. 35, noting that it was the only entry that did not yield a hit single. In the ''Q'' & ''Mojo'' Classic Special Edition ''Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock'', the album came No. 9 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums". In the United Kingdom, Virgin Money's January 2012 advert, '40 Years of Better', which the bank used to signal its entry into the banking sector, used the introduction to ''Tubular Bells'' accompanied by an image of a record orbiting the earth to signify the beginnings of Virgin. Around the same time, a Virgin Media advertisement featuring David Tennant and Richard Branson also incorporated the record, where a younger version of Branson has a copy of the record under his arm upon exiting a time machine. On 22 April 2007 a British newspaper, ''The Mail on Sunday'', gave away 2.25 million free copies of the full original ''Tubular Bells'' to its readers; this came in a card packet displaying the original artwork. EMI (owners of the Virgin Records label) earned between £200,000 and £500,000 from the promotion. ''The Mail on Sunday'' claimed that its promotion increased sales of the album by 30%; however industry sources noted that this was not a significant rise for the title at the time. This cover-mount deal preceded the album's transfer from Virgin/EMI back to Oldfield. Oldfield attacked EMI in the press for agreeing to this deal with ''The Mail on Sunday'', not having been consulted about it. He also stated that he felt that it devalued the work. In a poll conducted by ''Music Week'', to which Oldfield wrote a letter about the situation, 89.9% of people supported Oldfield's view that EMI and ''The Mail on Sunday'' should have consulted him about the cover-mount promotion. In 2008 when Oldfield's original 35-year deal with Virgin Records ended, the rights to the piece were returned to him and were transferred to Mercury Records. On 15 April 2009, Mercury announced the transfer of Oldfield's Virgin albums to the label, and the first album ''Tubular Bells'' was re-released in June 2009. ''Tubular Bells'' was released on various formats, which include an original vinyl, a new remix, a 2CD edition and DVD. There were also bell-ringing events on 6 June 2009 at 6pm, a reference to 666.〔 Coincidentally, in 2013, the UK divisions of Mercury Records and Virgin Records were merged to create Virgin EMI, after Universal's purchase of EMI, effectively devolving Oldfield to his old record label. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tubular Bells」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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