Changeling: The Autobiography of Mike Oldfield (2008) is about the 19-year-old British composer of Tubular Bells, the instrumental album that sold millions and changed his world. The beginning riff became the theme to the 1973 film, The Exorcist.
As a shy teenager in 1972, Mike Oldfield composed a multi-layered musical composition, in which he played all of the 20+ instruments himself. It became a major success, and was Richard Branson’s first production on his Virgin Records label in 1973.
Oldfield begins his memoir in 1978, not with his fame, but with the rebirthing treatment to reduce his anxiety and depression that came with the ‘terrible drawbacks’ of being famous. He then goes back to the beginning – his birth in 1953.
Oldfield describes his childhood, his mother’s ‘mental illness’ and the close relationship he has with his older brother Terry and especially his older sister Sally, whom he formed a folk duo with. He knew he was different from a young age. He describes having ‘atmosphere antennae’ and being happy in his own company. At the age of ten, he got his first guitar, his ‘sanctuary’ which he took to experimentally and instinctually: ‘I believe we have an instinct for things like music, a kind of sixth sense, which defies all rational explanation.’
Music gives him a sense of purpose. With music, he ‘loved all things technical.’ In the late 1960s and 1970s, ‘all things technical’ mainly meant electric guitars, amplifiers, initially a two-track tape recorder, and eventually a multi-track tape recorder. He describes the moment music became mathematical.
He took to drugs, which he says led to ‘utter paranoia’ – panic attacks and bing afraid of everything. Oldfield discusses his way out of the dark times and into the beginning of the light. He discusses, up to 2006, his subsequent albums, projects, marriages, therapy, and the ever-changing music industry.
This is an honest, detailed, poignant memoir of the ups and downs during the author’s creative experiences, the changes in his moods, his journey as a recluse, and the technical processes of the iconic music that became his whole life. Lastly, Mike Oldfield gives hope to all those who feel they are living on the edge of society.
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MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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