"IT WAS Eamonn Carr, Horslips’ drummer and student of Gaelic, who first gave me a clue as to what Mike Oldfield’s third album is all about. Scanning the David Bailey cover picture, with Mike gazing pensively through a rain-streaked window, he said the title over to himself and then jumped to his feet in excitement.
“It’s Gaelic,” he exclaimed. “That’s not the way you spell it, but it’s the way you pronounce it.”
So it is.
Amadan, pronounced “ommadawn,” according to John Grant’s ‘Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language’, published in 1925, means “a foolish man, a simpleton.”
So this is Mike Oldfield’s self-portrait."
- From Beyond the Ridge: Portrait of a Genius (album review by Karl Dallas in Melody Maker, 25th October 1975)
When Oldfield’s debut album Tubular Bells was released in May 1973 he had only just turned 20, yet had already been playing music professionally since the age of 14; first in a folk duo with his older sister Sally, then in a group called Barefoot with his big brother Terry and most recently as a member of Kevin Ayers’ backing band The Whole World.
Yet suddenly finding himself a major star, with an innovative and wildly successful solo album which he was expected to spend every waking hour promoting, proved a difficult experience. Being in the spotlight did not suit his introspective personality. The pressure was immense and the resulting stress caused Oldfield to suffer acute anxiety and panic attacks, probably made worse by the psychological impact of some bad experiences with LSD when he was younger. He found salvation by using his royalties to buy a haven as far from Virgin’s London offices and the media circus as possible. As far away as possible turned out to be a spacious 1920s house called The Beacon, located 1,000 feet up a hill in rural Herefordshire near the Welsh border. So just another early ’70s hippie rock musician getting his head together in the country? Well perhaps, but he had his reasons.
It’s possible to view the 1974-5 Herefordshire phase of Oldfield’s career as a process of self-healing; achieved by refusing to play the record company’s game (constrained though he was by his contract), keeping to safe and familiar surroundings (and people), enjoying simple pleasures and thereby gradually recovering his confidence and composure. There was horse riding, solitary country walks, flying model aeroplanes over the hills and spending his evenings in local pubs downing pints of ale with his friends William Murray and Leslie Penning.
Then there was the music. Oldfield’s second album Hergest Ridge (1974) was written at The Beacon and named after a local landmark. Later a home studio was installed and there, between January and September 1975, Ommadawn was recorded with Oldfield credited for the first time in his career as sole producer.
As on his earlier albums Oldfield played many instruments on Ommadawn, though other musicians were brought in to embellish the recording. A quartet of drummers from the Afro Jazz group Jabula appear on the final section of side one. Jabula were among the South African Apartheid era musical exiles who congregated in London during the ’60s and ’70s. Conveniently, they were on Caroline (a Virgin Records subsidiary label).
Paddy Moloney of legendary Irish folk group The Chieftains played the lovely Uillean pipes section in the middle of side two. Paddy was brought in following Oldfield’s dissatisfaction with the Northumbrian pipes tried by a local musician (identified only as “Herbie”). The only part of Herbie’s contribution that made the final cut is a long note which can be heard under a passage of electric guitar immediately before the Paddy Moloney section.
Vocals were provided by Sally Oldfield, singer-songwriter Bridget St. John (who Oldfield would’ve met years earlier while recording the Shooting At The Moon album with Kevin Ayers) and Clodagh Simonds (formerly of Irish progressive/folk-rock band Mellow Candle). Oldfield asked Clodagh to help translate some lyrics into Gaelic (which she did, with help over the phone from a relative in Ireland) and she was thus indirectly responsible for the album title.
Gong percussionist Pierre Moerlin (tympani) had already worked with Oldfield when he performed at the live premiere of Tubular Bells at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in June 1973, while older brother Terry Oldfield played pan pipes.
The two individuals who worked most closely with Mike Oldfield throughout the making of Ommadawn were William Murray (who lived as a house guest at The Beacon during the 1974-75 period) and local early music enthusiast Leslie Penning. Oldfield met Murray while both were in Kevin Ayers’ band. Murray had also been Mellow Candle’s drummer at one point and it was his recommendation that led to Clodagh Simonds working with Oldfield. He engineered the album, played percussion and received a writing credit for the lyrics to On Horseback, as well as special thanks on the inner sleeve. Leslie Penning played recorder (built up on tape into multiple layers) and conducted musicians from a silver band drafted in from the nearby city of Hereford.
Oldfield only just met the record company’s deadline for delivery of the finished album and Ommadawn was released on 21st October 1975. It peaked at no. 4 on the UK album chart, though only managed to reach no. 146 in the US. Such narrow commercial considerations surely miss the point though, especially when comparing the album to (the perhaps slightly overrated) Tubular Bells. As Karl Dallas put it in the same Melody Maker review referenced above,
"Well, ‘Ommadawn’ is a monster. It is more varied than ‘Hergest Ridge’, more complete in conception than ‘Tubular Bells’.
It has singable tunes, primitive body rhythms, soaring moments of joy, surprises, pleasures and enjoyments in plenty."
On Horseback is a separate song which occupies its own band on the vinyl, but which did not have a proper title on the original LP and was simply treated as though it were part of Ommadawn Part Two. Within a matter of weeks of the album’s release the song was given a name and issued as the B side of Oldfield’s UK Christmas single In Dulci Jubilo. I’ve followed suit (as have some CD reissues of Ommadawn) by presenting On Horseback as a separate track with that title.
Vocals were provided by Sally Oldfield, singer-songwriter Bridget St. John (who Oldfield would’ve met years earlier while recording the Shooting At The Moon album with Kevin Ayers) and Clodagh Simonds (formerly of Irish progressive/folk-rock band Mellow Candle). Oldfield asked Clodagh to help translate some lyrics into Gaelic (which she did, with help over the phone from a relative in Ireland) and she was thus indirectly responsible for the album title.
Gong percussionist Pierre Moerlin (tympani) had already worked with Oldfield when he performed at the live premiere of Tubular Bells at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in June 1973, while older brother Terry Oldfield played pan pipes.
The two individuals who worked most closely with Mike Oldfield throughout the making of Ommadawn were William Murray (who lived as a house guest at The Beacon during the 1974-75 period) and local early music enthusiast Leslie Penning. Oldfield met Murray while both were in Kevin Ayers’ band. Murray had also been Mellow Candle’s drummer at one point and it was his recommendation that led to Clodagh Simonds working with Oldfield. He engineered the album, played percussion and received a writing credit for the lyrics to On Horseback, as well as special thanks on the inner sleeve. Leslie Penning played recorder (built up on tape into multiple layers) and conducted musicians from a silver band drafted in from the nearby city of Hereford.
Oldfield only just met the record company’s deadline for delivery of the finished album and Ommadawn was released on 21st October 1975. It peaked at no. 4 on the UK album chart, though only managed to reach no. 146 in the US. Such narrow commercial considerations surely miss the point though, especially when comparing the album to (the perhaps slightly overrated) Tubular Bells. As Karl Dallas put it in the same Melody Maker review referenced above,
"Well, ‘Ommadawn’ is a monster. It is more varied than ‘Hergest Ridge’, more complete in conception than ‘Tubular Bells’.
It has singable tunes, primitive body rhythms, soaring moments of joy, surprises, pleasures and enjoyments in plenty."
As for the rip, this record contains many quiet passages. Although the vinyl appeared near mint, there were a lot of small clicks even after repeated scrubbing on the record cleaning machine. Having removed the worst offenders manually, I resorted to the declick module in iZotope RX; using a very low sensitivity setting of 1.3. After automatic declicking I went through the entire album and addressed remaining issues manually. Cross referencing with a CD version, I was able to confirm that the automatic processing hadn’t taken out any non-vinyl noises (you might be surprised how many click-like sounds of various sorts turn out to be a part of the recording rather than a vinyl artifact). I also prepared some short, manually-declicked files and spent time using my ears and poring over spectrograms - comparing the same short sections of audio in manually and automatically declicked versions - to reassure myself that nothing that should be there was missing. Both sides of the LP were normalized to -0.5dB
On Horseback is a separate song which occupies its own band on the vinyl, but which did not have a proper title on the original LP and was simply treated as though it were part of Ommadawn Part Two. Within a matter of weeks of the album’s release the song was given a name and issued as the B side of Oldfield’s UK Christmas single In Dulci Jubilo. I’ve followed suit (as have some CD reissues of Ommadawn) by presenting On Horseback as a separate track with that title.
Sounds very nice, thanks so much ORESTON!
ReplyDelete