Tubular Bells was a music industry ground-breaker of epic proportions, cobbled together, as it was, by a teenager guitar geek.

Mike Oldfield would be the first to admit that he was something of a social misfit, a prodigiously talented young musician whose guitar was his life. He didn't set out to create an album that would expand the horizons of electric guitar as none had done since Hendrix, or an album that would break every rule about how to make hit records, or even an album that would make it possible for rock composers to be spoken of with the same respect as classical composers, but he achieved all three just by doing what came naturally to him.

Much of the recording was carried out late at night, after the imbibing of far too much Guinness a the local hostelry. As a result, entire days of recording were wiped out accident, and as Oldfield readily admits, the tubular bells themselves were somewhat the worse for wear by the time they were put on tape. "Instead of using the little mallet provided, I hit the bell using a proper metal hammer," he explains, "because I wanted to sound much bigger. I really wanted a huge Cathedral bell, but all we had was these little bells. Anyway, I hit it so hard that I cracked it and there was so much gain wound up on the microphone channel that there's a noticeable distortion."

The movie The Exorcist brought the song Tubular Bells to the limelight as appearing on the soundtrack, the edited version became a U.S. Top Ten Single.