Tubular Bells For Two

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells ‘For Two’

Date: 7 August 2013

Location: Underbelly Cowbarn, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Support: n/a

Special guests: They were pretty special all by themselves.

I haven’t reviewed ‘Tubular Bells’, and I never will, because how could I choose a best song and a worst song for it? I am a big fan of the album, though, and if I were to write about it I’d probably give it a 6, which gives you some idea of how much I like it. Because of that, when I got to the Fringe festival and saw the posters for this up around the city, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it. (Shameless plug: I’m performing here! The show’s called ’15 Minutes’ and it’s 45 minutes long. Come see it.)

The basic deal with this show is that there are two Australian guys who play their way through Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Sound unremarkable? Well, that album has over twenty different instruments playing on it and everything here is created live, no backing track whatsoever. In addition, they’ve never written anything down or had any kind of sheet music, they’re just huge fans of the record who have steadily learned to play it by ear. I reckon the whole idea of it seems a bit more impressive now.

I come to this show right after seeing a comedy show and a theatre show pretty much back to back, barely time to walk between venues in between, so I arrived with only a couple of minutes to spare, but as soon as I got to my seat I felt more relaxed. The atmosphere was calm, the lighting was low and a curious array of keyboards and guitars were placed on a stage, half-hidden in a cloud of smoke. And I’d just barely had time to collect my thoughts and have a drink of water before Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth were striding out on stage, giving a brief wave and smile to the audience and sitting down somewhere in the middle of the mishmash of instruments.

Then… they played it. No introduction or small talk, just straight into the main theme. At first they sit still, occasionally swapping a guitar strap over their head or swivelling a chair to reach a different keyboard, but it’s very sedate, and then it gradually gets more complicated as percussion is introduced and as several instruments start being played at once – I’d think these guys has five arms each if it wasn’t for their tagline of ‘Tubular Bells played with four hands and four feet’. Which isn’t strictly true anyway, as they also use their mouths to do the vocalisations.

Both of them are concentrating so hard on what they’re doing. They take this music very seriously, clearly love it a lot, and there’s nothing improvised about this show, it’s a note for note recreation of the original with everything timed to perfection. Their instrument switches in particular are so tight and rehearsed, and it takes only a second for Aidan to change from one guitar to an entirely different one or for Daniel to run across the stage from the keyboards to the bells themselves… there’s no way one person could do this show, but two is enough, considering that one can cover for the other during these brief pauses.

It’s not all seriousness, though – halfway through side one I caught the pair of them grinning at each other for a split second. During a pause in his part of the music Daniel picked up a glass of red wine and casually took a sip before poising himself for a big moment. At the end of side one, there’s a brief pause and blackout as someone says ‘Please excuse us, we need to turn the record over.’ And Daniel talks to the crowd while Aidan prepares the stage for them to continue: ‘This is a little something we like to call Side Two.’ And I don’t know if it’s the massive round of applause they got in the break or just the knowledge that it’s more than half over, but they’re a lot more at ease on Side 2.

People always think of Tubular Bells as the quiet, folky piece that it is in the first half, but the second part actually rocks out in a lot of places, and the part with the caveman vocals honestly scares me, at least it does when it’s played at top volume and I’m sitting in the third row. Not complaining, though – it shows that the volume and sound quality were both excellent. The lighting, too, was really well done. Simple colours didn’t distract from the performance but enhanced the mood, with blue for slower sections and reds and oranges for the more intense parts.

The one thing about the performance that I found a little strange was towards the end of the first part, with the announcements of ‘Grand piano… Reed and pipe organ…’ I could see the stage, and see that there quite clearly wasn’t a grand piano or a reed and pipe organ, it just sounded like there was, which was hard to get my head around. It’s a shame because I usually love that part where each instrument in turn plays the same theme. It’s cheesy but totally brilliant. But they really did have a glockenspiel, and of course, a full set of tubular bells. With the cry of ‘Plus… tubular bells!’ a full set of bright white lights came up over the bells. It was a beautiful moment to witness.

(Although, for a piece CALLED Tubular Bells it always strikes me how little they’re used. If you’re going to buy a set, you might as well get your money’s worth?)

Halfway through part two is a very intense drumming section, and after that was over, you could literally see the sweat dripping off Daniel’s face in particular, and for the last few minutes the performance did have less energy. They still didn’t miss a note, though, and they managed to pull off ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ excellently, purely on adrenaline I guess, which was an outstanding finale. Then there were a few bows, and another wave, and then they were gone, probably to get some much needed sleep. I imagine being alone on a stage that looks like it’s set up for a full orchestra really takes it out of you.

I would have liked to stay behind and talk to people about it afterwards, but I had a dinner reservation to meet (it’s been a non stop day.) However, on my way out I heard a brief exchange between a husband and a wife, aged around fifty. The husband was raving about the show, saying it was the best thing he’d seen at the Fringe (I’d agree with that) while the wife merely said ‘Yes, it was different.’ Stereotyping at its best/worst… I like to get into conversations with people at these events just to disprove these stereotypes. Hashtag adventures of a female prog fan under twenty.