Harrogate Mike Oldfield event amid the bells of lovely church

The Harrogate vinyl music event dedicated to classic albums is gearing up for a special night in one of North Yorkshire’s most lovely churches.
Magnificent setting for event - All Saints Church in Kirkby Overblow near Harrogate.Magnificent setting for event - All Saints Church in Kirkby Overblow near Harrogate.
Magnificent setting for event - All Saints Church in Kirkby Overblow near Harrogate.

The Harrogate vinyl music event dedicated to classic albums is gearing up for a special night in one of North Yorkshire’s most lovely churches.

It’s an appropriate setting for a largely instrumental album awash in melody, spirituality and the sound of bells.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

All 49.16 glorious minutes of Mike Oldfield’s multi-platinum 1973 album Tubular Bells will be the star at All Saints Church in Kirkby Overblow on Friday, January 17.

As well as selling more than 15 million copies worldwide, including 2, 630, 000 in Britain alone, and spending a total of 286 weeks on the UK album charts since its original release in May 1973, Tubular Bells was a key reason why Richard Branson set up Virgin Records.

Next week’s Vinyl Sessions will be the 21st to be held since it was launched last year at Starling Independent Bar-Café with the aim of raising £10,000 for the Friends of Harrogate Hospital charity.

Amazingly, multi-instrumentalist Oldfield was only 19-years-old when he recorded Tubular Bells, also playing virtually every instrument himself.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

So successful was Tubular Bells after a section of it was used prominently on the soundtrack of phenomenal horror movie The Exorcist in 1973, it won a Grammy award.

But the album was a slow burner, spending many weeks near the top of the UK charts before finally hitting that number one spot fully 16 months after it replaced Hergest Ridge, Oldfield’s own follow-up album to Tubular Bells.

Oldfield has released 26 albums in total, most recently a sequel to his 1975 album Ommadawn titled Return to Ommadawn in anuary 2017.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Vinyl Sessions event next week will see the album played on glorious vintage vinyl in the dramatic setting of this stunning church.

As always in the previous 20 Vinyl Sessions, the usual team will be involved – organiser and hi-fi expert Colin Paine, speaker/introducer Graham Chalmers of the Harrogate Advertiser and video film compiler Jim Dobbs.

Entry is free but advance booking for this special event is essential.