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The Daily Mail online
Baby No 7 is tiring me out, says Tubular Bells legend Mike Oldfield
By TAHIRA YAQOOB
Last updated at 22:00pm on 16th March 2008
He managed to master 20 instruments for his hugely-successful album Tubular Bells.
And his latest album saw him marshalling the talents of 86 classical musicians.
But faced with the demands of one baby son plus a boisterous four-year-old, Mike Oldfield has to admit defeat.
"It is hard work," admitted the multimillionaire star, now almost 55.
"As you get older it certainly gets harder. There is a cumulative effect where if you have 14 sleepless nights, it adds up and you get bleary-eyed." Reading-born Oldfield, who has five adult children from previous relationships, is married to a 30-year-old French woman named Fanny.
Together they have Jake, four, and Eugene, who was born in January.
The family have just left their five-bedroom villa in Majorca to make a new home in the tax haven of Monaco.
Oldfield, whose latest album Music of the Spheres is out today, admitted that eight weeks of sleepless nights since Eugene's arrival had left him exhausted.
"Eugene has good nights sometimes - but he is easy compared to Jake, who runs around like a chimpanzee so I have to run around after him.
"I am getting on a bit so I am following this little four-year-old around and having trouble keeping up."
He added, however, that he would not change a thing.
"Despite the tiredness there are advantages to being an older father. In my mind, men are not mature until they get to their 50s.
"When you are younger, you are busy doing other things like getting drunk."
Oldfield was 19 and already a successful rock guitarist when he made Tubular Bells in 1973.
It was followed by other hit albums including Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn.
In the 1980s he fathered Molly, now 28, Dougal, 26, and Luke, 21, with then partner Sally Cooper, followed by Greta, 19, and Noah, 18, with Norwegian singer Anita Hegerland.
In his autobiography Changeling, published last year, he admitted he had not always been a constant presence, saying: "I am sad I couldn't be a real father for them all the time."
  17 Marzo 2008, 2:06:29 |
