Eso es Palma de Mallorca!!!!!!!!

Mike Oldfield didn’t get where he is today by thinking small. His most famous work, the 1973 album Tubular Bells, was the fruit of laborious composition and overdubbing. It was an instrumental epic on which Oldfield, then only a teenager, played more than 20 musical instruments himself. The British rock icon not only followed that with a series of other epics – including Tubular Bells II and III – but also, dissatisfied with the primitive quality of his original opus, recorded the whole thing over again from scratch in 2003. In his spare time, he has learnt to fly aeroplanes and pilot yachts, and has had an asteroid named after him. Recently he completed his first all-classical album, Music of the Spheres, for which he assembled “about 86” musicians at Abbey Road recording studios.

So when he laid eyes on Old Down House, in Tockington, Gloucestershire, in 2005, Oldfield wasn’t the type to balk at the scale and grandeur of the place. The sprawling property, set in 54 acres, with its expanses of Cotswold stone, its curvy gables, its tall mullioned windows, its coach house, stable, staff apartments, walled garden, outdoor swimming pool, lily pond, fishing lake and, of course, staggering views, immediately felt like home.

At that time, Oldfield, now 54, and his French-born wife, Fanny, 30, were living in the Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Giles, in a slightly less grand property called Roughwood Croft. “We wanted more land for our horses,” he tells me. “One year, it rained for six months solid, and the paddock became a mud bath. It just seemed time to move on. I was actually looking in the New Forest, but I couldn’t find anything there, so one day I was looking on the internet. I was looking everywhere in the country. I stuck the cursor north of Bristol – ‘What about there?’ – and up this house popped, Old Down House. A big house with lots of land. So that day we got in the car and drove up there.”

The property, originally known as Fern Park, had enjoyed mixed fortunes. Built as a neo-baronial pile by a well-to-do Victorian, Thomas Johnson-Ward, in the 1850s and 1860s, it survived for nearly a century before being gutted by fire in 1952. It was extensively rebuilt in the 1970s, when much of the interior was also modernised, which is what you did to period properties in the sacrilegious 1970s. For a while it became Old Down Country Park, a commercial attraction open to the public. You could pick your own fruit, visit animals at a petting zoo and take tractor rides around the grounds. “The old signposts were still there when I bought it, for the gift shop and the tearoom and all that,” Oldfield says.

With part of the building destroyed by the 1952 fire, the east wing had become separated from the main house by a stretch of land, which had been turned into a car park. “The house was in bits,” he says, “but when I saw it, I thought, ‘Ah, I’ll just join it all up to make a nice big house.’ ” Oldfield’s work is distinguished by his ability to bridge disparate passages to create long pieces of music; it seems he was now simply applying this method in an architectural setting. Initially, he explains, he was thinking of covering the existing outdoor swimming pool. Then inspiration struck, and he decided to kill two birds with one stone and create a new indoor-pool building over the car park, reconnecting the east wing with the house.

“I decided the new pool should be a wooden building, because there’s so much stone in the house already.” Further south, he connected the old coach house to the main building with another wooden-framed structure: a conservatory. An old garage in the coach house was to have a new life as the essential space within any Mike Oldfield home – the recording studio – and a smaller adjacent room became his favourite place for composing. Reflecting other Oldfield passions, the tearoom became a garage for the multimillionaire’s collection of motorcycles, and an area of the grounds was furnished with equestrian jumps – useful for Mrs Oldfield, who teaches horse-riding.

It comes as no surprise that Mike Oldfield, this sensitive musical pastoralist, has enjoyed the views from Old Down House over the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel. “It feels to me as if the place is right on the edge of England,” he says, “because England stops at the Severn, and then you’re in Wales. And being on the edge of something is rather nice, I think.” The isolation of the place also ticked one of Oldfield’s boxes.

The first property he bought, in the mid1970s, was “a place called the Beacon, which was like a shack on top of a very windy hill in Kington, in Here-fordshire”. It cost £12,000 – which his boss at the time, Richard Branson, deducted from his royalties.

But there were problems when it came to recording his third album, Ommadawn. “There were neighbours all around, and they turned up en masse one afternoon, complaining about the noise. It was a bit like the Frankenstein movie, when they all come to get the monster. I put it up for sale the next day. Ever since then, I’ve lived where there aren’t any neighbours.”

But the sun that beats down on Oldfield’s 54-year-old face today as we talk is not the chilly autumn sun of England. This is el sol, the warming sun of Spain. The capricious composer has decided to leave his homeland, together with Fanny and their young son, Jake, and live somewhere in the Balearic islands. “I’m looking for a smaller property this time,” he says. “I’ve slowed down – I’m 7½ips [inches per second] instead of 30ips, in recording-studio terms.”

Today he has been motoring around one of the islands on a BMW off-road motorbike. He knows the Balearics well. “I’ve been coming here since the 1970s, because Richard Branson had connections here. I used to go and visit Richard’s family in Minorca and stop in Mallorca on the way.” Two decades later, he came to live in Ibiza, where he had a £2m house built after seeing a plot of land advertised in this very newspaper. While he was there, he met Fanny, and started work on Tubular Bells III – inspired by the dance music he had heard in the island’s famous nightclubs.

Oldfield’s new Spanish life means that Old Down House requires a new owner; it is on the market for £3.5m. Oldfield admits that the house is that rare thing, a creative project he has left unfinished. “The whole place needs a face-lift, really. I spent months agonising about the main staircase. The one that’s there now is very 1970s. I spent some money getting various designs done, and I’ll pass those on to whoever buys it.” Sadly, none of those designs is tubular or features a bell motif. “I was going to refurnish the whole place as well, but with a three-year-old child, there’s not much point in refurnishing, because he puts chocolate sauce on everything.”

The property is not listed, with the exception of some fine wrought-iron fencing with decorative stone piers outside in the grounds. “So, for somebody buying the house, it’s a fabulous opportunity to create a bespoke home,” says Richard Brooks, a director of Savills, which is handling the sale.

“You could probably even make a golf club out of it, with all the land it has,” suggests Oldfield, “or a health spa.”

A Sunday tabloid claimed last week that the musician was leaving Britain because of the smoking ban in public places, portraying him as a Hockney-esque grump. “No, it’s not just the smoking ban,” he says. “That’s only one of lots of reasons. There are too many CCTVs, and Britain has become a violent place: you can’t go out on the streets. But the number-one reason is the weather. I don’t think I could live in a cold climate again. It just affects my whole mood. You get the odd cold day here, but the rain doesn’t set in like it does in the UK because of the Gulf Stream.” His pale eyes twinkle as he guffaws. “I’m doing a bit of a Reggie Perrin, I suppose. You know, ‘I’m selling everything! I’m off!’ ” The next Oldfield generation will thank him for the move, he thinks. “We have another son coming in January, called Eugene. We talk to him as if he’s already there. And it’s a lovely thought that Jake and Eugene will grow up in the sunshine and learn to speak Spanish.”

Perhaps it’s too much to expect highly creative people to be 100% consistent, but I recall my interview with Oldfield just five years ago. Why, I asked him, did he suddenly decide to leave Ibiza and return to the UK? “I wasn’t happy,” he replied. “I missed England and the rain and the seasons.”

I’m not convinced that rainy England has seen the last of Mike Oldfield and his family.

Old Down House, Tockington, is for sale for £3.5m through Savills Clifton, 0117 933 5803; www.savills.co.uk

Mike Oldfield’s new album, Music of the Spheres, is released in February 2008

En serio, que ganas tengo de encontrarmelo...

Mike vuelve al redil.

Viper, es cuestión de días que te encuentres a Fanny en la cola del pescao.

crises dijo: Mike vuelve al redil. Viper, es cuestión de días que te encuentres a Fanny en la cola del pescao.

Alguien que traduzca, please

Mike Oldfield dijo: 

 “No, it’s not just the smoking ban,” he says. “That’s only one of lots of reasons. There are too many CCTVs, and Britain has become a violent place: you can’t go out on the streets. But the number-one reason is the weather. I don’t think I could live in a cold climate again. It just affects my whole mood. You get the odd cold day here, but the rain doesn’t set in like it does in the UK because of the Gulf Stream.” His pale eyes twinkle as he guffaws. “I’m doing a bit of a Reggie Perrin, I suppose. You know, ‘I’m selling everything! I’m off!’ ” The next Oldfield generation will thank him for the move, he thinks. “We have another son coming in January, called Eugene. We talk to him as if he’s already there. And it’s a lovely thought that Jake and Eugene will grow up in the sunshine and learn to speak Spanish.”

"No es sólo la prohibición de fumar.Esa es sólo una de un montón de razones. Hay demasiadas CCTVs, e Inglaterra se ha convertido en un lugar violento: no puedes salir por la calle. Pero la razon principal es el clima. No creo que pudiera vivir de nuevo en un clima frio. Afecta a mi humor. Aqui hay algun dia frío pero la lluvia no aparece como en el Reino Unido por el Golfo Stream. Estoy actuando un poco como Reggie Perrin. Sabes, estoy vendiendo todo! I´m off ( no me acuerdo >.<)"

La proxima generación Oldfield le agradecerá su mudanza, piensa él. "Tendremos otro hijo en Enero, llamado Eugene. Le hablamos como si ya estuviera aqui. Y es un pensamiento adorable que Jake y Eugene crezcan en un lugar soleado y aprendan a hablar español"

Dentro de nada veremos videos en youtube del tito tocando con Viper en su habitación!! jejeje.
Lo mismo se ha mudado para proponerle a Viper una colaboración (por eso de que se ha quedado sin guitarras y tal).

sorti dijo: Dentro de nada veremos videos en youtube del tito tocando con Viper en su habitación!! jejeje. Lo mismo se ha mudado para proponerle a Viper una colaboración (por eso de que se ha quedado sin guitarras y tal).

Pués ya estoy paranoico, pués ahora siempre llevaré encima cuando salga a la calle un par de discos para darle por si me lo encuentro... xD

ViPeR dijo: Pués ya estoy paranoico, pués ahora siempre llevaré encima cuando salga a la calle un par de discos para darle por si me lo encuentro... xD

ViPeR dijo: Pués ya estoy paranoico, pués ahora siempre llevaré encima cuando salga a la calle un par de discos para darle por si me lo encuentro... xD

Tengo dos discos de música mios para darle, y un dvd con los videos de youtube xDDDDDD

ViPeR dijo: Tengo dos discos de música mios para darle, y un dvd con los videos de youtube xDDDDDD

jaimixx dijo:

ViPeR dijo: Tengo dos discos de música mios para darle, y un dvd con los videos de youtube xDDDDDD

Tú quieres echarlo d eMallorca ¿verdad?

dani9del9 dijo:

ViPeR dijo: Pués ya estoy paranoico, pués ahora siempre llevaré encima cuando salga a la calle un par de discos para darle por si me lo encuentro... xD

los q deberias llevar siempre encima son el Satelite Oldfield 1, 2 y 3 para regalarselos :)~~

De hecho en esa foto está intentando sacar de oido mi canción...

29 Octubre 2007, 13:37:13

xDDDD q buena don

oye, en q curras tio? t aburres muxo no? xDDD :P

Es que hace un par de años me tocó la loteria y he prescindido de currar, de vez en cuando hago alguna cosilla pero por mera distracción.

Down by Law dijo: Es que hace un par de años me tocó la loteria y he prescindido de currar, de vez en cuando hago alguna cosilla pero por mera distracción.

Eugene Oldfield ...ahí está el próximo genio

29 Octubre 2007, 15:04:29

killing bell dijo: Eugene Oldfield ...ahí está el próximo genio

killing bell dijo: Eugene Oldfield ...ahí está el próximo genio

Down by Law dijo:

killing bell dijo: Eugene Oldfield ...ahí está el próximo genio

el proximo genio del humor ...

Lo mejor seria encontralo en la playa con su bañador slip

Tati_Sentinel dijo: Lo mejor seria encontralo en la playa con su bañador slip

Down by Law dijo:

Brutal Don!

Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

He vuelto =)c

Down by Law dijo:

bels_mike dijo:  impresionante tio jaja eso es currarselo

Tati_Sentinel dijo: Lo mejor seria encontralo en la playa con su bañador slip

Down by Law dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo: Brutal Don! Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

ViPeR dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo: Brutal Don! Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

bah, en mi casa hay habitación libre eh? xD

ViPeR dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo: Brutal Don! Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

bah, en mi casa hay habitación libre eh? xD

He vuelto =)c

LadySekh_70s dijo:

ViPeR dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo: Brutal Don! Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

bah, en mi casa hay habitación libre eh? xD

Y no te importará tenerme por alli una temporada?

ViPeR dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo:

ViPeR dijo:

LadySekh_70s dijo: Brutal Don! Viper... sabes cuanto me podría costar un pisito en Mallorca?

bah, en mi casa hay habitación libre eh? xD

Y no te importará tenerme por alli una temporada?

No.

He vuelto =)c

Las cosas claras, no sé que haces todavía que no has sacado el billete Lady...

Jajajajajajajaja

sorti dijo: Las cosas claras, no sé que haces todavía que no has sacado el billete Lady...

Bañador a la Borat es horrible!

Down by Law dijo:

Ahora te lo encuentras, le das un cd tuyo y te plagia una canción y después dice que la hizo inspirandose en haloween ancestral, gana minolles con el tema y tu en tu casa haciendo videos pal youtube

tsode dijo: ... y tu en tu casa haciendo videos pal youtube

Solo acá existen momentos más frikis,jajaja...

Y Mike tiene poca Bellyfield

Como se dice friki en portugués?

frikinho

frikaldo

frikaldinho

tio rarinho

Gracias por la información, Viper.
Me quedó con la última línea de la noticia:I’m not convinced that rainy England has seen the last of Mike Oldfield and his family.
Me da buen rollo esto.

Mike-Bell dijo: Como se dice friki en portugués?

En portugués de Brasil = alucinado