A 1975 live, orchestral performance of Mike Oldfield’s 1974 album,“Hergest Ridge”, recorded at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall, is set to be released on CD.
The original broadcast of “Hergest Ridge”, showcasing David Bedford’s orchestral arrangement and featuring Steve Hillage on guitar, will be released on September 5 via the FM Concert Broadcasts Ltd label. The release coincides with the recent 50th anniversary reissue of Mike Oldfield’s iconic album.
This particular recording captures the September 5, 1975 performance at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow, where Oldfield was joined by the Scottish National Orchestra. Notably, Hergest Ridge had also been performed earlier at London’s Royal Albert Hall on December 9, 1974, alongside “Tubular Bells”, with both pieces presented in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Portions of that performance were broadcast by the BBC in January 1975.
Steve Hillage ended up playing guitar on these shows because Mike Oldfield insisted he couldn’t take part—he was under so much stress at the time. According to the new reissue’s liner notes, Oldfield was off in Italy and Greece with his brother Terry during the Royal Albert Hall dates.
On the technical side, Mick Glossop—who’d mixed “The Orchestral Tubular Bells”—came on board as a technical advisor alongside Virgin Records’ Chris Hollebone and John Jacob, and worked with the original broadcast team on these tapes.
Interestingly, snippets of that Glasgow Orchestral Hergest Ridge performance found their way onto the 1979 documentary “The Space Movie”, which celebrated the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s tenth anniversary. Decades later, a cassette of the Scottish concert resurfaced around the 50th anniversary of “Tubular Bells”, and thanks to modern digital editing and restoration gear, it’s in surprisingly good shape.
