For some artists, returning to a part of their back catalogue can be uncomfortable. All they remember are the circumstances in which the music was born, the difficulties in writing it, or shortcomings in its performance – a gap between the artistic tangle in their head versus the unforgiving reality of the finished item.
For Mike Oldfield, Hergest Ridge will, to some extent, always be a reminder of the crushing pressure to produce the follow-up to Tubular Bells, while still coming to terms with the stresses and strains of sudden fame.
