LSD trips were very, very scary. I think it is better to go the new age route, where you raise Consciousness through chanting and meditation, rather than take drugs.

Having said that, we would not have all those beautiful tracks like Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, and we probably would not have Tubular Bells without drugs.

Tubular Bells is the debut album by English musician Mike Oldfield, released on Virgin Records on 25 May 1973, just 10 days after Oldfield’s 20th birthday.

Mike Oldfield recorded it when he was 19 and played the majority of the instruments on the album.

Mike’s mother was an alcoholic, and when he was 14 or 15, he shut himself in the loft and composed.

He played every instrument himself. His expression came out in the music.

He was an absolute genius. Tubular Bells was also the first release on the Virgin label and its success played an important part in the company’s subsequent growth.

Although sales of the album during its first few months were slow, it gained global attention after its hypnotic opening piano theme became synonymous with the classic demonic-possession Academy Award-winning horror film The Exorcist, released at the end of that same year.

Well, the Human mind – Consciousness – is a very complicated thing. We do not begin to understand it.

So if you are a creative person, everything that happens to you must come out in what you do.

Obviously, yeah, it had an influence. It was never meant to be music for a movie, though.

The album became a worldwide success during 1974, reaching number one in the UK, Australia and Canada, and number three on the US Billboard 200.

It ended the decade as the third best-selling album of the 1970’s in the UK.