Entrevista a David Bedford: http://www.oldfield-forum.de/thread.php?threadid=1453&sid=49ff4c205a3cde0903c52955bc3fa682

DP - How did you react to the reborn post-Exegesis Mike Oldfield?

DB - Whatever suits anybody. I mean things where you go along, pay good money to be insulted are absolutely mad.
They are really a con to make money. There are a lot of American people who go around doing that.
I told him at the time it was a complete con and he was insisting it had done him a lot of good.
However, on the other hand if he wanted that kind of treatment he could have gone to a good psycotherapist or whatever.
But it did do him some good and made him more outgoing so I am probably being unfair to these people.
It also made him a little arrogant at times and stroppy but much more decisive but for a period he went through a phase
of being extremely stroppy but that gradually died away until he became decisive which is different.

DW - Certainly his music before and after has changed. He seems to be writing more shorter pieces.

DB - Well, which came first the chicken or the egg. You don't know if his musical mind would have gone
in that direction anyway or whether this experience did it. I don't think it did, composers change naturally
over the course of the years and he probably would have come out of it and his personality would have developed anyway.
He was very young when all this happened - all the big success. He probably would have matured as part of normal maturing.

DP - Soon after Exegesis you both appeared at the "Save The Whale" concert in Jubilee Gardens, South Bank. What was performed there?

DB - Oh, yes. That is a good question. I know I had a school girlie choir. But what they would have done is anybody's business. We did my song from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", and we probably did a couple of Mike's singles with choir accompaniment. But I don't remember any more than that.

DP - You don't know if it was recorded?

DB - No it wouldn't have been.

DP - Was it easier to do the orchestrations for "Incantations" than for the earlier records as this was partly written with an orchestra in mind?

DB - Yes it was much easier as he had sorted out his musical ideas much more and there were definite areas where he knew he wanted orchestral instruments. He'd almost written them in the sense that synthesizers had developed enormously so he was able to do backings of synthesizers which he felt he would like strings to do so it was almost written for me.

DP - Despite the huge loss made on the Exposed tour did you consider it a good venture and did you enjoy it?

DB - Yes it was terrific. The only problem was that he was going through one of his stroppy phases so he didn't get on too well with some of the string muscians and he asked a couple of them to leave because they were not looking happy enough on stage and he was in a very stroppy and bossy mood at times and kept himself very aloof but did issue invitations to anybody who had any problems to go to his room and talk to him. So the string orchestra muscians were a bit worried that they might get the sack at any moment. Not that they would have lost any money because they would have to be paid for the whole tour. But it was extremely well recieved everwhere we went. The only thing I found disturbing was that we went to all these cities but that the stage was identical each time. There was two feet between these instruments and there was the same carpet so it was almost like doing the same concert 20 times or how many times it was. So the fact that we were in Barcelona one night and Paris the next or whatever didn't register. So it was coach, soundcheck, concert, sleep, coach soundcheck, concert, sleep until the muscianns discovered some rule that if there was X amount of hours worked they had to have so many off. So then we had to charter an aeroplane for everywhere. So it was travelling and playing really and we didn't get to see any of the cities. So when I say to people I have been to Hamburg, Munich and all this they say "Oh you lucky thing" - but I say I didn't see the cities at all.

DP - What tracks did you do vocal arrangements for on "Platinum"?

DB - Oh, was this the one with the Philip Glass piece. Yes, I arranged the voices for that.

DW - Do you normally listen to Philip Glass's music?

DB - Yes, I went to his operas. But right from the beginning although he may not admit it Mike was
influenced by Terry Riley, and the opening of Tubular Bells is very similar to a piece by Terry Riley called
"A Rainbow in Curved Air". So that was sort of in his mind although he was not the same as the minimalists in
that he develops material. So it was quite logical for him to do an arrangement of Philip Glass's track who was
at that time relatively unknown before he became a big superstar.