Mike Oldfield - Platinum





Mike Oldfield - Platinum



Information

'Sally' was a song about Mike's feelings for his girlfriend Sally Cooper. Sung by Mike and Nico Ramsden, it contained the chorus "Sally, I'm just a gorilla, I'll say I'll love you ever more/Even an ape from Manila couldn't stop me knocking on your door". On hearing this, Virgin boss Richard Branson took an instant disliking to the song and demanded that it should be removed from the album, to be replaced by 'Into Wonderland' sung by Wendy Roberts (although when interviewed by David Porter in 1995, Wendy Roberts said she thought that the track which she recorded was called Sally, and knew nothing of what had gone on with the replacing of the original song). Some copies had already been pressed, so the early pressings of the LP contain the song Sally. All the rest contain Into Wonderland, although the album artwork was never updated, so the labels still say Sally (as do the CDs I've seen). The song contains various musical links with Punkadiddle. Some people with the original album feel that 'Sally' fits much better into the album than its replacement.
For the song, Mike asked producer and engineer Tom Newman to disguise the voices of him and Nico Ramsden. Tom applied what's now known as 'telephonic' EQ (equalisation) to their voices. That is, he cut the bass and boosted the mid-range (called telephonic because it sounds a bit like it's coming down a telephone). Mike's ideas of disguising his voice continued through his early 80s albums, with his use of vocoders and other electronic gadgetry.

Punkadiddle was Mike's answer to the punk movement, the emergence of which had escaped him while he'd been in retreat recording Incantations. Mike was not at all impressed with punk music, not least because it seriously dented his record sales (indeed, Virgin Records' signing of punk bands while failing to promote Mike's albums was to be the cause of a great rift between him and the record company). Mike said at one point that he felt that punk rock made fun of music, so perhaps Punkadiddle was Mike's idea of having music make fun of punk rock.

Kurt Munkacsi worked as engineer on many Philip Glass albums. Mike's choosing him perhaps came from an interest in bringing a Philip Glass influence to the album, with Mike featuring Glass's 'North Star' as part of 'Platinum'.

Renate Blauel was one of the in-house engineers at Air Studios in London. Her other claim to fame is as one time wife of Elton John.

An altered form of the album was released in the USA as 'Airborn', the difference being that Woodhenge was replaced by the track Guilty, a disco style tune based on the same note pattern as Incantations, which was released as a single at around the same time as that album. Similarly to parts of Platinum, Guilty was recorded in New York using session musicians.




Track list

1. Part One: Airborne 5:06
2. Part Two: Platinum 6:03
3. Part Three: Charleston 3:17
4. Part Four: North Star/Platinum Finale 4:43
5. Woodhenge 4:06
6. Sally 5:00
7. Punkadiddle 4:56
8. I Got Rhythm 4:40