David Bedford
David Bedford, composer and musician, died on October 1st 2011. Born in 1937, although he worked across a broad range of music, he is probably best known to most rock fans for his association with Tubular Bells. He handled the orchestration on the second studio version and was involved with other Mike Oldfield projects.
He then released a studio album of The Odyssey for Virgin Records in 1976, and staged a one-off live performance of this which took place in 1977 at the Royal Albert Hall. Andy Summers played guitar on The Odyssey and also on Sarabande. The connection to the Deep Purple story comes at this point, as he asked Jon Lord to be one of the keyboard players at this show (he did not appear on the studio album), and also opened the evening with a cut down live version of Sarabande. The evening was recorded by Capital Radio who aired some of it. A live recording of the Odyssey was released only a few months back with Jon Lord guesting. I remember trekking down to see this concert and will try to find the photographs I took. It was written up in Darker Than Blue magazine at the time.
darker than blue 
August 24, 2013 at 7:07 pm |
Hi, I’m David’s daughter, thank you for your piece. If you have any photos or a copy of the article you wrote about the Odyssey Live concert I’d love to see them. We just have loads of pictures and articles about the concert on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/davidbedfordmusic
August 28, 2013 at 11:54 am |
I did take some pictures Sarah but we were up in the balcony and had to use a long lens. I’ll have to look the negatives out.
September 10, 2013 at 11:23 am
Thanks for your reply. If you ever found them we’d be delighted to see them, we don’t have any film or photos of that concert other than what’s already on the internet (a few press shots, none of which we have originals of – mostly scans). Best wishes. Sarah.
July 30, 2013 at 1:28 pm |
I remember it well. Two points. Alan Fluff Freeman sat in front of me. I gave him a request but he never played it!
In the radio interviews that Tommy Vance did for the release of Perfect Strangers, Jon Lord (as part of his interview) said he would never dream of going near the Albert Hall and performing solo. Its good to read here that you remember him being there and performing cos I’ve always thought it was me going crazy and imagining that he was there!
I’ve never heard the Capitol Radio recording, is it available?
cheers Neil
July 31, 2013 at 8:06 am |
We were up in the cheap seats so didn’t get to mix with the celebs Neil (though we did bump into Freeman outside Brixton at a DP shop, and Ann had to get his autograph!). Capital threw out all their old tapes, but I think this show has been about from a cassette.