This is a review of Maggie Reilly's collaborations with Mike Oldfield.  For technical data see Angel Tears by Merciful Squirrel.
Afterwards it feels like it was a big accomplishment and a long time when Maggie and Mike made music together.  Actually it was only few albums and Maggie does not sing every song there.  But the experience stands big in our memory.



Mike uses aggressive tribal drumming and some brass-like synths to build the background of Celt (QE2).  Maggie's voice has been processed, the natural beauty is replaced with the color of steel.  Her voice resounds like a war trumpet and there are some synth trombones giving support.  Mike creates tension using contrast between Maggie's straight forward melody and his guitar solo.  Maggie introduces the melody in only three phrases.  After a break comes this curly guitar solo, which finally is interrupted by Maggie.  Even if Maggie's melody is quite square, there are several variations of it.

Another kind of processed voice can be heard in the beginning of Sheba.  It's like a keyboard organ chord trying to speak out words.  I guess Maggie's voice modulates some synth there.  This makes the first voice of Sheba.  Fortunately, the second voice is Maggie's natural voice.  The two voices repeat suggestively a short fragment of melody building up this song.  Variations of volume avoid turning monotonous.

In the beginning of Taurus 1 Maggie sings few verses as backing vocals that remind future Deep deep sound of Taurus 2.  Near the end there is the speaking keyboard again.  Maggie is listed among the singers of Arrival, but I have to admit I can't find her voice there.  If you love the beauty of Maggie's voice, Sheba is the only song on QE2 (1980) for you.


Once upon the time there was a small aeroplane that got in trouble with a big bad thunderstorm.  The plane was piloted by Mike Oldfield and, fortunately, he survived to tell the story.  That's how the album Five Miles Out (1983) was born.  This album is a good buy for a Maggie fan, even if you already have There And Back Again.

The opening long instrumental Taurus 2 reflects the ideas of the song Five Miles Out.  Even if this is an instrumental, Maggie has three occurrences here.  At 1:37 she sings a short verse to express she is a member of the crew.  If you listen to it carefully, you may find her voice humming behind the instruments at moments during the first minute.  At 8:28 she sings The Deep Deep Sound, a spell that the pilot reads to her engine to keep it running.  The verse is again quite square, the melody is repeated from different keys and it calls for some range.  Perhaps Maggie had felt more comfortable if the whole thing had been a step or two higher.  Her third solo in Taurus 2 is at 16:45 to 20:00 about.  Her voice is processed here even more than in Celt.  While Celt is defiant and challenging, this one feels like more triumphant.

I have to admit I didn't like the song Five Miles Out at first.  I learnt to appreciate it when I realized that contrast makes this thing run.  All those rough and ugly sounds: guitars emulating the plane engine, distorted speech in the radio, percussions hit like a shower of hails, creeping panic, and suddenly, everything calms down, one angel voice sings, beautiful like a ray of sun between walls of clouds while you are diving towards distant ground.

Family Man is a somewhat questionable story of a man who knows his restrictions.  The melody is simple and few instrumental solos don't add much.  However the percussions and effects are worth listening.  This is the only song here to overlap the album There And Back Again.

Orabidoo is one of my top favorites among Maggie's songs.  It starts as very non-rock high vibraphone like bells tinkling a simple melody.  A synth with similar sound color soon joins and you may wonder a bell with a very long sustain.  At 2:20 the regular Oldfield machinery starts jogging in a happy and carefree mood.  After some time Mike adds intensity with speed and more instruments for volume to end this phase.  Everything calms down for a while at 8:34, but the timpani starts a new rise.  Quite a clamor finally calms down at 10:48, only an acoustical guitar is left.  And Maggie almost shyly sings this song Ireland's Eye. A little bit of the intro bells again and with the two last phrases Maggie disappears up into the blue.

There is some processed speech during the first half of Orabidoo, and I was quite sure I would never figure out what it says.  OK, everything can be found in the web nowadays.  It's about flying and watching clouds building up to a storm around Kathmandu, of course.  So, the main subject of the album is repeated here.  When the sun goes out and world turns gray before gales, homesickness brings in pictures of Ireland.  Or, perhaps, it's no use to try to explain the long distance from Nepal at all.

When I tried to understand the melody of Ireland's Eye, I felt something familiar.  It's definitely not a copy of Danny Boy, but it exploits similar harmonies.  Let's guess: Mike started with Danny Boy, dabbled with it for a while, produced a half dozen of variations and used some of them for Ireland's Eye.  To give us a hint he saved one line of lyrics: "Valleys hushed and white with snow".  Besides mastering any instrument, besides being the grand wizard of the guitar, this man is a melody genius.  Turning a melody around is no problem.  Just listen to the intro tinkling, it's not repetition. He produces a sequence of variations and modulations starting with almost nothing.  If you would like to profoundly understand this side of Oldfield, even without Maggie, it's perhaps a good idea to get the album Guitars into your player, instead of all those tubular things.  And try to find the two similar phrases in song Muse.  But it is an other story.


Another sample of the melodic richness is To France on album Discovery (1984).  It starts with four short instrumental phrases played by an acoustic guitar and an ethnic reed pipe or possibly an electric guitar imitating one.  The phrases are alike but not the same, depicting waves of the restless sea.  Maggie's opening four phrases are the same origin, but simpler and the four are repeated with different words.  The chorus goes a little smoother and broader but naturally expanding the movement started by the waves.  After a little instrumental, the opening structure is repeated.  At 1:36 Maggie first sings the "I see the picture" part with a new broadly painted melody.  I like the idea when  Mike plays here with the reverb and we have several Maggie's at varying distances.  Towards the end these ideas are developed and mixed and there is still a short guitar solo to come.  If  we would break the song apart we could make a half dozen pop songs of the material.  To France was a good success, but I don't see anybody trying to do anything like it nowadays.

In Talk about your Life Maggie sings a non-catchy melody and this song is too easy to reject after one run.  But listen to the background.  The wawes of To France go rolling under the main melody virtually all the time.  The song is a smart fabric of two interwoven melodies.  Maggie's song has a meditative mood  growing to some degree of irritation towards the end.  Besides, you'll have a short citation from Tubular Bells, find it by yourself.

The percussions in Chrystal Gazing hit overly hard and Maggie's voice is blended in, almost drowned in the instrumental sounds.  The song melody is simple, but the short instrumental comments by a guitar and a woodwind (either an oboe or an English horn) add more melodic ideas rater than repeat the song melody.  In Tricks of the Light Barry Palmer sings most of the verses and Maggie the choruses.  The instruments don't add much melody, but just support the rhythm.  I think Maggie's restrained interpretation and accurate pitch and Barry's wider interpretation don't make especially good match.  I had the same feelings later with Talking To Myself on Starcrossed.  Again, the instruments are loud and Maggie's voice is barely perceptible.  And finally, in the long instrumental Lake you'll have some tiny samples of Maggie's voice.


Maggie is most renowned of Moonlight Shadow, a big success song on album Crises (1983). After a brief guitar intro Maggie sings this story of a man who was shot dead. The song runs in a brisk tempo in minor key and the brutal story builds a drastic contrast against Maggie's innocent voice. The song is done at 2:07, when comes a clean guitar solo and at 2:37 a distorted guitar. Maggie adds comments over the solos. It has been suggested that the song is about John Lennon's death, however, this seems to be a wrong conclusion. Rather, the video refers to a duel.

One more time, Moonlight Shadow makes me think Maggie has done her best successes with songs, where a melodic idea is reflected between her voice and some instruments. She can sing like an instrument and her voice is an equal partner with most melodic instrument sounds. Singing with instruments seems to deliver better results than singing with another singer, because the other singer tends to bring in too much interpretation. Maggie's style seems to be more cooperative than ambitious, and I like it much. On the other hand, the multi-Maggie parts in some songs don't replace using instruments, because a good song needs a variety of different sound colors.

Foreign Affair sounds like a travel agency ad. Maggie repeats suggestively a few phrases and the instruments build the rhythm and add some effects.  The idea is repeated overly until sudden end.


Blue Night on album Earth Moving (1989) goes forward in steady walking speed telling a story of  woman who reads a love story and dreams of a lover. Distinctive here are short respites between phrases.  Maggie seems to be singing out all the time.  Few instruments add some comments. The sound quality on Earth Moving is far better than anything in this review.


All has been said and still I would like to add some fisherman's tales, you know: "I wish you had seen the one I lost".  Merciful Squirrel has lyrics of Mistake. I have never heard it, but if I ever will, I'll be glad to add a review. I have been told that Man in the Rain was originally written to Maggie, but she refused and, instead, Cara Dillon sings it on Tubular Bells III. I have nothing against Cara's voice, still, I would love to hear it sung by Maggie.  I have two versions of Incantations and both of them make me wish Maggie was there. She could do the anthem far better.

This review was written in the spring and summer of 2005. I was busy in the end of the spring and there were beautiful summer days, too. A couple of rainy days and now it is finally completed.  It was a pleasure to write and I had a good reason to listen all the songs again. Collaborations were done in 1980-1989, most of them on the first half of the decade.


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