MOONLIGHT SHADOW
"Moonlight Shadow" is a pop song written by British multi-instrumentalist Mike
Oldfield and released as a single in May 1983 and included on the album Crises
in the same year. The vocals were performed by the Scottish vocalist Maggie
Reilly, who had joined Mike Oldfield in 1980. It has been his most successful
single to date, with Tubular Bells being his most successful album worldwide. It
is said that the lyrics were a reference to the death of John Lennon.[1]
The single peaked at number 4 in the British charts, making it Oldfield's second
highest ranked single after "Portsmouth" which reached number 3 in 1976.
"Moonlight Shadow" was successful throughout Europe, It reached number 1 in
countries including Italy, Austria, Switzerland for four weeks and Norway for
six weeks. It spent four weeks at number 2 in Germany and also hit number 6 in
Australia. It was re-released as a maxi-CD single in 1993 to promote Oldfield's
Elements box set, charting at number 52.
A 12" single (later reissued on a 3" CD single) featured an extended version of
the song with an extra verse and the single B-side was "Rite of Man" which was a
rare instance of Oldfield singing lead vocal. The extended mix also appears on
his compilation album The Platinum Collection.
In 1991 the song was re-released in France and in 1993, it was featured on
promos for Elements in France and Spain.
Maggie Reilly sang "Moonlight Shadow" live when she toured with Oldfield in the
1980s. However since then, other singers have performed the song live with
Oldfield including, Anita Hegerland, Miriam Stockley and Rosa Cedrón.
The original cover art is an enlargement of the lower right corner of the Crises
album cover. This shows a man with his foot on a ledge with the sea and sky in
the background. The moon, the tower and its shadow from the album cover cannot
be seen on the single cover.
An early version of the song was entitled "Midnight Passion" with vocals by
British singer Hazel O'Connor.[2] Along with Maggie Reilly, a girlfriend of one
of the roadies when Oldfield was on tour, Oldfield used a rhyming dictionary and
recorded many of the lyrics word by word.[3] According to Oldfield, Virgin
Records were immediately happy with the song and wanted more pieces similar to
it.
Oldfield later sampled the drums from "Moonlight Shadow" for the song "Man in
the Rain" on his 1998 album, Tubular Bells III.
It was long believed that the lyrics are a reference to the murder of John
Lennon, although when asked about this in a 1995 interview, Oldfield responded:
[It's] not really [about Lennon]... well, perhaps, when I look back on it,
maybe it was. I actually arrived in New York that awful evening when he was shot
and I was staying at the Virgin Records house in Perry Street, which was just a
few blocks down the road from the Dakota Building where it happened, so it
probably sank into my subconscious. It was originally inspired by a film I loved
- Houdini, starring Tony Curtis, which was about attempts to contact Houdini
after he'd died, through spiritualism... it was originally a song influenced by
that, but a lot of other things must have crept in there without me realising
it.
—Mike Oldfield, Gareth Randall Interviews Mike Oldfield
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