Obscure Prog Facts

Not being on the playlist was not equivalent to being banned  - the playlist (in 1973) was for daytime programming - the single could have been played by any of the evening DJs on their programmes (John Peel, Pete Drumond, Annie Nightingale, Bob Harris, Tommy Vance etc.) - the "problem" with that for ELP and Manticore was daytime radio was necessary if you wanted to have a hit single.... and to be honest, it was never going to be a hit anyway (even in 1973).

 

Probably not that obscure for British TV viewers but KE9 was also used as the theme tune for The Generation Game when Jim Davidson (a big ELP fan) was the host. Strangely they used a live version where Lake's voice sounds a bit odd and for a while I thought it was a cover.

 

 

(His biological father is Heathcote Williams)

The Snow Goose was not the original book Camel was using for inspiration, it actually started out being a novel titled Siddhartha.

Around the 48 minute mark in Amarok you can hear Morse code, the message is "F*** Off RB" RB standing for Richard Branson the owner of Virgin. Oldfield had stated that Amarok contained a secret message and that anyone who found would receive a cash prize paid by Oldfield himself.

Another lesser known one is that Max Bacon of GTR fame was on a show in the 80's called New Faces, something like an American Idol where contestants preformed and judges scored them. While on the show Max preformed songs from the GTR album along with a song he did with Mike Oldfield. None of this was mentioned on the show, for it was an attempt at relaunching his career after GTR disbanded... he was not successful and lost in the final stage of the show.