Barry is still, ten years after his death, such a towering presence that subsequent composers have either tried to do something completely different (so it doesn’t sound like Bond at all) or followed the template (so it sounds like they are mimicking Barry). Bold, beautiful, melodic and evocative – no other Bond composer has ever matched him.Īnd that’s the problem, really. He was a melodic genius, and his scores work as well away from the films as they did in the cinemas – listen to Dawn Raid at Fort Knox from Goldfinger, Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from Thunderball, Fight at Kobe Dock from You Only Live Twice and practically everything from Diamonds Are Forever. He set the musical standard by creating bold, brassy scores, with the trumpets scored so high they almost screamed, interspersed with bitter-sweet melancholic moments, weaving the title song through the films’ soundtracks and knowing when to just write “Play James Bond Theme here” on the sheet music and let that stirring big band blast do the rest. Barry went on to score eleven of the 25 films, most notably Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, ending with The Living Daylights in 1987. As a sop, the producers told him they’d call on him if there was a sequel – and, of course, there was. Paid £250 to arrange the James Bond Theme, Barry was surprised to see it all over Dr No and thought he deserved more money. He became an arranger for Adam Faith and scored Faith’s first few films, including Beat Girl. And they employed John Barry Prendergast (yes, that was his real name too) to arrange Monty Norman’s sketchy musical ideas into the James Bond Theme.īarry was a good choice because he straddled the orchestral and pop worlds – trained to compose by the organist of York Minster, he was a trumpeter who led his own moderately successful group, The John Barry Seven, that combined jazz with Shadows-style twang guitar.
They cast Scottish bodybuilder Thomas Connery (yes, that was his real name) as Ian Fleming’s spy. The producers of the first 007 movie, 1962’s Dr No, made two very clever decisions that helped create the template for the following 24 films. David Arnold even shook dried goat’s testicles for the opening sequence of Casino Royale, and on the latest score there’s guitar by Johnny Marr of The Smiths and drums by none other than Jason Bonham. Right from the off they included twangy electric guitar, played by Vic Flick, and later incorporated synthesisers and programmed electronic drums.
Indeed, if one of the defining attributes of prog is its willingness to go completely over the top then songs such as Goldfinger, Thunderball and Diamonds Are Forever are practically Emerson, Lake and Palmer.Īnother prog trope is the use of instruments from other musical genres, and the Bond soundtracks certainly do that. The Bond movies have given us some banging tunes that I suspect may be on the guilty pleasures list of many a prog enthusiast. Both have been around a long time, both have gone in and out of fashion, both try to reinvent themselves while sticking to a tried and tested formula, many of their original line-ups are dead and the early stuff was the best.Īnd they both take an awful long time to produce anything (except for Big Big Train and Steve Hackett, who seem to have musical diarrhoea). In many ways, James Bond has a lot in common with progressive rock.