There has been much discussion over the last 60 years regarding the legacy of the James Bond franchise. Who was the best actor to play Bond, which film had the best villain and “Bond Girl,” what were the best gadgets, what installments could we have done without?
Lists of best original Bond songs have also popped up, as every dedicated fan of the franchise has their own favorites and rarely do those lists ever contain the same titles.
Back Stories
For example, Bono and the Edge of U2 composed the title song to “GoldenEye” but, in the end, they thought a female voice would serve the material better and pegged Tina Turner to sing it. When Paul McCartney delivered the demo of “Live and Let Die” to the producers, they loved it but wanted a female to sing it. Composer (and Beatles producer) George Martin informed them, if McCartney wasn’t chosen, they wouldn’t get the song.Although only a few bars of it are heard in this movie, the Alice Cooper song, “The Man With the Golden Gun,” was deemed too hard rock and a different, a softer song of the same name by Lulu was chosen instead.
Out of Sequence
Director Mat Whitecross was fiendishly clever in presenting the songs in achronological order. The movie opens with the 2020 Billie Eilish title song from “No Time to Die” and ends with Louis Armstrong’s 1969 “We Have All the Time in the World” (“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”), one of his last recorded performances.Whitecross was wise to spend extra time in the company of Shirley Bassey, the only artist to sing three original songs, the most notable being “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds Are Forever.”
Recognizing that the songs take up a minute bite of screen time, Whitecross does a deep dive into the original scores and those reoccurring instrumental themes that permeate every installment.
Former singer Monte Norman is the guy who composed the “surf guitar” riff which first appeared in “Dr. No.” Demonstrating how universally identifiable that piece of music is, a group of musicians from Mumbai play it on accordion, sitar, and flute; the melody is instantly unmistakable.
The composer on 11 installments, John Barry, is the one most responsible for the overall legacy of the themes. The leader and trumpeter of an early ‘60s jazz-pop combo (think a more daring version of Herb Alpert), Barry, labeled by many as being very difficult to work with, married the then standard orchestral strings to big band brass.
A point that is made by several of the interviewees throughout is just how well the scores and the songs reflected the times when each was produced. There was the swinging ‘60s where British pop reigned supreme, the classic rock of the ’70s, the power ballads of the ‘80s, the mixed bag of the ’90s, and the revivalist torch singers of the last two decades.
More, Please
Much like any great performance, “The Sound of 007” understands that brevity is preferable over excess, and it’s always better to leave the audience wanting more instead of wearing them out, or worse, boring them.What some producer or studio might want to consider (for perhaps the 70th Bond anniversary) is to make a 10-hour limited docuseries which covers these subjects: original songs, scores, title actors, villains, Bond girls, gadgets, cars, and production design. That is, if they can make another Bond flick which doesn’t bow to the mounting political correctness that “No Time to Die” seemed to be heading towards. For many of us, James Bond movies are more than just a series of spy flicks; they mark and accompany key events in our lives. If you want a sensitive secret agent who is more in touch with his feelings, invent yourself a new one.
