Vic Flick- the man responsible for 'the riff'
One of the key elements of presentation for any Bond adventure is music. Not just scoring, though this shouldn’t be disregarded, but the so-called theme song and the use of the classic ‘James Bond Theme’. This is the introductory part for my series on the music of James Bond.
I’m certain I could stake my first-born on the assumption that the Bond theme – I refer to the The John Barry Orchestra’s jazz interpretation of the music by Monty Norman; the music that traditionally accompanies the gun barrel shot – is the most memorable Bond music for pretty much everyone. Of controversial parentage, this comparatively short piece of music vies with the main ‘Star Wars theme’, the 5-note figure from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and the ‘Indiana Jones theme’ and maybe the opening bars of ‘Moon River’ for the title of Most Famous Music Ever. It should be noted, too, that 3 out of those 4 tunes are all by the same genius freak of musical nature, John Williams.
Painfully cliched by this point, the Bond theme translates to action, sex and bad puns and has been used as a metonym for such for years. Not to be confused with the ’007 Theme’; another piece of music originating in the earlier films which was typically used in action/fight scenes, use of ‘The James Bond Theme’ is one of the boxes the producers must tick (along with “My name’s Bond….James Bond” and the gun barrel sequence) for a genuine Bond outing.
Of all the official Bonds (all but 67′s ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Never Say Never Again’ in short), only ‘Dr. No’ lacks a dedicated lyric theme. Hell, some of the films have two! This doesn’t mean that ‘Dr. No’ is necessarily devoid of memorable music- in fact, there’s a glut of catchy tunes used in the film including Honey Ryder’s brief interpretation of ‘Underneath the Mango Tree’ as she walks from the sea and into cinematic history – it really just means we are saved some of the embarrassment to come with lyrics ranging from the simply banal or irrelevant to out-and-out insane.
Part of the fun of the pre-release media storm that comes with a 007 installment is speculating about just who will be drafted to lend themselves to Bond. With ‘Quantam of Solace’, the guessing game reached fever pitch when ‘those in the know’ announced that bouffant-haired train-wreck Amy Winehouse was being considered for the coveted position. Thankfully, that came to nothing, but Winehouse is only one of a long line of jilted musical acts who missed out on belting one out for Bond (such as Blondie, Alice Cooper and Dionne Warwick).
So whether it be good, bad or “Who will he bang? We shall see,” Bond music is uniform in one regard and that is that it’s memorable. And in cases such as the aforementioned ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, this is often to a painful degree.
