Art byJohan Oomen
Evan Nabavian’s Odd Job with the Klobb
Real life spy stories almost always disappoint. Maybe it was different during the Cold War, but it seems like spies spend their time navigating red tape to cultivate intelligence assets for morsels of information that Susan Rice might read — hardly the stuff of Thunderball. Tradecraft employs precious little seduction and killing, it seems. Espionage is conspicuously boring.
The intrigue and debonair of James Bond movies, now a trope in itself, can variously be attributed to Ian Fleming’s source material, Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli’s vision, Sean Connery’s often cited ‘panther-like’ grace, Terence Young’s direction, maybe even Ken Adam’s production design, but perhaps most acutely, the music.
I’ve been to the Fontainebleau, the Miami Beach hotel where Bond meets Auric Goldfinger. It was devoid of sex and intrigue. Rather than rows of Vogue cover models offering massages, you would find a throng of Persian Jews chasing their kids and weighing kosher-for-Passover lunch options. Maybe I was 40 years too late or maybe I just wasn’t greeted by John Barry’s score, raucous big band horns with an orchestral flourish (“Into Miami” on the soundtrack).
Barry, who deserves most of the credit for Bond music besides Monty Norman’s main theme, created perfect pop music confections that were rollicking enough to soundtrack an international playboy and refined enough for an agent of the Crown. The music endears us to the otherwise garish trappings of the ultimate gentleman spy. Cartoon villains find their cunning, tourist traps become exotic locales, and love interests assume the mantle of Bond Girl. Therein lies the Bond style: sleek, thrilling, and anything but mundane.
The Bond sound is elusive, even to its current stewards. Sam Smith invites comparison with 50 years of Bond themes when he releases the series’ latest on September 25. For an exhaustive history, read Jon Burlingame’s The Music of James Bond. Less known are the non-canon covers, spin-offs, and novelties in the margins of the story that capture or emulate Bond music in remarkable ways. For a selection of those, read below.
John Barry – “My Love Has Two Faces, 1968”
“My Love Has Two Faces” might as well be a Bond theme. John Barry and Shirley Bassey recorded it between You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service for the 1968 Michael Caine heist flick Deadfall. Bassey’s sonorous voice is as much a Bond hallmark as the Walther PPK. “My Love Has Two Faces” is the only non-Bond collaboration between the two besides 2009’s “Our Time Is Now” which doesn’t really count. The lyrics about love gone sour and the somber tone disqualify it as Bond material, but all the other pieces are there. Fun fact: Burlingame recounts that Caine stayed at Barry’s Cadogan Square apartment in the spring of 1964 and that Caine, though he didn’t realize it at the time, was the first to hear “Goldfinger.”
John Barry – “The Ipcress File” (1964)
The Ipcress File, with Michael Caine again, is supposed to be the gritty anti-Bond spy movie, though it shares much of the early Bond crew, including producer Harry Saltzman and John Barry on music. Though more subdued and less colorful than a Bond theme, the soundtrack retains the slinking cool and hardly escapes the Bond tradition.
The Atlantics – “Goldfinger”
Cover versions of Bond themes are legion and mostly terrible, but this 1965 cover by an Australian surf rock band is a novelty that doesn’t scrub the song of its character. It could be a deleted scene where Bond hits the beach for some expository dialogue with a surfer dude rather than a buxom red-headed masseuse. The record’s B-side, “Bumble Boogie,” summarily shatters the illusion. (Not to be outdone, New Zealand has a surf rock cover of “Thunderball.” As does Southern California.)
John Barry – “Wednesday’s Child” (1966)
Yet another John Barry score for a 60s spy movie, but yet another take on the genre. “Wednesday’s Child” comes from the soundtrack to The Quiller Memorandum, a Cold War thriller about a neo-Nazi insurrection. Eddi Fiegel writes in John Barry: A Sixties Theme that Barry sought to represent the indoctrination of youth and so he based his score on an eighteenth century European lullaby. Its distinct lack of swagger disqualifies it as Bond music, but the atmosphere and exotic instrumentation suggest an afterword to a bombastic car chase and shootout.
John Barry – “Theme from The Persuaders” (1971)
John Barry with the electric harpsichord, ever the rock star.
Grant Kirkhope – “Aztec” (1997)
So the story goes that Goldeneye restored the series after the Timothy Dalton years and modernized Bond for cynical 90s audiences. But film histories neglect to mention Goldeneye’s second life as a classic Nintendo 64 game, whose legacy looms as large as its source material, maybe even larger. It brought the first person shooter to a mass audience as never before and it was the quintessential multiplayer binge. The team at UK game developer Rare created their own Bond music aside from the Monty Norman theme, likely because of licensing limitations. As with classic game soundtracks, players will recognize every note, having spent so much time exploring its world. But the theme from the hidden level Aztec most closely suits Bond. Composer Grant Kirkhope marries romance, suspense, and militant percussion using the sounds he could get out of the N64. It made the prize of unlocking the secret nineteenth level that much more special. The Goldeneye game’s soundtrack has been sampled by Lee Bannon and Gangsta Boo. You couldn’t pay a producer to sample Eric Serra’s score for the movie.
Dick Hyman – “Goldfinger” (1964)
“Goldfinger” on a Lowrey organ.
Perry & The Harmonics – “Goldfinger” and “From Russia with Love” (1965)
The only album by Chicago soul outfit Perry & The Harmonics, Intrigue With Soul is self-explanatory. Just look at that cover and marvel at the fact that this exists. Everything Live and Let Die could have been.
Fabrizio Ferretti / Manhattan Pops Orchestra – Operazione Tuono (Thunderball)” (1966)
Tony Dallara – Thunderball “1966”
Only Italian and Spanish pop ballads could muster the ardor of “Thunderball.”
Anthony & The Imperials – “You Only Live Twice” (1967)
An amazing “You Only Live Twice” cover, or if Wikipedia is to be believed, a version that was almost the official soundtrack.
Archibald & Tim – “Thunderball” (1967)
“Thunderball” on the organ via Italy.
Sexteto Electrónico Moderno – “You Only Live Twice” (1968)
And then, finally, the Uruguayan electronic cover of “You Only Live Twice.”
