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I've been watching some Barry videos on You Tube today, and I'll post this one from "Midnight Cowboy." This one always brings tears to my eyes.
(Full disclosure: Don Zuiderman asked me to record some extracts from Barry's biography Hit And Miss for this one, so you get to hear my dulcet tones.)
Very soothing indeed (and sorry about the late reply)!
When listening to this one, I couldn't help but think of Dusk at Piz Gloria, although this one is much more upbeat of course. Interesting point about the lack a "main" melody, though some melodies, like this one, is just as effective in its simplicity and repetitiveness.
Inspired by the Music Score Ranking Game, I was interested in hearing John Barry talk about his music, so here he is in his own words on a few things.
(Interviewer): Now why are minor keys so essential in these Bond themes?
BARRY: I guess minor keys are essential in my life. I love writing in minor keys. I adore them. They are just emotionally more fruitful. There's a certain -- I don't know -- there's a certain sense of tragedy. Although you're plane hokey, if you had to do James Bond in major keys it would sound like Mickey Mouse cartoon music. It really would. It's because you play it in the minor key that it gives it a weight and a power, you know, you listen to Shostakovich you listen to Prokofiev. I mean, it's all this minor -- I'm very very influenced -- I mean, my greatest loves are the Russians composer's: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky. The Russians have a way with the minor key that no other people have. And I -- if anybody says what's the biggest influence in your life, as much as I love Beethoven and a million other things, it's that Russian attitude to be able to deal with a minor key.
(Interviewer): This is good because Bond was always fighting the Russians.
BARRY: Yeah, that wasn't a part of the thing. It just happened to work out well in that...But it gives it size. It gives it more sense of drama. If you had tried to score Bond movies in major keys, when you think about it, it would have been absolutely disastrous.
(Interviewer): So you must have had fun doing this. I mean, it's very silly and very fun.
BARRY: Yeah, talk about a license to kill. It's a license to write silly and just have great fun. That was the whole joy of these movies. This was not "Citizen Kane." It was just this fun comic strip. So you could get away with murder. If this had been a one off -- some guy made a movie called "Thunderball" and it hadn't the cachet that was growing up around the whole thing, we would have been thrown out of the studio. It was the whole -- the whole thing just -- we were launched. And we could do anything really silly. That was the freedom of it. And why I left ultimately was because it stopped being wonderful and silly. It started to be formula. And that's when the fun went out of it. And once the fun goes out of it, well there's really no point.
I mean, the James Bond thing (theme) was a peculiar mixture of that low rock guitar figure, if you like, and the brass sound was like the Kenton band. And then the bridge, "da da dop de dop doo de doo lee da de da," is almost like a Dizzy Gillespie be-bop phrase, you know. So it was this kind of hybrid of all these kind of things that I was involved with at the time. And I must say I didn't give it too much thought. I didn't have too much time to give it a lot of thought. And it just came out like it did, you know. I didn't sit down and intellectualize about it, and I've never read a James Bond book. I'd only seen like a cartoon strip that they used to have in the "Daily Mail" in England. So I knew it was about a spy. I knew roughly what the essence was, but I never saw the movie. I just wrote the damn thing, you know.
These first three sections are from
https://freshairarchive.org/segments/composer-john-barry
It was a mix of all kinds of things...jazz, classics, pop. I just found myself doing it—I looked at it and said, 'That’s working.' That became the Bond style...If you had a car chase, the damned car was right in your face; even the fistfights were noisy, so you had to come up with an orchestrational palette that would cut through all that. Big strong brass chords, sustained strings to retain the tension, and percussion, of course. It was the only thing that worked. You couldn’t put soft violins in there. It was an overall mood, all minor keys, very sinister. It was distinctive, and it really set the tone for those Bond movies.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2012/11/08/james-bond-music
Samples here:
https://lalalandrecords.com/somewhere-in-time-limited-edition/
THE 50'S:
THE 60'S:
THE 70'S:
THE 80'S:
THE 90'S:
THE 00'S:
I specifically like the Latin version of Hideaway, what a gem. And then the USA Today theme, never heard that one, very beautiful (is that on any recording?).
The USA Today Theme has never had an official release, but all its variations were included on a bootleg album together with the score for the 1986 film A Killing Affair (a.k.a. My Sister's Keeper). It's the first album listed on this page:
https://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/30621/Killing+Affair,+A
Incidentally, A Killing Affair has a lovely score as well:
Or, in higher quality (a re-recording):
The original:
The MIDI:
https://mega.nz/file/4UpTDbbR#3hGkyVkNVjhY8dND_KZ-p0vjvAYkMC8Ybbv00TayR8s
Me too. I love it. Its repetitive style makes it infectious.
There is an apt sadness and otherworldliness to it that I find very special indeed. To me, Barry was at his strongest in the days of King Kong, The Black Hole and Moonraker.
Yes. Very celestial-sounding scores.
Rich Douglas did a good job recreating those tracks.
A Séance on a Wet Afternoon re-recording? I was going to sit here at the cable car controls, but now I'm gonna have to run to get that album! Wonderful score!
https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/man-with-golden-lyrics-bond-songwriter-don-black
Agreed. Thanks for sharing, @Dwayne.
This is a really, really belated answer because I hadn't read the latest postings on this last autumn, but Don Black is certainly right here:
"You had a break of 23 years till the song ‘Surrender’ for Tomorrow Never Dies. In your book you say you were “disappointed” it was on the end credits and not the main title. Was that a diplomatic understatement or are you just battle-hardened to how the industry is?
If you can’t take rejection, you’re in the wrong business. It’s no good getting too upset. However, I personally feel, and I know David Arnold and a lot of people in the Bond world felt, that this is the best Bond song ever written. And k.d. lang was so great on it. It was a shame, because the end titles don’t get as much visibility, but hey, it’s one of those things."
I think he's pretty much on the spot here. Relegating k.d. lang's "Tomorrow Never Dies" aka "Surrender" to the end credits was one of the worst decisions in terms of Bond themes in the last thirty years. For me, it epitomizes everything that a Bond theme should be about. I don't even mind the Sheryl Crow song, but this was really up there with the best Bond themes ever.
I love the song but I have heard people complain about it being just too loud and too bombastic. Also, I know that not everyone appreciates Arnold's lead theme that is everywhere in the score. Still, Surrender is by far the better song for me. I would have switched both songs if I could.
It's a more interesting and original song than Surrender anyway. And as for 'tease and tantalise'... :))
Edit: Excellent, just an excellent piece, it's now one of my favorites! Along with the Persuaders theme and OHMSS.
Wow! Barry what a man you've done here in Vendetta!
I would also add this: The Danny Scipio theme from the 'Vendetta' by Barry
How awesome are these works, it's a shame, the TV series of this was now lost.
I understand most of the episodes of this show are lost.