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Barry has said the theme song was often the genesis of his scores, and I think one reason why the theme song works so well is that it's about a villain, so it's ominous and sets Bond up against that. Barry got his inspiration from the song Mack the Knife. He says when Harry Saltzman heard the song sung by Shirley Bassey, he thought it was the worst song he'd ever heard in his life (leaving out some curse words). He also thought it was too old-fashioned and young people in the newly Swinging 60s wouldn't like it. Director Guy Hamilton said he didn't know if it was going to be a hit or not but that it worked for the film dramatically. And Cubby Broccoli said he liked it, "Let's do it".
After the soundtrack went to #1 and everybody liked the title song, but Saltzman didn't, Barry was having dinner at a restaurant in London with friends Michael Caine and Terence Stamp. Saltzman came in and was talking with everyone at the table, being nice to Caine because he wanted him for The Ipcress File, and at the end of all this, Saltzman looks over at Barry with kind of a sour look on his face and says, "Thank you". Barry said Saltzman's voice was low and dripping with disdain. And Stamp said to Saltzman, "You --- ---", called him a really dirty name. And the whole club, where there were other people in the business, burst out laughing, because they apparently felt the same way toward Saltzman.
Caine was crashing at Barry's place when Barry pulled an all-nighter on the Goldfinger theme. Caine said, "He was just going bong bong bing bong all night on the piano. Never stopped. I couldn't sleep. And I got up about seven o'clock and I thought, Well, I guess some breakfast and coffee at least—and he was still banging away. And then he played me the song and I was the first person to hear Goldfinger".
On this being ranked lower than several of us expected, I suspect some of the disparate rankings in this game have to do with us falling into different age groups and possibly whether some of us have more of an ear for music than say casual music lovers, and some of us might even be able to write our own music, but overall I think that, like the films themselves, it's just a matter of personal opinion.
I certainly don't think this is the case. I've seen members who were of the 60s/70s era rank Arnold's scores quite high, and I myself and others who were more of the 90s era and beyond have ranked Barry's scores quite high. And more importantly, seven of the top 10 are from all the films from 1963-1973, and the other three are all Barry! So it's not as if Goldfinger was toppled by Gen Xers and Millennials upvoting GoldenEye, Die Another Day, and Skyfall.
Wow, I loved reading this post! Great job here, @Thrasos.
By the way, in relaying the story about Saltzman, I was not doing it to point out any faults he may've had, though some say he may not have been as "adventurous" about some of the Bond music as say Cubby Broccoli and Barry...it was just trivia about Barry and his music, with some big name people. I don't know Saltzman's history too much other than knowing he was Broccoli's partner and had a good mind for business, so I'm very thankful for all of the parts Saltzman played in helping to produce the Bond series and to help bring it to where it is now.
While I not participating in this game, in my informal ranking of the scores I had GF at number 3. It is certainly a score that I frequently play for fun or have in the background when I’m working. In fact, if I don’t have the time to actually watch the film, just listening to the soundtrack allows me to re-create the various scenes in my mind. And that, I think, is a true measure of its’ strength.
But I adore the stuff someone above referred to as shimmering and ambient. Barry's own characterization of the theme song, Wagnerian and pretentious, is accurate, and I guess the problem for me is that the action in the film never rises to a point that meets the music.
Well, bad music also tends to be written by people who can write music, so I'm not sure this faux-objective metric holds water...! Which is obviously not to say any of the music in GF is bad! I may have this at number 20, but I love all the scores apart from DN and (half of) GE.
That's right, you hit the nail on its head with that comparison.
I agree with you and Slazenger7 about how Barry nicely translated the visuals and attraction of gold into music; and I liked your earlier post, including the part about Into Miami, and how that's a great setup for what follows; a great scene there poolside. More trivia: the sax in Into Miami and on other cuts was played by John Scott, who also played for Henry Mancini, and with LALD's George Martin, playing flute on the Beatles song You've Got To Hide Your Love Away. He also created film and TV scores himself, and one was Greystoke, the Tarzan film with Christopher Lambert.
And that nice chiming sound in Oddjob's theme was made using finger cymbals. Barry said: "You hear it the first time you see Oddjob. I wanted the sound of metal, and finger cymbals are very small but they have a distinctive 'ting' sound--it was the whole idea of metal, of gold and the hardness of it". It's about time for me to watch GF again.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Music composed by
JOHN BARRY
FRWL collected two bronze medals, two 4th places and two 5th places. Five more top 10's were noted.
Only one bottom 5, a single 22nd place.
FRWL's original music received 141 points in total.
May I also recommend the Allmusic website's comment on the soundtrack:
"The first James Bond soundtrack composed from beginning to end by John Barry, From Russia With Love set the pattern for the score of every movie that followed in the series -- except for the title song (sung by Matt Munro) which, in this particular instance, was the least impressive element of the soundtrack. In later releases, the producers would see the value of getting singers perceived as a little more on the cutting edge of popular music in one way or another, and they would gain some major hits as a result. However, in this case it was the instrumental music that was among the most startling and unusual ever heard in a film score up to that time, beginning with "007," a horn-driven piece with a driving beat. (New versions of "007" would end up in two of the next three Bond movies as well as several more that followed.) The other highlight of this flavorful soundtrack was "Girl Trouble," a suspense theme that played off the dynamics of a solo cello, strings, and horns in a relentless beat; this piece was so inspiring as action music that a big chunk of it was used as the opening and closing theme of a local news show in New York for decades. Everything on this album sounded special in one way or another -- whether the actual music or the dynamics and timbres involved -- and although it never yielded a hit single, From Russia With Love deservedly remained in print for decades on vinyl."
Absolutely. Just think of that Main Title cue. Masterful stuff.
FRWL, and, to a lesser extent, GF, are to me proto-Barry scores. He really gets started on Thunderball. FRWL still has some corny use of the original Bond theme recording, not to mention full-scale repurposing of some bad Dr No music.
It's a huge step forward from what came before, but I don't think it makes an impression when compared to anything else Barry did.
Exactly the same positions that I placed the respective three scores in. The tracking of the Bond theme and the Dr No music is a mark against the film and the decisions of the filmmakers rather than Barry's efforts on the score, I feel. I always assumed he would have been against such choices as a composer.
I agree with that, and if Barry was responsible for everything we heard in FRWL, I'm sure I'd have ranked it higher. I just went with the score we got in terms of what is in the movie, not necessarily just the decisions Barry made about his contribution.
That's 100% fair! There are often times where I forget about these drawback moments because I've become so used to hearing the scores as album presentations.
I always feel a twinge of disappointment when Connery takes aim at the helicopter and it's Norman's music that kicks in and not Barry's.
I especially like the music that plays when Blofeld, Klebb and Kronsteen are together. And Stalking at the beginning is awesome. There are many other good cues. And great to hear the first version of the 007 theme, as was mentioned.
I'm also with those of you who wonder why LALD is still higher. Maybe when that one comes up, those who rank it highly will defend their choice.
Again, I decided to sit this game out, but my personal rankings had all of the classic Barry’s scores ahead of LALD – if for no other reason than their historical importance, and (IMO) they are more fun to listen to as stand-alone works of music. Then, again, I did have CR’67 ranked at number 4, so clearly my judgment is not to be trusted on these matters!!! 😊
Proto-Barry (or proto-Bond) is a very accurate way of describing FRWL, @ProfJoeButcher. I also think Barry improved by leaps and bounds with Goldfinger, @Thrasos, and Thunderball provided a bigger canvas still before Barry would go on to his most ambitious and most poetic work for Bond with You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
I love what Barry did for the opening titles of FRWL (I think it's the single best cue in the whole film) and "James Bond with Bongos" is very fun too. The main theme is indeed great, and the song by Matt Monro is one of my absolute favorites, but the theme is pretty sparsely used throughout the score itself and it's awfully subtle when it does pop up. The 007 theme is used far more prominently, and I'm not a fan of that one.
There's not a whole lot else in this score that I'm able to get excited about or champion over the music in any number of the other scores. It's funny you should want to know why people ranked Live and Let Die as high as they did, @DarthDimi, because that's precisely how I feel about From Russia With Love, haha. Apart from those fantastic opening titles, I just don't see what this one has over Goldfinger or really most of the other scores.