7 Days 'Til 007: "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"

A spectacular week that saw huge victories for the first African American president, several female Democratic Senate candidates (including the first Asian American woman elected to the Senate and a Missouri Senate candidate who actually understands female anatomy) and the movements to legalize weed and same-sex marriage concludes with something equally eagerly awaited, this time from the world of entertainment. It's the arrival of the well-received new 007 film Skyfall, which drops in the States tomorrow. This is the penultimate post in a seven-part series about standout vocal themes or instrumental pieces from the official 007 films.

It's hard to listen to John Barry's rousing instrumental opening title theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service without going up to a mirror and pretending to aim a gun while kneeling, just like OHMSS star George Lazenby did in the film's gunbarrel sequence (the only Bond who kneeled in his gunbarrel). It's also hard to add lyrics to it that don't suck ass.

Try making up your own lyrics to the OHMSS main title theme sometime. Of course you're going to include the movie's cumbersome title in your made-up lyrics, but it won't sound right, even when you prolong the "Maj" in "Majesty's" to get the title to match Barry's nine-note brass melody. Just give up like Barry and his songwriter most likely did.

The theme was originally supposed to contain lyrics, but I guess Barry and the songwriter couldn't come up with anything that worked or would have been up to par with the chart hit Barry and his crew made out of "Goldfinger" and the solid Bond songs they crafted with "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice." So OHMSS became the first Bond movie since From Russia with Love to kick off with an instrumental during the opening titles (it remains the only post-From Russia with Love installment to do so). I like how the film opens that way. It adds to the whole "this isn't a typical Bond film" vibe of OHMSS, the last Bond film that treated the audience like grown-ups (until the series went back to basics in For Your Eyes Only after years of cartoonishness and juvenile antics).

The switch from Sean Connery to Lazenby must have inspired Barry to change up the Bond sound and use synths for the first time in the series. "That [synthy sound] and the single-mindedness of Barry's instrumental main title makes it one of the most revered of all the 007 scores among Bond aficionados," wrote Jeff Bond (no relation) in the liner notes for the 2002 expanded reissue of the OHMSS score.

Sixteen years after OHMSS, Barry made an interesting musical choice when he resurrected the OHMSS main title theme's synth riffs in his View to a Kill score, perhaps as both a shout-out to the OHMSS ski chase sequences that featured his main title theme (A View to a Kill was the first Bond film with a skiing sequence that Barry scored since OHMSS) and a nod to the 1985 film's Silicon Valley-related plot. The OHMSS and View to a Kill scores are two of my favorite scores in the series, and that's mostly due to the presence of this excellent OHMSS theme, the tune that can't be lyricized, no matter how hard you try.

7 Days 'Til 007: "007"

You know his name. You know his steez. Now get to know his jams. It's time to kick off a countdown to the American release of Skyfall, the latest official Bond installment (it's also a movie that had some trouble getting off the ground, which led to Stephen Colbert posting the following funny tweet: "The latest Bond movie has been put on hold for financial troubles. If only they had a shoe that turned into $30 million"). Each weekday until November 9, enjoy a post about a standout vocal theme or instrumental piece from the official Bond movies.

I love how John Barry's secondary theme for the Bond character--not the theme by Monty Norman that producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman hired Barry to tweak and arrange, and what a disaster that tune turned out to be--opens with seven drum beats as a nod to Bond's double-oh section number and then repeats those notes until the end. "007" first appeared in From Russia with Love (it accompanied the gypsy camp gunfight sequence and Bond's theft of the Lektor device) and was featured in four other Bond movies (thanks for the scene details, Wikipedia and 007 wikis!).

Thunderball: "007" accompanied the parade chase scene and the sluggish-as-hell underwater battle between buttloads of agents (on the film's expanded soundtrack album, the underwater mayhem cue is part of Track 17, and you can hear Track 17 during "AFOS Prime" on A Fistful of Soundtracks).
You Only Live Twice: The theme resurfaced when Bond piloted the mini-copter known as "Little Nellie."
Diamonds Are Forever: Check out the theme when the Sean Connery-era Bond takes on Blofeld one last time on an oil rig off the coast of Baja California.
Moonraker: After an eight-year absence, "007" resurfaced during the Amazon river chase. The theme was never again used in the series.

Not even David Arnold, a huge fan of Barry's music, re-used "007" in his Barry-influenced scores for the later Bond installments. Instead, he opted for Barry's "James Bond Is Back" fanfare from the From Russia with Love main titles and of course, "The James Bond Theme." Tor Books blog contributor Ryan Britt wonders why "007," one of his favorite tunes in the series, hasn't been used since Moonraker. He says, "It’s more heroic than 'The James Bond Theme,' and when it’s used in subsequent [post-From Russia with Love] movies, I get chills."

"007" is '60s action scoring at its classiest. The composition suggests what North by Northwest--a major influence on From Russia with Love--would have sounded like if Barry scored that film and brought his jazzy flair to the chase scenes.

"Rome, Italian Style" Track of the Day: Count Basie and His Orchestra, "007"

Song: "007" by Count Basie and His Orchestra
Released: 1966
Why's it part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist?: It's Basie's big-band cover of the recently deceased John Barry's "007," complete with the legendary jazz pianist's trademark "plink, plink, plink" at the end (although it's actually more of a "da-dee-dee, plink, plink"). Not to be confused with the much more famous "James Bond Theme" (which was written by Monty Norman and arranged by Barry), "007" is a secondary theme for the Bond character that Barry introduced in 1963's From Russia with Love, the first film in the Bond franchise that Barry scored from start to finish, or rather, from gunbarrel to final makeout session, presumably on a raft. This North by Northwest-style, stately-sounding action motif turned up frequently during the Sean Connery era of the series--the era when the Bond installments, particularly From Russia with Love, most closely resembled North by Northwest--and rarely appeared in the series again after Connery's departure. The Basie Orchestra's rendition of "007" is taken from Basie Meets Bond, an album in which the band made its debut on United Artists Records by recording a tie-in to United Artists' biggest cash cow at the time and covering its most signature themes, including, yes, "Underneath the Mango Tree."

Hear Basie get his plink on.

Vanity Fair profiles John Barry

No other mainstream magazine gives as much coverage to film music as Vanity Fair does. In 1997, VF united Silver Age composers (Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein) and present-day Hollywood favorites (Danny Elfman, James Newton Howard) for a memorable photo spread--the film music equivalent of the 1958 "A Great Day in Harlem" photo shoot. Then last month, VF's Oscar blog provided readers with an impressive overview of this year's Best Original Score contenders (Slumdog Millionaire, the controversial Dark Knight).

This week, the online edition of VF has posted a lengthy profile of John Barry, who recently celebrated his 75th birthday. The article is a terrific read for those of us who are fans of Barry's classic music from the 007 movies. It goes into detail about the dispute between Barry and Monty Norman over who should be credited for "The James Bond Theme;" the creation of the game-changing Goldfinger theme sung by Shirley Bassey, who's in the above 1964 photo with Barry in the center ("'From Russia with Love' didn't wallop an audience. It didn't scream sex and danger and chic amorality. It wasn't silly. It wasn't 'Goldfinger'..."); and the melancholia that suffuses Barry's work, from the You Only Live Twice theme to scores for chick flicks like Somewhere in Time and Out of Africa.

Bruce Handy's Barry profile is also filled with great gossip (I didn't know he was once married to Blow-Up hottie and "Je t'aime... moi non plus" singer Jane Birkin). My favorite bits of gossip include the tidbit about Fellini's love for the Goldfinger score and an anecdote about Barry's contentious relationship with famously abrasive '60s and '70s Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman, who hated the Goldfinger theme and was disgusted by the raunchy lyrics in the Diamonds Are Forever theme.

Saltzman sure would have loved the pun that concludes The World Is Not Enough ("I thought Christmas only comes once a year").

"Shutup, I Love This Title Screen," Part 17

From Russia with Love
Title design by Robert Brownjohn