Today, as my mind wandered about the world I found myself looking at my bookshelf and my collection of 1960s Pan James Bonds - In my opinion the best set of covers they ever had, not looking too cheap, like the girls and giant guns seventies ones, or too literary like the current Penguin Modern Classics ones. This set me to thinking about the films and then the title songs and so I thought I'd share my opinions on those, starting with the songs.
Naturally I'm not going to deal with any of the later ones - Dalton onwards because they are pretty uniformly rubbish (especially the Bono/Tina Turner 'Goldeneye') - just up the the end of the Roger Moore era.
Firstly Dr. No. The first appearance of the Monty Norman James Bond theme, but the opening tune stands out amonst the Bond movies, being a Calypso version of Three Blind Mice, which perfectly evoked the Jamaican ambiance that played a surprisingly large part in Fleming's books. It seems to be a place that Fleming loved and was familiar with, living there in his house 'Goldeneye', and this is in many ways the perfect introduction to the world of Bond. The other important song in 'Dr. No' is 'Underneath the Mango Tree', which Ursula Andress mimed to, the actual voice being that of Diana Coupland, Sid James' co-star in 'Bless This House'.
After that tentative beginning, there is then a spate of great theme songs, by great singers - Matt Monro, 'From Russia, With Love', Shirley Bassey, 'Goldfinger', Tom Jones, 'Thunderball' (a difficult song to write, as the title is actually meaningless, being the name of a military operation, but in the hands of Tom Jones it seems to make sense at the time) and Nancy Sinatra, 'You Only Live Twice', one of my favourite Bond themes and one of my favourite of the movies, although with some reservations. 'From Russia With Love' also saw the first appearance of John Barry's brilliant '007', which appeared in the rest of the Connery films and in 'Moonraker', but hasn't made a fully fledged appearance since. Shirley returned with the theme of the last official Connery Bond, 'Diamonds are Forever' which is a fantastic theme, but the first of the sub-standard films, but tucked in between the last two Connery's, there was the woefully under-rated George Lazenby in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', with the first ever instrumental Bond theme and one of the best. The fact that the film also featured Louis Armstrong singing 'All the Time in the World' (which still chokes me up because of the ending) makes it one of the best Bond films in terms of the music alone.
We then enter the world of Roger Moore, with a strong start from Paul McCartney and Wings with 'Live and Let Die' - another classic and one of the best post-Beatles songs Macca ever did. And just to lay to rest the grammar issues, I have always heard it as 'in this ever changing world in which we're living' which is fine, regardless of what Chrissie Hynde seems to think. The next film though, 'The Man with the Golden Gun' is not a great Bond movie, but despite this it is still better than the, frankly crude and embarrassing theme by Lulu, 'He has a powerful weapon', oo-er missus. The first really bad Bond theme. Thankfully the next film, 'The Spy Who Loved Me', returned to form with Carly Simon's 'Nobody Does It Better', where she shows Lulu the art of lyrical subtlety and suggestion.
The last great Bond theme, in my opinion, is another Shirley Bassey, with the neglected 'Moonraker', a pretty, wistful little song, totally at odds with the over the top attempt to cash in on the late seventies SF boom, which was the film. From then on the songs became more and more ordinary, usually performed by second rate pop stars, although there was a final attempt at producing a great theme with Rita Coolidge's 'All Time High' from the risible 'Octopussy'. In all fairness, it must be said that 'For Your Eyes Only' is not too bad and is better than anything else Sheena Easton ever produced.
So, there we have it - my totally biased views on the early James Bond themes. The best ones? In no particular order, 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'From Russia, With Love', 'Goldfinger', 'Nobody Does It Better' and 'Live and Let Die', with honourable mentions for two non-themes, '007' and 'We Have All the Time in the World.'
Today the music, tomorrow the films!
No comments:
Post a Comment