In his autobiography When the Snow Melts (published in 1998), the late Bond producer Cubby Broccoli aptly referred to ‘the brilliant John Barry’ and said his soundtracks were ‘some of the best in cinema music’.
More recently, former Bond music composer David Arnold, when he was a special guest on the ClassicFM music station in the UK, also paid strong homage to John Barry and his 007 music, and described how listening to the music to You Only Live Twice (1967) was a truly ground-breaking moment, which gave him a burning desire to compose for movies himself. When UA released a variety of Bond double-bills in the 1970s, You Only Live Twice was often placed alongside Thunderball. What a truly memorable experience for cinemagoers that must have been! Moreover, for John Barry fans, it was a double-hit of his iconic James Bond music. The year 2025 has marked the 60th birthday of Thunderball. The JBIFC offers here (00)7 bullet-points on the life of the great John Barry (1933-2011), his contribution to EON Bond movie no.4, and some other brief thoughts on the composer’s life and legacy.
007 and Counting…
001: After the incredible success of John Barry’s music for Goldfinger (1964), it was inevitable that the EON producers would once again turn to the highly-talented composer when it came to their fourth James Bond adventure, Thunderball. However, Barry was under no illusions about the challenge that lay ahead. For one thing, Thunderball was going to be a longer movie, and that meant, of course, that it would need more music than the previous Bond films. More importantly, Barry had some major reservations about the actual title ‘Thunderball’, and wondered how on earth he would be able to integrate the word into a main song. As he put it in a later interview, after initially agreeing to compose the film’s music, he had at first little knowledge about the movie’s plotline: ‘All I knew was that ‘Thunderball’ was the most horrendous title for a song’.
002: Having read in a newspaper that the Italians were now calling James Bond ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’, Barry decided that this nick-name was a more viable potential title for a song, something that could still convey everything that people associated with 007 and his world. Barry approached the EON producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and sounded them out about his alternative title, and they approved. Moreover, the director Terence Young, who was by then shooting the movie on location, cannily integrated the title directly into the film. The nightspot in Nassau where Bond seeks temporary refuge after a dramatic foot-chase through a street carnival is called the ‘Kiss Kiss Club’.
003: However, things became more complicated. In the end, two songs were actually recorded for the movie’s main title theme! The first version, a rendition of ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ that was put together by Barry, was jazz-inspired, with nicely ‘Bondian’ lyrics by Leslie Bricusse (Bricusse in particular said he ‘loved’ this version). The American singer Dionne Warwick was chosen to record the song, which she did in London in September, 1964. Barry was very pleased with the result, and both he and Bricusse were convinced it would be a ‘big hit’.
004: Yet things are never simple in the world of music-composing for films. Just as Barry became deeply embedded in work on the main soundtrack, the Bond producers had a change of heart, and decided that – for marketing purposes – the title ‘Thunderball’ needed to be the title of the movie’s main song after all. Barry suddenly had to go back to the drawing-board (so to speak) and start again. Moreover, Bricusse was now too busy on another project, so Barry had to find an alternative lyricist for the second version of the main title song.
Fortunately, he found the highly-skilled Don Black, who had written for the singer Matt Munro. At first very excited to be doing a Bond film, Don Black also suddenly faced the same challenge that had caused a lot of soul-searching for John Barry: how to use the word ‘Thunderball’ in a song? Black decided to approach it as a kind of Shirley Bassey song, with moody lyrics delivered by a strong voice. Even more boldly, Black persuaded his old friend Tom Jones, the hugely popular young Welsh singer, to record the song. The now-legendary recording took place on 11th October, 1964, and (as many Bond fans now know), the recording itself went down in Bond history as a very memorable event in itself: John Barry asked Jones to hold on to the very high note at the end of the song, which he did – for a very full nine seconds! As Jones himself recalled later, when he finally opened his eyes, ‘the room was spinning’ and he nearly passed out.
005: The song ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ was not quite dead, though. In late September, EON had hired none other than Shirley Bassey to sing the song for the end-titles to the movie. This was recorded on 12th October, 1964, just a day after Jones had recorded his main ‘Thunderball’ song. While the new version of the ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ song was very ‘Barry-esque’, with plenty of brass, it had taken eleven takes, and Barry (very reluctantly) decided it was not quite right. When Bassey was informed that the song would not now be used, she was said to be ‘furious’, and even threatened legal action. Although a settlement was reached, it soured relations for a while between Bassey and the 007 producers, although by 1971 Bassey was back – and in great style – with Diamonds Are Forever (and, again, in 1979 for Moonraker).
006: John Barry completed work on the main Thunderball soundtrack with some all-time great James Bond music, a range of music that more than matched the huge ambition, action and exotic glamour of the movie itself. Interestingly, at one point, he also re-used the ‘007’ theme, a highly catchy piece of music that he had composed for From Russia With Love (1963) as a kind of alternative to the main Monty Norman ‘James Bond theme’. Tellingly, such was the pressure on Barry to complete the music for Thunderball, when the LP soundtrack album was released in 1965 it only contained tracks from the first half of the movie, as Barry was still racing to fully complete the background score!
007: John Barry, of course, continued to work on the James Bond movies and arguably had a huge impact on cinema music in general. The Yorkshire-born composer very sadly died in January, 2011, aged just 77, and there were many tributes to his Oscar-winning work from across the movie and music world. Indeed, his work today is so highly regarded that it is regularly placed alongside the compositions of some of the most famous classical composers. Barry exemplified both the 1960s as a ‘swinging’ decade and the rise of movie soundtracks for a popular mass audience, and he gave the 007 movies a highly distinctive musical identity. There have been many words written about his legacy.
Did You Know?
Barry’s close collaborator and good friend Don Black, after working with him on Thunderball, went on to develop a highly successful music writing partnership with Barry. Writing in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper in 2012, the Oscar-winning lyricist revealed that, since the death of John Barry had been announced, he (Don Black) had been ‘inundated by emails and texts from his fans around the world’. Black argued in his article that John Barry had ‘revolutionised film music’ – he had ‘a way of connecting emotionally with a story’, an understanding that resulted in the most beautiful and appropriate music. Black continued: ‘Working with John was a joy, because he didn’t present you with a rough idea, but a finished product. You knew by the time you got hold of the music he would have agonised over it, rewritten it and honed it until it was perfect’. Black added: ‘He may have gone, but the gift of his music will be with us for decades to come’.
Bond composer John Barry in the 1960s