The JBIFC is very sad to report that the hugely talented guitar player Vic Flick has died, aged 87. With his exciting guitar riff, Vic helped to make the ‘James Bond theme’ one of the most famous and memorable short pieces of music in cinema history.
It is no exagerration to say that the theme, whenever it kicked in during the course of a James Bond movie, immediately delivered a combination of pulse-raising tension, memorable tempo and 60 bars of dynamic sound, the like of which has never really been equalled. Vic had been a key member of the John Barry Seven. John Barry, of course, was given the task of arranging Monty Norman’s original piece into a fully-realised two-minute piece for Dr. No (1962), and did not have much time to do so. Under pressure to deliver something in time, Barry was inspired by his earlier hit ‘Bees Knees’ (1958), which he described as ‘a twangy-guitar type thing’, and this was the kind of guitar-driven approach he wanted for the James Bond theme.
Another influence was Barry’s theme to the film Beat Girl, which also had the ‘twangy’ guitar approach at its heart. Moreover, what Beat Girl and the James Bond theme had in common was the excellent guitar work of Vic Flick, who was a highly valued member of Barry’s ‘team’. And, as Vic recalled later, what Barry liked about Vic’s playing was the ‘edge’ it had to it, something that Barry felt was a perfect fit for the character of James Bond.
When Vic played on the theme, he said he deliberately ‘overplayed it’ – as he put it: ‘I leaned into those thick low strings with the very hard pectrum, played it slightly ahead of the beat, and it came out exciting, almost “attacking”, which fit the James Bond image’. What a lot of people did not realise is that Vic did not play the James Bond theme on an electric guitar; instead, he played it on an acoustic guitar.
John Barry was very pleased with their work, but did not really anticipate at the time that it would become so legendary. Barry was paid £200 for his work on the theme, and Vic Flick received £7 and 10 shillings. But, as we now know, the James Bond theme became very much a part of the whole James Bond phenomenon in the 1960s, and continued to be utilized at regular intervals for many of the subsequent movies in the EON franchise.
Vic remained part of the John Barry orchestra on the first five James Bond films. His work can be heard, for example, in the gypsy encampment scenes in From Russia With Love, and can also be heard in Goldfinger, where he played the banjo for the scenes on the villain’s Kentucky horse farm. Then, some years later – much to his delight – he was asked to return to the series for Licence To Kill in 1989. Using his original 1960s guitar, Vic played on Michael Kamen’s main score for the movie, which was Timothy Dalton’s second adventure as 007.
Later in life, Vic was invited on numerous occasions to play the James Bond theme in public performances, and was very happy to be so associated with such a famous piece of film music. Looking back on the actual creation of the James Bond theme, Vic said it was ‘part Monty Norman’s talent, John Barry’s and mine, all put together’.
Vic Flick, 1937-2024.
Vic in later life with his famous James Bond theme guitar.