On this date in 1962...
ON THIS DATE IN 1962, composer JOHN BARRY recorded the first version of The James Bond Theme at CTS studios in London. His band member Vic Flick played the iconic guitar part.
The authorship of the theme has long been a source of controversy. It is officially credited to Monty Norman, the composer hired for Doctor No, but the theme and its recording was almost completely out of Norman’s hands by the date of the recording. The producers had brought in John Barry after Norman’s score failed to impress.
Norman’s story was that he wrote the theme by transforming a line from an old, abandoned song he’d written for an old musical, and handed that over to John Barry for him to arrange and conduct.
Barry’s story was that he was given pretty much free reign over the theme, and he exercised it, taking total creative control.
When questioned in interviews, John Barry teased that if he didn’t write the James Bond theme, why did he get to do the other films? This only inflamed fan suspicions that Barry was the true author.
Of course, such an inference doesn’t actually prove anything, but effectively, John Barry was inferring that the theme was ghost written by him.
Certainly, the final product has Barry’s stylistic signature all over it.
Later court cases established that at least part of the James Bond theme, the famous guitar riff part, is indeed derived from Norman’s earlier work, but in establishing that, it was also established that almost everything else was written by John Barry.
Barry’s representatives claimed that made him the author.
Norman’s representatives argued it was “extreme arrangement”.
If this was a script, you’d call John Barry’s work a rewrite. An almost complete rewrite, probably.
The story is complex and one can only conclude that a truly fair credit might be that it was composed by John Barry and Monty Norman, just not together. You could say it was composed by John Barry from thematic material composed by Monty Norman. You could say it was composed by Monty Norman and arranged with additional material composed by John Barry.
Either way, John Barry’s name ought not to be missing.
The derivation of the riff from Norman’s song shouldn’t be ignored either.
The official credit prevails.
Whomever wrote what, pretty much all the work to realise the theme, from composing additional material, arranging it, taking it into the studio and recording it, ended up being done by John Barry.
On the back of his transformative work on the James Bond theme, John Barry was invited back to score eleven more James Bond films, including the composition of so many of the iconic songs such as Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever.
