Thunderball
THE MUSIC OF
JAMES
BOND
48
And he was generating considerable new publicity himself. He was the subject of profi les in both Billboard and Variety in January and February 1965 (the latter, in classic Variety style, was headlined “007’s B.O. Click Tunes Deals for Composer Barry,” B.O. being Variety slang for “box offi ce”). Since fi nishing Goldfi nger, he had written fresh, innovative scores for Richard Les- ter’s stylish The Knack . . . and How to Get It (which would win top honors at the Cannes fi lm festival) and his former fl atmate Michael Caine’s starring turn in a more low-key spy fi lm, the Saltzman-produced The Ipcress File. Topping it all off, in the week the Goldfi nger album hit the top of the American charts, it was announced that Barry had signed a three-year deal with CBS Records (Columbia in the U.S.) as both artist and producer.
But he was already thinking ahead to Thunderball. As Barry later recalled, on a fl ight from London to the States, “I picked up a newspaper. The Bond thing was in full stride by then, and in one article it said that the Italians called Bond ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.’ All I knew was that ‘Thunderball’ was the most horrendous title for a song.” He remembered joking about it with Anthony Newley, when they were talking about what they could do with “Thun- derball” as a title, and the clever Newley immediately responded, “Thunder- ball, marvelous, you should care for me,” taking his cue from a George and Ira Gershwin song.
“We can redefi ne Bond through the lyrics, through that title,” Barry thought; he would write a song called “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” He won approval from Broccoli and Saltzman and, with shooting already under way in the Ba- hamas, director Terence Young decided to incorporate the song title into one of the Nassau locations. The script referred to the Jump Jump Club, where Bond would end up while trying to elude his SPECTRE pursuers; and al- though the call sheet for April 5, 1965, refers to the Jump Jump Club, the schedule for April 6 renames the nightspot as the Kiss Kiss Club. This is the title seen on screen.
In Thunderball, SPECTRE decides to hijack a NATO jet armed with two atomic warheads and then demand £100 million in ransom money or face the possibility of a major city being destroyed. Bond’s investigation leads him fi rst to an English health farm and then to the Bahamas, where he meets SPECTRE operative Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his beautiful ward Domino (Clau- dine Auger).
The fi lm’s most memorable musical moment takes place there, in the spe- cially built Paradise Island set. In the script, Bond is dancing with Largo’s henchwoman Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) when “the drummer breaks into a fran- tic solo” and 007 wheels Fiona around just in time to make sure she takes the bullet meant for him. That wild conga-and-bongo solo was played by 23-year- old percussionist King Errisson (billed as “King Erison” on screen), and those featured 22 seconds helped to propel him to fame.
Errisson was discovered by Connery and McClory, who, along with other members of the Thunderball crew, would seek late-night revelry at the Conch Shell Club, “over the hill on the ghetto side of town. After a couple of weeks
of coming in every night, they decided I was the guy to do the part,” Errisson recalled. For the scene, Errisson actually played a composition of his own, “where I would play a certain tempo and raise it and raise it until I get to the crescendo that you see. What they wanted was for me to go crazy when I see the gun coming out of the curtain, in order to make Bond look at me.” That piece was eventually replaced, to Errisson’s disappointment, by a Barry origi- nal. Another song that Errisson performed, his Nassau hit “Wings of a Dove,” was recorded for potential use (and even teased in an August 1965 Billboard article as a featured number in the fi lm) but ultimately discarded over music- rights issues. Errisson went on to become Neil Diamond’s conga player for more than 40 years.
Having fi nished recording King Rat in Los Angeles, Barry fl ew to the fi lm’s Nassau location on April 20, 1965. The idea, Variety reported, was “to dig up native musical ideas for his fourth James Bond fi lm assignment.”
“I spent a week down there and listened to calypsos and things, none of it really very useful in terms of the dramatic context of the movie,” Barry said.
“The music is going to go on all night anyhow,” says Luciana Paluzzi to Sean Connery during their love scene—one of few moments in the fi lm when “Thunderball” is actually played as underscore.
THE MUSIC OF
JAMES
BOND
50
“We would go out to these restaurants in the evenings and whoop it up a lot. Harry and Cubby used to have maybe 20 people in a restaurant, with Sean and everybody. The actual goodies that wound up on the screen from these adventures was very minimal. But it was fun.”
When Barry returned to London, he began crafting the melody for “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” True to form, Barry wrote something fresh and vital, a jazz waltz that could be applied dramatically in many contexts, from warmly romantic to darkly suspenseful. And once again, and as he had recently done with The Knack, he turned to Bricusse for a lyric.
“John called me to say that Cubby and Harry were very taken with the nick- name ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,’” Bricusse recalled. “It came very quickly, too. It was dead easy, that one. I loved the tune. I just think there’s an excite- ment in jazz waltzes, and the fact that it was jazzy suited the character of the man and the piece.”
As with Goldfi nger, Bricusse didn’t see any footage or read a script; he simply worked from the title and Barry’s music. “John was one of that rare breed,” Bricusse refl ected. “There are not many really good fi lm composers who are really good songwriters. Hank Mancini was one, John Barry was one, John Williams is another. The gift of melody, in terms of songwriting structure, eludes a lot of top fi lm composers.” Barry’s tunes, Bricusse added, “took enor- mous thought, planning and work.”
Bricusse’s lyrics were smart and witty: “He’s tall and he’s dark / and like a shark, he looks for trouble / that’s why the zero’s double . . .” and although it might have seemed a natural for Shirley Bassey to belt out, à la Goldfi nger, she would not wind up getting the fi rst call on the song.
For the next three months, while Thunderball continued shooting in Nassau and at Pinewood, Barry shifted attention to his fi rst stage musical, Passion
Flower Hotel, which opened August 24, 1965, at the Prince of Wales Theatre
(after a three-week tryout in Manchester). HIs collaborators were old show-biz cronies: Trevor Peacock, the Beat Girl lyricist who struck out trying to put words to Goldfi nger; and Wolf Mankowitz, the man who introduced Cubby Broccoli to Harry Saltzman and who had penned the book for Monty Norman’s fi rst musical Expresso Bongo. (Barry wound up marrying one of the girls in the
Passion Flower Hotel cast, a young Jane Birkin, and for a while they were one
of the hottest couples in Swinging Sixties London.)
By September, it was back to Bond. Thunderball was an even greater chal- lenge than Goldfi nger, not only because it required far more music (nearly 80 minutes in the fi lm, even more recorded and not used) but also because large sections of the fi lm take place underwater. To create a feeling of suspension, he decided to make extensive use of harp, vibraphone, fl utes and strings, often in adaptations of “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” or the jazzy midsection of the Bond theme—and recorded in such a way that the music seemed distant, or echoing. “Lots of echo, and no bass,” he later explained. “It was just melodies and lines fl oating. It wasn’t rooted, which is what you feel when you swim un-
THUNDERBALL
51
derwater; you’re not attached to anything. I just removed all that low end and did it in a strange, linear scale of overtones with alto fl utes and vibraphones to create the effect.”
In terms of basic musical material, he already had three themes to draw from: “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” the Bond theme and “007,” which he had written for From Russia with Love but which could (with new variations) cover some of the action sequences.
First to be recorded would be “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” on September 4. Rising American star Dionne Warwick was chosen to sing. She had had four top-40 hits in 1964, and she was doing a European tour in late August and early September that made her available for a London recording. “Dionne’s was marvelous,” Barry later said. “It was a three-four kind of thing with a whole section of cowbells doing the rhythm. It was a strange kind of a song, but I liked it,” he added. Warwick’s vocal had a warmth and an ease about it, and it dovetailed nicely with Maurice Binder’s title sequence of underwater nudes—although it needed a seemingly interminable 48-second intro, appar- ently because nobody wanted the vocal to begin until after the title Thunder-
ball appeared on screen. “John made a marvelous recording with Dionne,”
Bricusse later remarked, “and we were convinced we had a big hit.”
And then, while Barry was in the midst of writing and orchestrating a score based on this very melody, the unexpected happened. Broccoli and Saltzman told the composer that “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” had to be jettisoned from the fi lm. “We’ve got to have a song called ‘Thunderball,’” Barry quoted Broc- coli as saying, “because that’s the title of the movie and United Artists wants that title on the radio. ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ doesn’t mean a thing.”
With deadlines approaching, both in terms of fi nishing the fi lm and getting a fi nished soundtrack album to United Artists Records, the pressure was on. Bricusse was unavailable, having left to write the songs for 20th Century-Fox’s fi lm musical Dr. Dolittle. So Barry decided to take a chance on Matt Monro’s manager Don Black, whose lyric-writing career had taken off with “Walk Away,” a hit for Monro in late 1964. “Do you fancy having a go at the new Bond song?” Black remembered Barry asking.
Barry said nothing of “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” only that the producers were in a hurry to do this. In a day or so, the composer wrote a new melody (with an intro drawn from the bebop midsection of the Bond theme) that ended with three notes that might say “Thunderball.” Black, excited about the op- portunity, accepted immediately; but he still had to write a lyric around a word that made no sense. He checked the dictionary and found no “thunderball.” And there was no time for script readings or fi lm screenings.
“So I used it as a kind of code word,” Black remembered. “I thought the opening line was good—‘he always runs while others walk’—I thought, well, that’s Bond, isn’t it? I just kept going like that. I’ve always found that if the lyric hugs the contours of the melody and doesn’t offend what the composer’s written, you’re in pretty good shape. When I wrote it, I thought of two things:
(left to right) John Barry, singer Tom Jones and lyricist Don Black listen to a playback of “Thunderball” (courtesy of Don Black)
S C O R E H I G H L I G H T S
John Barry initially approached Thunderball with three themes in hand: “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” would become the main theme, with help from the “James Bond Theme” (in particular, its jazzy mid- section) and “007,” the lighthearted adventure theme he fi rst introduced in From Russia with Love. When the song “Thunderball” was added to the mix late in the game, Barry quickly modifi ed a few cues to in- corporate the new theme and make it seem more a part of the entire tapestry.
The precredits sequence features one of Barry’s all-time great developments of the Bond theme (called, on the album, “Chateau Flight”), a high- energy piece for Bond’s unmasking of Col. Bouvar, their fi ght and his aerial departure via conveniently placed jetpack. The “Thunderball” song featuring
THUNDERBALL
53
James Bond and Shirley Bassey, that kind of full-throated, powerful voice. It’s a Bond thing—‘any woman he wants, he’ll get / he will break any heart with- out regret’—it’s a summation of that lifestyle.”
The whole song was written over a mid-September weekend. And Welsh- born singer Tom Jones, an old friend of Black’s who had already had two top- 10 hits earlier that year (“It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?”), quickly agreed to sing it. Black liked his “steely, manly voice.” Britain’s New
Musical Express announced Jones’s signing on September 24, and they went
into the studio on October 11 to lay down the track.
“I was thrilled to bits when they asked me to do Thunderball,” Jones re- membered many years later. “There was a connection, because Les Reed, who wrote a lot of my big songs, was John Barry’s pianist. The most memorable thing about the session was hitting that note at the end. John told me to hold on to this very high note for as long as possible.”
Jones’s now-legendary fi nal note lasts nine full seconds, and in the iso- lated vocal recording he can be heard running out of breath, although that last part is buried in the fi nal mix with the orchestra. “I closed my eyes, hit the note and held on,” Jones said on another occasion. “When I opened my eyes the room was spinning. I had to grab hold of the booth I was in to steady my- self. If I hadn’t, I would not have passed out, but maybe fallen down. But it paid off, because it is a long note and it’s high.”
But, when the lyric says “he looks at this world and wants it all,” is the song about the villain or the hero? “It’s not about the villain in the fi lm, it’s a song unto itself,” Jones said. “It’s a fi ctitious character that Don Black wrote about that’s not really in the fi lm. I was so thrilled to do it, I didn’t question it.” Black insisted that the song was about Bond. Barry just wanted to get a great performance: “Tom sings with great conviction. He doesn’t ask any questions.”
Tom Jones’s vocal (fi ve minutes into the fi lm) is no- table for its heavy application of that same brassy portion of the Bond theme, and it is so prevalent throughout the score that it gives credence to the idea that Barry always believed this portion of the Bond theme to be his own work (something Monty Norman always denied). “Thunderball” would also mark the last time Barry incorporated the bass line of the Bond theme into his title song (right after “he looks at this world and wants it all”).
Largo reveals his plan to hijack a NATO Vulcan jet with two atomic warheads, and the scene switches from SPECTRE headquarters to a health farm in England, where Bond meets Count Lippe; these two suspense cues (starting at 10½ minutes into the fi lm), the latter based specifi cally on “Mr.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” show up on the LP as “The Spa.” Bond discovers the dead NATO pilot (23 min- utes in) to a suspense cue (“Switching the Body”) that, intriguingly, opens with a variation on the late- composed “Thunderball” theme but segues into suspense with a repeated passage for alto fl ute and harpsichord; it then ends with a quote from “KKBB.”
One of the score’s highlights is “The Bomb” (31 minutes in), which is actually three cues totaling nearly six minutes for a tension-fi lled sequence in which the Vulcan’s SPECTRE pilot is murdered un- derwater and Largo’s minions steal the atomic bombs aboard, all set to an elaborate series of vari- ations on the midsection of the Bond theme; here, and often in later underwater sequences, Barry de- ploys fl ute, strings, vibraphone and piano in repeat-
(left to right) John Barry, singer Shirley Bassey and manager Kenneth Hume discuss her vocal of “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” in October 1965 (courtesy of The Film Music Society)
ing patterns. The complete piece is on the album; in the fi lm only about 4½ minutes remain, probably because of last-minute edits. (Another piece largely lost in the fi lm is the music for the car chase, at 37 minutes into the fi lm, as Lippe’s car is destroyed by a rocket-fi ring motorcycle as Bond watches; the screaming-brass Bond theme survives on the ex- panded Thunderball CD.)
Bond travels to the Bahamas to fi nd Domino Derval, the sister of the dead NATO pilot. Two de- lightful lounge-music versions of the main themes are heard back to back: “Thunderball” (nearly 49 minutes in) with a jazzy piano solo (slightly different from the album version, which adds a nice alto sax solo), and “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (52 minutes), which becomes “Cafe Martinique” on the album,
the name of the restaurant where Bond and Domino dine and dance.
Bond goes diving beneath Largo’s yacht (1 hour, 3 minutes into the fi lm), and again Barry turns to Bond theme variations, but with far more urgency and what would later become a Barry-Bond trade- mark, strings and xylophone together; vibraphone and strings play repeating phrases while shrill brass fi gures denote hand-grenade tosses into the water (this cue, too, is truncated but plays in full, as “Bond Below Disco Volante,” on the LP). Bond and Leit- er’s helicopter search for the missing NATO jet (at 1 hour, 9 minutes) also takes its cue from “KKBB” (“Search for Vulcan” on the LP) and once again fea- tures dramatic harpsichord and high, muted, wah- wah trumpets.
(SCORE HIGHLIGHTS, CONT
.)
THUNDERBALL
55
With a new title song fi rmly in place, Barry worked overtime to incorporate the new theme into the score so that it wouldn’t look like the kind of pasted-on song he loathed. “I like to get a song that is the basis for my thematic ap- proach for everything,” he told the Associated Press, “instead of just a song stuck on the front. I know a lot of people write a song and the rest of the music is unrelated. I think it’s important to relate.”
So, in another last-minute move, he recorded “Thunderball” in a handful of instrumental versions spread throughout the fi lm, all designed to give the impression that it wasn’t “just a song stuck on the front.”
“Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” wasn’t dead, however. On September 30, Eon agreed to hire Shirley Bassey to sing it, for possible use under the end titles.