Tag: Shirley Bassey

Movie Music Monday – Goldfinger

Sir Sean Connery was born on this day in 1930.  He has had so many wonderful roles in the movies.  I loved him in The Untouchables, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The Hunt for Red October (just to name a few). 

Connery nailed it as Agent 007 – James Bond.  He played Bond in 7 films: Dr. No, Never Say Never Again, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, and Goldfinger. He was the tallest actor to portray the character.

Shirley Bassey was asked to sing the theme to the movie.  On Shirley Bassey’s website, she says about Goldfinger: “John Barry wrote the music. We were touring in England at the time and he was conducting for me. One day he said, ‘There is this new song for the James Bond film Goldfinger and we’d like you to do it. I know your rule that you will never listen to a song unless there are words. There are no words, I must warn you – there’s only the music, which I have done. And we’re waiting on the lyric.’ And because we had such a wonderful relationship on our tour I said to John, ‘Well, I’ll listen to it. I’ll break my rule.’ And thank God I did, because the moment he played the music to me, I got goose pimples, and I told him, ‘I don’t care what the words are. I’ll do it.’ And fortunately the words were great.”

Songfacts.com says: John Barry worked long into the night on the music. According to an article in the London Times, the next morning over breakfast, he played the opening three notes to his flatmate at the time, Michael Caine. The actor said bluntly, “It’s ‘Moon River.'” Barry swiftly added the three-note brass line to disguise the similarity.

Bond producer Harry Saltzman hated this and he took a lot of convincing to use this as the film tune. John Barry explained in his interview with NPR that Saltzman called it “the worst song he’d ever heard in his life,” but because there was no time to change it, he had to live with it.

I can’t imagine there being a better song for the film.  It wound up being Bassey’s biggest hit!

Vic Flick, who was one of the top session musicians in England in the 1960s, played guitar on this track. He told the Daily Mail that Shirley Bassey originally struggled with this song: “Barry wanted this long note held,” he recalled. “He said to do it again, and she said she couldn’t. But then there was a rustling noise – and suddenly this bra comes over the top of the vocal booth. And then Shirley really let it go.”

Happy Heavenly birthday to Sir Sean Connery.  Try not to be distracted by the voice of bra-less Shirley Bassey!

Movie Music Monday – Skyfall

The last James Bond movie I saw starred Timothy Dalton. I think it was The Living Daylights, I might be wrong. I’ve honestly never seen a Bond film with Daniel Craig as 007. That being said, the music today comes from his movie Skyfall. The reason? Adele was born on this day in 1988.

Bond films are known for their amazing title songs. Live and Let Die from McCartney, Goldfinger from Shirley Bassey, and A View To a Kill from Duran Duran for example. So how did Adele get involved in the title song? Thanks to songfacts.com – here’s what happened.

Director Sam Mendes told Yahoo that at first, Adele wasn’t quite sure how to go about composing the movie theme. He explained: “She came in very early before we started shooting and her main concern was, ‘I write songs about myself, how can I make a ‘Bond’ song?’ My answer was, ‘Just write a personal song!'”

Adele teamed up with Paul Epworth to pen the sultry ballad. Said the singer: “I was a little hesitant at first to be involved with the theme song for Skyfall. There’s a lot of instant spotlight and pressure when it comes to a Bond song. But I fell in love with the script and Paul had some great ideas for the track and it ended up being a bit of a no-brainer to do it in the end. When we recorded the strings it was one of the proudest moments of my life.“

Paul Epworth said that finding the right sound for “Skyfall” was a particular challenge. “[The producers] said they wanted a dramatic ballad basically,” he explained. “With having read the script and trying to set the whole thing up in that context, where it happens in the film, there was really only one thing it could be. It was interesting to want to do something that was simultaneously dark and final, like a funeral, and to try and turn it into something that was not final. A sense of death and rebirth.”

After writing the piece of music that Epworth believed could be the tune for the Bond theme, the producer thought, “This could be the song.” Epworth told Hollywood.com that he then rang up Adele, “and said, ‘It might be too dark.’ And she said she loved it.” The pair immediately went into the studio and within 10 minutes she’d put down the first draft of the verse and chorus. “She had the lyrics ready in her head when she drove over. It was the most absurd thing. She’s fast, but it was really quite phenomenal,” he said.

Daniel Craig admitted to Yahoo that he found himself coming over a bit emotional when the song was first played to him: “I cried. From the opening bars I knew immediately, then the voice kicked in and it was exactly what I’d wanted from the beginning. It just got better and better because it fitted the movie. In fact the more of the movie we made, the more it fitted it.”

It was a top ten song in the US and it won Best Original Song at the 85th Academy Awards. It was the first Bond theme to win an Oscar.

Happy 37th birthday to Adele!