Switched on Pop - James Bond's Spycraft Sound

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

The latest installment of the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die, closes the book on the Daniel Craig era of the international superspy. The film’s theme song, “No Time to Die,” by Billie Eilish, Finneas, and Hans Zimmer, also marks the conclusion of one of the great musical sagas in recent cinema. Monty Norman’s and John Barry’s now-iconic “James Bond Theme,” written for 1962’s Dr. No, has remained a constant across six decades of espionage and one-liners. But every new Bond theme has also developed subtle variations on the original that reflect the character’s changes over time. On this episode of Switched On Pop, we uncover what inspired the theme, how it’s changed, and why it almost never happened. FURTHER JAMES BOND THEME READING The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism by Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold The Music of James Bond - Jon Burlingame Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I am musicologist Sloan, Nate Sloan. You've already ruined my bit, but what do you think of when I play this chord? I think of a screen slowly being covered with blood as we witness the intro to a James Bond movie. Yes, exactly. Recently, the final film in the Daniel Craig James Bond era was released.

It's called No Time to Die after a nearly two-year delay. And it continues one of the most iconic musical themes in pop culture. What I want to do today is understand where does this James Bond sound come from? How does it inform the creation of the whole idea of the Bond song? You know those songs in the opening sequence? Oh, I know, Charles. Done by Pop Stars. You know what's up?

Oh, yeah. And maybe we can ask, what does it all mean? I am so down. I had a cassette tape with the original James Bond theme when I was in, like, middle school that I wore out. I love this soundtrack and I want to learn more about it. Where do we start? Where are we going? Take me on this journey.

The original 1962 release of the James Bond theme from Dr. know, it is completely timeless. I totally agree. And yet, listening to it now, one thing that strikes me is just how richly orchestrated this theme is. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The song is crafted

with the lushness to reflect the Playboy aesthetic that James Bond is and was when he was first created in the 1950s as a sort of male escape his fantasy by Ian Fleming, the author and former British Naval Intelligence

officer, he wrote it at his golden eye estate in Jamaica to distract himself from his pending wedding to his pregnant fiancee. And in so many ways, the music, I think, does perfectly reflect the character. Are you saying this is the musical personification of toxic masculinity? Yeah, more or less, right? I mean, you've got a flandering spy who drinks heavily, somehow finds a lot of time for romance in between international espionage. Okay, but in actuality, like, does the music actually project that?

Totally. I mean, I think that what you hear is this sort of like very modern mashup of a bunch of different genres that that Playboy character might be listening to at the end of his day while I was sitting down to drink his martini. You've got jazzy bebop chords,

but he's not square. He doesn't only listen to jazz. He's also contemporary. He's into pop music, surf guitar. And, you know, he's someone who has a lot of class. He shows up to dinner in a full black tie recalia. And so he's going to play some classical pop and big band swing. Okay, yeah, I'm buying.

It sounds like he's got a pretty diverse record collection that he likes to put on the high-fi at his space age bachelor pad. Yes, exactly. And as inescapable as this theme is today, it almost never happened. Dun, done, done. All right, let me explain. We need to hear that chord again after that, Cliffanger. Okay, go on.

Okay, originally, the singer, songwriter, and composer, Monty Norman, is brought on to score Dr. No. And he goes on this research trip to Jamaica. I don't know if you remember this, but Dr. No takes place primarily in Jamaica. And the music that he composes originally is very influenced by the sounds that he's hearing in Kingston. For example, this song Under the Mango Tree, which makes it into the film and has heard many times, was originally going to be the opening song and the main theme. The history of the theme I picked up from a book called The Music of James Bond, and it made me think about an alternate universe in which

you know, Daniel Craig walks out in a suit and tie, jumps off a bridge, and then cut two under the mango tree. Exactly. A weird alternate history to this entire franchise for sure. And it's totally not working for the film producers. They're like, Norman, go try to do some other stuff. And so he writes another attempt called Dr. Knows Fantasy. Getting closer here. Right?

Has a little bit that surf vibe. the swinging drums but it still isn't quite working for the producers and are like do you have anything else and no one's like yeah I've got this trunk song like a song that I wrote a long time ago

and sit in the trunk it's really different but maybe the theme could work this unlucky sneeze and what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round fund it's all agreed

that I'm the reason why my father fell into the village pond and drowned. WTF is this orientalist exoticized clap trap that I am listening to. Yeah, for real. I hate it. Yeah. But please explain. Okay, so basically he had written Good Sign, Bad Sign, the song.

It was composed for a musical adaptation of the novel, A House for Mr. B. Suarez, which takes place in a Trinidadian community and it never aired and was actually only recorded later in 2005 but he had this melody and they thought well maybe we could do something with it. Thank God that never aired because that was the cringiest thing

I've ever heard and offensive on every possible level. Just as unsettled as you are, I think the producers of the film are still like, you know, Monty, I don't know. Let's bring in some. somebody else to help out with this theme song. And so they recruit the arranger John Barry, who at the time had dozens of hits in British rock and roll. He was a writer of TV theme songs, and he came highly recommended. And so Barry comes in. He also has the most important

qualification for working on the music of a James Bond film, which is that you have two first names, Monti Norman, John Barry. Sorry, Charlie, you were saying. Not only did he have the right name, but he also had the right vibe going. He had recently written a theme for the film Beat Girl, which is really getting quite close to what we're going to hear in James Bond. Okay, that slap. Someone needs to sample that stat. It's a hot beat.

I'm getting the sense that this John Barry dude is going to be very important in making this theme sound the way we know it to be. Yes, you're spot on. Barry said that he wanted Bond. to be a mix of all kinds of different things. Jazz, classics, pop. He wanted a Bond style. And I think we have to understand it as a mashup.

Today, when we hear the James Bond theme, we think this is the sound of spy music. But like all original creations, it's a compilation of so many influences. And so I've been digging through archives of classic playlists, trying to find the sounds of that era that might have been influencing what eventually becomes the James Bond theme.

And one of the most important elements that we hear is that opening chord progression. This chromatic ascent and descent, da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. Yeah, if you were into the world of jazz of that era, just a few years before James Bond, in 1954, Miles Davis played similar chords and melodies on It Never Entered My Mind.

In fact, that chromatic sound was so popular that you could even hear it in pop music. You could hear a bit of that same melody on Roy Orbison's crying from 1961 just a year before Bond was released. And even though it was released just after the Bond theme, you can tell people love this sound. You can hear the same thing on Quincy Jones's first hit. It's My Party with Leslie Gore. In all three cases, you get that kind of sound. Okay, I love locating that undulating chromatic line

that is so iconic in this song within its late 50s, early 60s context. And I just have to say, Charlie, before we move on from this, one of my favorite factoid that I've ever learned in making our show is that when smashmouth recorded All-Star, they used that same James Bond chromaticism in the chorus of All-Star, according to their songwriter Greg Camp. I love it.

That little motive has some real longevity. It totally does. And it's not the only reference that John Barry is pulling from. He said that he thought of the Bond theme is sort of like a Dizzy Gillespie-style lick. And I think all of that swing vibe that you're hearing where the bass starts to walk. Dang, is that reminiscent of A Night in Tunisia by Dizzy Gillespie? things are starting mysterious and then they're going to get bombastic

and that bass is going to start to walk I understand why I love this theme so much as a kid and used to listen to it all the time on cassette it's a big band swing composition basically it's like it was right in my jazz wheelhouse totally but not only because it's also a surf rock thing right you know in 1958 the composer henry mncini had done the peter gun theme song for the TV show

and it's kind of moving into that surf realm. And we know Barry was very into this sound. He took the song Walk Don't Run, a Johnny Smith hit from the 50s, and did his own surf rendition just a few years before Bonner was released. Here's the John Barry 7, Walk Don't Run. The guitar player on both of those, by the way,

named Vic Flick, was paid just seven pounds for his participation in recording the James Bond theme. Shut up. Seven pounds is on the most iconic guitar. playing of the 20th century and his name is Vic Flick. It's a travesty. You know, of all these references, we're forgetting one of the most important, the place

where it all began today. Do you recognize that from anywhere else? It sounds like the chord you would play at the very end of like a minor key ballad. Yeah. Is it a minor major chord? Yes, it is a minor, major seven with a nine. Is there somewhere specific you'd hear that that I'm not thinking? of. This chord is also called the Hitchcock chord. You would have heard this in the theme for Psycho. You also hear it in

North by Northwest. It's in vertigo. The composer, Bernard Herman, loved this sound. And there's a good reason why this Hitchcock chord gets passed on to Bond. And it has to do with exactly what you said about it. This is one of these weird chords. It's called a minor major seven. Yeah. It has so much ambiguity. dissonance and complexity in this single tonality. Yeah, it's like a cimerical chord. It's got on its bottom a minor triad, and on the top, it's got a major triad.

And when you put them together, you just have such a unique, intense, crunchy, it's a very evocative sound. What's cool is that you can call this bi-tonality, right? you have one chord, another chord, stack together, create a whole other thing. And within it are all these dissonances. In the middle there's even this augmented chord,

the same sound that we hear in Bond. It's so fitting for James Bond, because not only is it drawing on the cinematic history of the tension that we get from Hitchcock, but it also, I think, represents this dueling personality. the Playboy spy, who's on one hand responsible for saving the world over and over and over again while simultaneously continuing a tradition of toxic masculinity, which I think the series is desperately trying to separate itself from.

Okay, so we have this chromatic harmonic undulation at the beginning. We've got a little dollop of 1960s surf guitar. We have this big band. jazz, bebop arrangement. Yep. And then to tie it all together, we've got this mysterious minor major seven chord. That's right. And what I'm hearing is when you mix all this together, you get the musical personification

of James Bond, the character, and the themes of the series. And you know, it makes me hear the series kind of in a new light. But it also leaves me with a question, which is like, how do we get from, from there to hear. Like, you've just said that the series is trying to project a new image, trying to remake itself. How are they going to take that music

and, like, turn it into something for the 21st century? The most brilliant thing that the James Bond franchise does is take a theme song that everybody knows and infuse it into the world of pop music. Attention, Spotify.

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Okay, so when we think spy film now, we think about these unique combination of elements. But what sets James Bond apart from all espionage films is that it crosses over into the world of pop, starting with the third film. film, Goldfinger, the opening sequence begins with a pop song in an orchestral format performed by Shirley Bassie. Here's Goldfinger from 1964. Gold finger!

Goldfinch a cold finger! I see you laughing right now, but... I just never listened too closely to the lyrics of this. Here's the thing that this song went to number eight on the Hot 100. People dug it. Yeah. No, and I dig it. I just didn't remember that it rhymed Goldfinger with Coldfinger. That's I just, I just had to smile. I also remember that it's like a tango. I'm feeling it. It's cool. It's a great track. And it's the foundation for an entire legacy of music that is kind of its own thing. This song is a total hybrid because in addition to being a pop song to get us in the mood for a James Bond film that's going to give us a little bit of exposition, in this case, Goldfinger is going to be.

the arch nemesis of the film. The song also operates as orchestration that's going to be referenced throughout the rest of the movie. You can hear, for example, in the soundtrack, John Barry uses those same themes. In studying up on how these themes intersect, I've found a book called the James Bond Songs, pop anthems of late capitalism,

which argues that the Bond song is kind of its own thing. It needs to be a pop song to get us excited. It needs to be soundtracking. but it's also kind of stuck in the language of the original Bond song while also needing to update it. It has a lot of jobs to fill. And one of the things that I really love about the Goldfinger song is that it hints at the original theme in this really artful way. Let's see if you can hear it. I'll play it for you on piano.

It's, um, there's a note buried in these chords that I think you're not. hearing and I'm going to see if I can make a pop out by putting it on top of the chords. If I continued it. Okay, okay. So you're saying the first two notes of that undulating chromatic line that begins the original James Bond theme, dun, are buried within the harmony of the opening chords of the gold finger theme.

Yes. You've got it. Oh, man, Charlie. That is some deep Illuminati conspiracy. I mean, I'll give it to you because it's there. But yeah, okay, okay. So it's in the same sound world as Bond in this very subtle way. That's right.

John Barry is a celebrated composer, countless films under his belt, including 11 Bond films in total. He knows what he's doing here. He knows he's got to be referencing that earlier thing, making something new. And all the following composers that come along to work on James Bond, are still playing with this original material. He may be talented, but he's no Reginald Fletcher.

Excuse me? Or Nigel John. Huh? Timothy Joseph. Are you just putting together two names that are first names? Yeah, yeah. But no, he is, he is talented. I'll give John Barry that.

And they're all men's names because film composing is bit backwards and its representation. Well, they're in the lineage of these British men with two names who have written the James Bond sign. Yeah. Okay, you were saying John Barry, no. what he's doing. With the creation of Goldfinger, John Barry takes something, which is a couple of films, and I think develops a franchise. Henceforth, everyone needs to work in this same format. And this tradition continues of working with the hottest pop star of the moment, putting together a song to intro the film and provide musical material for scoring. For example, Nancy

Sinatra's You Only Live Twice. Or my absolute favorite The World is Not Enough by Garbage The World is Not Some artists even leaned so hard Into the Goldfinger precedent That they actually had to pay royalties back to the original artists Here's Gladys Knight's license to kill

I dig it But it is basically a 1980s rendition of Goldfinger Yeah But sing it Gladys Knight Damn, got some runs Yeah There's a lot of really fun of music to go back and listen to all these bond songs. But there's this sort of definitive shift that happens in the latest era, the Daniel Craig era, where this franchise goes from a bunch of different espionage plots to becoming a serialized, continuous plot across five films.

And to support this idea of Daniel Craig is going through one continuous adventure, the music. is crafted in such a way that it's going to take you on his same journey. Whoa. All right. Play that chord again. Give us that chord again. Yes.

Okay, take me on that journey, Charles. I'm ready now. Okay. In 2006, the film Casino Royal comes out. And it's supposed to be a return to form and an origin story in particular. It's got to set off how does James Bond begin? It's when he becomes 007.

and it launches into the film with a song written by Chris Cornell that is full of energy and excitement. And even though we feel like we're in the middle of the Outs era rock, which we are, we're also taken immediately back into the past. And we are hearing those references to Dr. No and particularly to Goldfinger. Okay, so where are the musical references to the ghosts of James Bond passed here? I'm not sure I'm hearing it. All right.

It's subtle, but it's really important. The baseline from Goldfinger becomes a theme that we're going to hear throughout the rest of the Daniel Craig films. Chris Cornell takes that same descending baseline and adds to it. Does it in a slightly different key. Those set of three chords become the identity for our new reinvigorated origin story, Daniel Craig James Bond. Gotcha. But it would be incomplete to just reference a hint of Goldfinger.

We need to hear that iconic James Bond melody. And of course, we do. There it is. Chris Cornell emphasizes that rising chromatic line that we know so well, the he turns it into. I dig it. You hear the original, but it's been reinterpreted in this way. It sounds a little more rock and roll,

a little more western almost. too here. It's cool. That's exactly right. In fact, David Arnold, who's the composer for the soundtrack here and... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Shut up. David Arnold? Yeah, David Arnold. Another two first name British male composer.

Yeah. That is freaky now. That's uncanny. Monty Norman, John Barry, David Arnold. Something's up here. There's some conspiracy afoot. But we'll dig into that later. Okay, tell me more. David Arnold's working on the score with Chris Cornell. Yeah, he basically said that he wanted to build it out of the DNA of the original

Bond theme to use the same genetic material, quote, in a different order. Smart move if you're trying to reboot an iconic series. Yeah. In fact, they don't even play the full James Bond theme until the end of Casino Real. Kind of like, the whole thing is the origin story. We finally become Bond and we get the main theme. And David Arnold titled it, The Name is Bond. James Bond. It's the final line of the movie. Now here's the thing. From here on out, every other song is going to stay in the same universe. When we move into the next film, Quantum of Solace, Jack White and Alicia Keys, take what Chris Cornell did with David Arnold and give it yet another new face. Here's another way to die.

There are those three chords again. We've got our orchestration. We've got some jazziness happening. But most of all, we have that descending three-note baseline. There it is James Bond theme Redux, 21st Century Edition. We hear the exact same thing in Adele's Skyfall. Three chords of destiny yet again. For the next film Spector, Sam Smith takes that same theme, inverts it, plays the chords upside down. And it's fitting because this is a film where he's kind of like coming back into form, rising from the ashes, if you will.

but let's get to today Billy Elish's version of No Time to Die. Find ourselves with James Bond, retired, reborn, and revisiting his entire past. The song written by Billy Elish, Mile Ale, and Phineas,

produced by Phineas, Stephen Lipson, and arranged by Hans Zimmer, picks up that same core progression. No Time to Die doesn't just try to wrap up the Daniel Craig era. It also is trying to be a bookend to, in a certain way, the entire series. And so, Hans Zimmer, who did the arrangement on the song No Time to Die and the entire soundtrack, has the task of taking this evolved James Bond theme that went from

Goldfinger through Chris Cornell and David Arnold that peaks up through every single Daniel Craig film. He needs to take that theme, unite it with the original theme, and close everything out in a nice, tight bow. Zorick gun barrel scene begins with our familiar Bond theme, but then the base moves down to those Casino Royale, Chris

Cornell chords. And they unite in our main theme. I love that, Chuck, because when I'm watching the movies, I'm aware of the score and the kind of suspense and intrigue that I'm generating, but what I'm not thinking about is how it's actually

referencing the whole history of this franchise and the subtle harmonic shifts that have taken place over the years and it's really like making its own kind of musical cinematic argument about the fate and the future of this franchise. I dig it. I'm excited to go watch

No Time to Die and be listening for these musical layers unless I get swept up in the action of it or something. Switched on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan and me, Charlie Harding were engineered by Brandon McFarland, edited by Jolie Myers, social media by Abby Barr, illustrations by Ira Scott Carwere, and Hano Rosen, or member of the Vox Media Podcast Network,

and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts, and always our website, www.w.w.w. Switchedonpop.com. Also, hit us up on the socials, the Twitter, the Instagram, at Switched on Pop. We want to know what's your favorite bond theme and who do you want to hear do the next bond theme. We'll see you next Tuesday, and until then, thanks for listening.