OHMSS voted No. 1 007 soundtrack

A recent poll at LastBroadcast puts John Barry’s soundtrack for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as the best in the 007 series.

An excerpt:

Comfortably winning with around a third of all votes, composer John Barry’s 1969 score for George Lazenby’s debut/swansong features some of the series’ most recognisable music, despite the film itself often being overlooked by the general public.

The rest of top five is also dominated by Barry:

2. The Living Daylights

John Barry’s final Bond score, 1987’s The Living Daylights is also notable for its pioneering use of technology, this time with the introduction of sequenced electronic rhythm tracks overdubbed with the orchestra.

3. Goldfinger

The first of three Bond films with a theme song sung by Welsh singer Shirley Bassey, the 1964 Goldfinger score is widely considered (much like the film) to have set the template for future entries in the series.

4. You Only Live Twice

With its instantly recognisable opening bars, You Only Live Twice’s oft-covered title track was sung by Frank Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy. (According to John Barry, Sinatra was so nervous whle recording that the final song uses 25 different takes.)

It’s not until No. 5, you get a different 007 composer, David Arnold with 2006’s Casino Royale.

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Raymond Benson on Sound Authors podcast

On June 8, 007 author Raymond Benson stopped by the Sound Authors podcast for an interview with proprietor Dr. Kent Gustavson.

After dealing with shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings, they got around to the topics of Benson’s new Spike Berenger thriller, Dark Side of the Morgue. It’s a follow-up to the rock ‘n roll detective’s previous adventure Hard Day’s Death. In this one, a Chicago-based progressive rock band is being killed off one member in time, and Berenger is up to his knees in rock snob suspects.

Benson also gets a bit into the details of the process of writing for other authors’ and creators’ franchises. His remarks on writing James Bond will, of course, be a particular interest to literary-minded 007 fans.

You can find a transcript of the interview at the Sound Authors website; there are various links to subscription services where you can listen to the actual podcast.