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(JAMES BOND THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
♪♪ Fool me once, fool me twice Are you death or paradise?
♪♪ Now you'll never see me cry
♪♪ There's just no time to die ♪♪
(EXHALES)
Hold on.
BILLIE: Since before I even was really aware of Bond,
the music has always been an important part of my life.
-Wanna take a break? -Yeah.
Yeah, come on. Have a listen.
For years, we would pretend to write Bond songs
because it was such a dream of ours.
For me, Bond music is the most iconic thing on the planet.
I first saw a Bond film...
I think I saw a double bill of
From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger, I think it was.
I wasn't old enough to separate the experience of the music at that point.
The first one that I can think of was Diamonds Are Forever.
I was really struck by the music.
I was at a children's birthday party.
They brought out this ratty projector.
God knows why anyone thought it was a good idea
to show You Only Live Twice to an 8-year-old. It took my head off.
You've got these incredible images and this incredible music.
The music got me through my teenage years, my childhood.
I love the films, but more than the individual plots of each movie,
the thing that stayed with me was the music of Bond.
Working on a Bond movie, there are three things you're playing with:
the Bond theme, the score, and then you've got the song.
I think song is the finest of the art forms, for me.
The intimacy of it, that it can be with you anywhere.
I love Bond songs.
It's impossible to choose a favorite Bond song.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is my favorite.
Carly Simon's is best.
My favorite artist is Chris Cornell.
Live and Let Die.
I'd have to say Skyfall. That song had a huge impact on me.
No Time To Die has a special place in my heart.
We Have All the Time in the World.
It's a very emotional song for me that reminds me of my childhood.
With the Bond songs,
it's a testament to how brilliant they are that they've lasted so long.
The Bond movies have their own sound that still rings out 60 years later,
which is astonishing for any piece of music.
It's something to be really celebrated.
SAM: Everyone goes into every Bond movie
waiting for the most famous piece of music in film history.
The Bond theme has been in our lives for as long as we can remember.
You're in the womb, what do you hear?
The heartbeat and the Bond theme.
DAVID: When Bond does something typically Bond-esque,
there's only one piece of music you can play.
BARBARA: James Bond, the character, doesn't spend a lot of time
talking about what he's doing or how he's feeling,
so the music has always had to kind of give you
a sense of what's going on within Bond.
The adrenaline, the tension, the joy, the anxiety...
You hear the Bond theme, and it gives you that shot in the arm.
(GUNSHOT)
(HARMONIUM PLAYING BOND THEME)
JON: Over the 60 years and 25 films,
the James Bond theme has become an iconic tune
recognizable to the world at large.
You know exactly what that is
within the first few notes,
no matter what the arrangement sounds like.
And yet it has one of the most strange and unlikely origin stories
in movie history.
Anyway, now for our musical spot, this week, we call on Monty Norman.
MONTY: I was a singer, originally, with the big bands.
Used to write the odd song.
And I suddenly realized
there was money to be made in writing stage musicals,
so I gave up singing.
Cubby Broccoli rang me
and asked me to come to his office to meet his new partner, Harry Saltzman.
He said, "We've just acquired
"Ian Fleming's James Bond novels,
"and we're going to turn them into films. Would you like to do the score?
"We're doing all the location work in Jamaica.
"Why don't you come out, absorb the atmosphere?
"Bring your wife. All expenses paid."
I mean, how could I refuse?
(SOCA MUSIC PLAYING)
It was an inspired choice to take this songwriter to Jamaica,
absorb the atmosphere, and incorporate the players
who were actually there in Kingston, Jamaica, at the time.
MONTY: Jamaica was great fun.
Ian Fleming invited us over to his house, GoldenEye,
and he was asking me about the music.
I told him we were just about to go into the location
for Ursula Andress to come out of the water.
Monty wrote this wonderful song, Underneath the Mango Tree,
which Ursula Andress is singing as she emerges from the water
when we first see Honey Ryder.
♪♪ Make boolooloop
♪♪ Underneath the mango tree Me honey and me... ♪♪
Who is that?
That song became a classic moment in movie history.
Right. Up slowly and face the wall.
Monty, of course, was a fine songwriter.
MAN: Hold it.
But where he was not entirely comfortable was in writing dramatic music.
Gently, bud, gently.
He struggled with the idea of a theme for this new character.
And there was some time pressure now.
I suddenly remembered something that I'd written for a musical
about the East Indian community in Trinidad
called A House for Mr. Biswas.
The songs had this Indian sound,
but instead of a sitar, I thought that should be done on a guitar.
It was a song called Bad Sign, Good Sign, and it goes like this...
♪♪ I was born with this Unlucky sneeze
♪♪ And what is worse I came into the world The wrong way round... ♪♪
And so on.
This sounded to me, strangely enough, when you think of it,
like the character of James Bond.
It's an idea, at that.
But the filmmakers themselves
felt they needed something a little bit more dynamic.
That's when the connection with John Barry was made.
Thank you. Very much.
In modern music today, people are always looking for what they call a new noise.
And we have someone who found a very enchanting new sort of noise.
Ladies and gentlemen, the John Barry Seven!
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
JON: In 1962, he'd already had a number of hits on his own,
and he was already a somewhat experienced film composer.
JOHN: I received a phone call on a Saturday morning
from the head of music at United Artists.
And he said that these two guys, two weird guys...
I always remember him saying, called Saltzman and Broccoli,
they've got a score for the movie and they're very dissatisfied.
By tomorrow, they need at least a main title.
I said, "Oh, my God."
But movies was the thing I wanted to do,
so I went in and had a meeting with Monty Norman,
and he played me some stuff, and I just said,
"If I've got to do this thing in this amount of time,
"I have to go with my instincts."
His reply, which I will always remember, was, "I am not proud."
He certainly wasn't.
So I just went home and worked.
And then we went in the studio, recorded it.
Some recordings you just know there was some kind of magic that day.
So, John Barry took Monty Norman's theme, and he created a radical arrangement
into something that was dynamic and exciting,
even a little sexy,
that had elements of jazz, pop and rock in them.
I was at the premiere, and when Sean says...
Bond.
And the music begins...
James Bond.
...the reaction was amazing.
There was no way anybody could tell
that that would become one of the most famous melodies in cinema.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
BARBARA: Monty Norman's theme in John's hands
became the most recognizable in the world
and has been for 60 years.
JASON: Bond songs are sort of chemistry experiments.
You don't quite know what they are until you hear it,
and you say, "Yes, that's it."
♪♪ He always runs While others walk ♪♪
It's an extraordinary task to write one of those.
There's sex, there's death,
there's duty, there's sacrifice,
there's a kiss, there's a murder.
(GASPS)
And that's all got to be in a 3.5-minute pop song
that intones the name of the film.
If any of those ingredients is missing, it's not a Bond song.
SHEENA: I think what made the whole Bond franchise different to begin with
was adding that element of that amazing theme song.
When a new Bond film was coming out, you got excited wondering,
"What's the song gonna be, who's singing it?"
DON: The song, it should be provocative,
a kind of guilty pleasure for the audience.
"I shouldn't be here, but I am, and I'm gonna wallow in it."
Lure of the forbidden.
HANS: There's a seductive quality in all the songs.
They're like a perfume in the air, and they promise you things.
They promise you inevitably that your heart will be broken.
And you can't wait for them to break your heart.
MARYAM: It sort of plunges you into the Bond world.
The mystery, the intrigue, the adventure, the sensuality...
It's haunting because Bond is a loner at the end of the day,
and he always ends up on his own.
It gives you an absolute open doorway to the story
and you have to incorporate the story into the song,
so that they are married.
A really good title song will do that.
The songs have an emotional backbone for the film.
They'll be involved and tethered into the score,
as it is with Billie Eilish and No Time to Die.
It had to be an ode to the music from Bond.
It couldn't be either/or,
it had to be a perfect mix to feel like Bond,
and also had to feel like me.
DAVID: The DNA of a Bond song is timeless.
There's plenty of incidences of how broad that church is.
If you look at Madonna's Die Another Day,
Nobody Does It Better, Live and Let Die,
they're completely different, yet they're all Bond songs.
But for me,
the blueprint of the Bond song was John Barry and Shirley Bassey.
And that was really with Goldfinger.
Dr. No obviously had the James Bond theme.
Russia with Love had an amazing song,
but it wasn't until the end of the movie.
John got to do the score but not the song for From Russia With Love.
It was when he came to Goldfinger,
having done a great job with the two previous films,
that Harry and Cubby said he could write both the song and the score.
JOHN: Goldfinger was the name of the villain,
so it was a weird thing to have to write a song about.
So, I sat down and wrote this rather strange melody,
just based on the word "Goldfinger."
JON: And so, he's working on the tune at his London flat,
and Barry was great friends,
and very often, lunchtime mates, with Terence Stamp and Michael Caine.
John and I became very, very close friends.
He's one of my closest and oldest friends, and a marvelous guy.
Stamp and Caine had been roommates.
And there was some to-do
whereby, apparently, there was a little too much female traffic
going in and out of his flat, and Caine was tossed out.
CAINE: I came to a situation
where I didn't have anywhere to sleep for two weeks,
so John said, "Come and stay with me."
I said, "Great. Thank you, John."
He had a lovely flat.
And I went to sleep.
(SNORING)
And I was woken up about an hour later by the piano.
John was composing.
All night long, he was on the piano.
My first night, I thought,
"I'm here for two weeks. I'll never get any sleep.
"He's gonna be on the piano every night."
(ALARM RINGING)
In the morning, I got up, I went down for breakfast,
and he was still on the piano.
I went into the room, said, "Do you want tea?"
He said, "No. I finished."
And I said, "What were you composing last night?"
He said, "This."
And he played me Goldfinger.
(GOLDFINGER THEME PLAYING ON PIANO)
So I was the first person in the world ever to hear Goldfinger,
and I heard it all night. (LAUGHING)
It wasn't an obvious hit because it was a strange song.
But I felt like if you could get a singer who had conviction,
you could sing the telephone book.
And Shirley Bassey fit so well in with that whole James Bond style.
John Barry had not only known Shirley Bassey,
he had actually been on concert tour with her.
We struck up a relationship.
Then we did a tour together, and he conducted for me.
And it was at the end of the tour, he said to me,
"I've just written the music for the next Bond film."
I went to his apartment and he played me the music.
I hear that...
(VOCALIZING GOLDFINGER THEME)
And I just got goose pimples, you know.
Just... Um...
I said, "I don't care what the words are. I'll do it."
JOHN: I remember when Shirley came into the studio,
she said, "What is this song about?"
I said, "It's a villain. Don't ask too many questions.
"Just get in front of the mic and belt it."
♪♪ Goldfinger
♪♪ He's the man The man with the Midas touch
And she was terrific. She was the ideal person for a Bond song.
♪♪ A spider's touch ♪♪
SHIRLEY: John just let me do it my way.
The Bond films, they're so masculine,
because they're on the violent side,
and spectacular side, and they're glamorous,
I felt a woman singing about Bond was right.
♪♪ But don't go in ♪♪
During the recording sessions, John insisted on take after take,
and really wanted her to belt it out.
John got upset because she kept cutting it off, running out of breath.
SHIRLEY: To do it over and over again, it was an all-night session,
and towards the end, I mean, I had this restricting bustier on.
She said, "Just a minute," and suddenly her bra came over the top of the thing.
She said, "Now try it. Try it again."
So I let it all hang out, and I felt much more comfortable.
And I was able to hit the note better anyway.
♪♪ He loves gold ♪♪
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
In the early days, it felt like it was a creative explosion
of the language of a Bond movie,
which hadn't really found its feet,
I think, until Goldfinger.
Bond music became a universe of its own.
JOHN: Goldfinger, to me, is the most favorite.
The first time I was allowed to do everything.
The whole Bond formula, it culminated in Goldfinger.
Barry sets it up with the song,
then the song becomes the foundation of the score.
(GOLDFINGER INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
When we had the big Fort Knox sequence at the end, I used the motif...
I kept repeating it throughout with the trumpets and horns.
The integration from Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice,
they weren't just opening songs and forget it.
They ran throughout the whole vein of the movie.
(PUNCHES THUDDING)
Since the time of John Barry, the Bond title song has always been woven
into the score of the rest of the film.
But No Time to Die is the first time the singer's voice
has actually been used as an instrument in the film itself.
STEVE: You always have the main song appear somewhere in the score,
but I don't think it was for a few weeks that we discovered
that should be our love theme.
-No, I knew. -Okay, he knew.
-He didn't tell me for weeks. -I knew there was a moment
which was gonna slay you when it came back.
It's so funny, hearing Hans talk about it.
"Nobody liked this. They didn't understand the song."
"But I liked it."
"I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was okay."
(LAUGHTER)
People were going, "Hang on a second, but it's not this movie."
I'm going, "Of course not. They haven't seen this movie.
"Get them on a plane."
-Literally landed, drove to a studio... -With our suitcases.
With our suitcases, so jet lagged, so tired. So tired.
Sat in this little room, and watched
-whatever there was of the cut. -The cut.
-It was great. Awesome. -It was amazing.
Then the next couple of days was going meeting Hans and working with him.
We all sort of hunkered down at AIR Studios,
which had sort of become the home of Bond over the years now as well.
(SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
BILLIE: Hans has this way about him
that just makes you so comfortable and very at ease.
When you're with him, you're, like,
literally fucking crazy that this dude is, like, such a...
-Legend. -Dorkball, and he's...
No, but... And he's, like,
just the sweetest, you know, goofiest, ridiculous man.
HANS: AIR is such a beautiful environment. It's such a beautiful acoustic.
I just got Billie to just sing as quietly as possible.
Not even the song, just some singing.
(VOCALIZING)
Could I maybe try it one time without the song in the background?
-HANS: Yeah, sure. We can do that for you. -Great.
(VOCALIZING)
BILLIE: Hummed a little song.
Kind of hummed a bunch of random stuff. Just a few little notes.
Did some a cappella, you know, verses and choruses.
I just did them and forgot about them.
(VOCALIZING CONTINUES)
HANS: I was just gathering ammunition, as it were.
I just knew that this was gonna be good.
Dude, being at the premiere...
-REPORTER: Hi! -Hi.
And there's 2,000 people in this beautiful theater in London,
and the whole cast is there on stage...
And throughout the movie,
in the most vulnerable and emotional parts of the film,
is my voice.
I have to finish this.
For us.
I know.
(VOCALIZING)
I'll just be a minute.
I've got them.
This might come in handy.
HANS: Billie's actually a ghost.
She's a beautiful ghost in the movie.
Impossible to talk about a Bond song without talking about the lyric.
It's 50% of the experience.
DON: I've always loved lyrics. I've always loved words.
The way I write is instinctive.
You don't analyze it, you go with your heart.
People always want an anecdote when it comes to songwriting,
and, most of the time, there isn't one.
But there's quite a few with Bond songs.
It's a chemistry that somewhere, something happens.
There isn't a rulebook of how you do.
TIM: Lyrically, most Bond songs have something to do with the storyline.
Most used the title of the film. Some haven't, like Nobody Does It Better.
John Barry rang me and said, "Would you like to do a Bond lyric?
Took me about 0.06 seconds to say yes.
And then I said, "What's the title of the film?"
thinking it might be romantic.
And he said, "Octopussy." And I went... (GASPS) Ah!
(LAUGHING)
We were always glad we got A View to a Kill
and not A Quantum of Solace.
"Quantum of Solace" is a hard thing to put in a song.
There's not a lot you can rhyme with "solace."
"Got lovely bollocks."
For No Time to Die, the lyrics really just came to us perfectly
because we knew what we were writing about.
We met with Barbara.
She told us about the beginning,
where Madeleine gets set up,
and that James thinks that she betrayed him.
But the main thing she said was she was set up.
And I can't tell you how important that was for us.
We just took that and ran, and wrote a song about that betrayal.
"Was I stupid to love you?"
Like, "Was I dumb? Am I blind?"
And I think that's a thing we've all experienced.
It just is a much higher stakes in James Bond.
But it really wrote itself.
DAVID: I think it was a natural thing in the '60s
for the Bond films to turn to theatrical composers and writers.
Because Anthony Newley, Lionel Bart, Leslie Bricusse and Don Black
delivered fantastic songs.
When I got asked to do my first Bond song,
my immediate thought was, "Call Don Black."
DON: The title was terrific.
It was enigmatic, but I couldn't think of the next line.
I walked around a few parks, I can tell you.
I stared out of a lot of windows.
And one day, my wife, Shirley, shouted out to me,
"Postman's just come, Don. And you've got an OBE!"
And I automatically said,
"It's not a knighthood, but it's the perfect way to start."
And I thought, "Hey, that's it!"
And that's how I like to write lyrics.
There's the movie, right? There's the movie.
Two lines, job done. Brilliant. That's why you work with Don Black.
He's a great lyricist.
He's had number-ones with Michael Jackson.
He won an Oscar with John Barry for Born Free.
He's a huge name.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Not only is Diamonds Are Forever the best Bond song, it's his best song.
♪♪ Diamonds are forever ♪♪
Diamonds Are Forever, I thought, was brilliant on nine different levels.
♪♪ They can stimulate And tease me ♪♪
I always say that luck plays such a major part in a songwriter's career.
Because Diamonds Are Forever almost never happened.
♪♪ Desert me ♪♪
Looking back on Diamonds Are Forever,
again, I'm looking at a blank page
and I've got John's tune in my head.
Don wrote it. He said, "What do we sing about?"
I said, "Why don't we...
"treat a diamond...
"like it's the male sex organ?"
And so, he said, "Yeah?"
I said, "Well, just sing about a diamond like it's a you-know-what."
And when you read the lyrics,
"Touch it, caress it."
I mean, if you submit that thought, you'd probably enjoy the song again.
(CHUCKLING)
It was a song with a wink.
Then we had the big day at John's apartment
when we had to play it to Harry Saltzman.
JOHN: Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman came over
to my apartment to listen to it.
Harry Saltzman, God rest his soul,
he was a difficult man, let's put it that way.
And after we played Diamonds Are Forever, Harry made it very clear that he hated it.
"We can't have that goddamn song in the movie!"
He had a very colorful vocabulary.
He said, "It's filthy. 'Touch it, stroke it, and undress it'?
"Can't put that in a lyric.
"I don't like the music, either."
And then John's Yorkshire bluntness came out.
I said, "Harry, you hated Goldfinger. You are tone-deaf!"
He went as red as the red socks he wore.
And he just steamed out of the room, my apartment.
Just went out, slammed the door, left.
(DOOR SLAMS)
There's this silence.
And then Cubby said,
"Do you have any Jack Daniels?"
And I said, "Yeah."
So we all hit the Jack Daniels.
I thought that was the end of it.
"We had a go, he hates it.
"He hates John Barry. He hates life. He hates everything."
Cubby said, "I think it's terrific. You should go ahead."
(VOCALIZING)
♪♪ Diamonds are forever
♪♪ Sparkling round My little finger
♪♪ Unlike... ♪♪
And then we played it to Shirley Bassey, and she loved it.
I loved the song, 'cause it was a song from my heart,
because I love diamonds. (CHUCKLES)
♪♪ ...your grave for
♪♪ I don't need love
♪♪ For what good Will love do me? ♪♪
DON: Shirley Bassey is one of the great storytellers.
"Diamonds are forever. They are all I need to please me."
Straight away, you're in a world.
You're taken there from the first couple of lines.
♪♪ They'll luster on
My own feeling is that Shirley Bassey should sing them all.
♪♪ Forever, forever... ♪♪
That outrageous, mannered, marvelous, provocative style she has.
She's everything that Bond should be.
Shirley Bassey is Bond.
♪♪ And ever... ♪♪
(MUSIC STOPS)
Shirley Bassey was one of the only examples I had growing up
of a Black British singer that sang with that huge voice.
Without her, I don't think I would have felt like I could do what I do.
There's something about the music of the '60s
that possesses so much feeling.
CAINE: If you think of the '60s as a revolution in England,
it was music-led.
Beatles led the rock and roll, and John led the movie music.
John Barry was a major part of the Swinging '60s.
The whole Swinging '60s was amazing.
I was the luckiest guy on the face of the Earth,
because I couldn't have been on a more successful kick than the Bond movies.
John Barry was so much a part of the DNA of these films.
That Bond sound is clearly him.
Whether it's the guitar, the horns, whether it's any of those things,
they were so evocative of that era.
Bond wouldn't be Bond without that.
He probably is the first person that took the big band swing brass...
...and merged that with the orchestra.
(ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING)
JON: If you had had a traditional orchestrally-based score,
it might have been serious,
but it wouldn't have had that sassy feel that we got from John Barry,
particularly in the way he wrote for brass.
(ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYING)
That is a significant step forward for film scoring in the 1960s.
NEIL: The sex that was on the screen
was so there in the music.
This is John Barry in his pomp.
That makes two of us.
The muted horn, muted brass
is the signature of Bond.
So it's bold and it's brassy, but there's just a little dampener on it.
It's like a silencer of a gun.
It's the musical equivalent.
ANNA: I love that John Barry grew up in a cinema.
His father ran a cinema, and he also played trumpet,
so he has an inherent understanding of cinema and music.
I think he's one of those geniuses that has an instinct for it.
John Barry then ended up emigrating, living in Oyster Bay, on Long Island.
I get the feeling that you could take the lad out of Yorkshire
but you couldn't take the Yorkshire out of the lad, or his music.
I've always had a slight theory
that there's a whiff of the Colliery Band
about John Barry's obsession with brass.
(BRASS BAND PLAYING)
When you hear John Barry play, something that I just adore in music
is the melancholic, reflective side of music.
And Barry, you can hear that right throughout his scores.
You know, Bond...
You can't have a Bond, for me, without that feeling.
DAVID: John Barry created the sound of James Bond.
Jill?
And over the next 25 years,
he was the reigning king of James Bond music.
He did 11 of them.
And I think, where other composers have taken on that job,
the biggest success stories have always been
people who have had an awareness about Bond music
and about how wonderful John Barry's stuff is.
CELESTE: When I was younger, I used to work in this charity shop.
I volunteered there because they had loads of vinyl.
And so, I first found a John Barry vinyl, and it was actually From Russia With Love.
When I first started writing, I would always reference John Barry.
DON: He invented this style.
He couldn't help but be incredibly elegant about his music.
We start off very much with what John had given us,
and then slowly branch off into our own style,
but there's always John Barry.
He is the center of this universe as far as music is concerned.
With the song, the casting is complex,
in the sense that many people have ideas about who would be suitable.
TAYLOR: I think it's become a really interesting song contest.
For me, I like dramatic, edgy pop.
And that's what we get every time a new Bond film comes out.
They've made some really interesting choices over the last 20 years.
JASON: The fight to do a Bond song is
as big as the fight to be cast as Bond, if you're a musician.
To do a Bond song is like doing Hamlet.
It's a top achievement.
DAVID: I felt like I'm casting, when looking at singers.
You make an informed choice about who it is you'll get to sing it.
You agree that with Barbara, Michael, and the director,
and then they let you go away and do it.
SAM: With Skyfall we all wanted to being British artist.
Was a synergy about it.
The 50th Anniversary, 2012,
UK feeling great about itself, for a change,
the Olympics,
and it all went into the movie, that sense of pride.
Adele was very much part of that.
PAUL: I think Adele's the perfect singer for it 'cause
she's done her music history.
She grew up with Bassey songs.
The way she finishes the lines, so authentic.
She's the heir to those people,
and yet she's also very contemporary, she has her own thing.
Ours had to be classic. The brief was...
"50th Anniversary, baby."
It's got to be a classic, you know?
With Paul, it just kind of...
Normally, I go in with an idea, and you have an idea ready.
We throw them at each other, and something happens,
it happened with Skyfall.
I gave her the script. "I loved it! I went in the bath to read it.
"By the time I got out, my bath was cold."
And then she went quiet.
Halfway through the shoot, she sent us the song.
It was like, "That's fantastic."
I don't think we changed a word or a note.
When you approach an artist,
it's because you love what that artist does.
We were blown away when Bono and the Edge said that they wanted to do it.
When we heard what they came up with, we loved it.
They told us they didn't wanna perform it.
They thought it should be a female vocalist.
And who better than Tina Turner?
TINA: I was sitting at my home in Zurich, and Bono sent me the worst demo.
He kind of threw it together as if he thought I wasn't gonna do it.
I think he was hoarse.
♪♪ ...move through Smoke and mirrors...
I don't think he really meant for me to sing it.
♪♪ ...in the crowd
♪♪ Other girls They gather around him ♪♪
He said, "I cannot let anyone else write the song.
"Me and my wife spent our honeymoon at Ian Fleming's place, GoldenEye."
♪♪ Golden eye Not lace or leather
♪♪ With the Golden eye Take him to the spot ♪♪
He said, "It's a little bit rough."
And I thought, "How do I put this together?"
It wasn't showing me what the melody was.
He said, "Dear Tina, this is rough.
"You probably won't get it. In the studio, we'll get it together."
And, true enough, it came together in the studio.
♪♪ ...Be denied
♪♪ It's a gold and honey trap ♪♪
I sung it how I would sing it.
And even Bono was impressed.
He said, "I should have known. I remember sending you that,
"and after I sent it, I realized that it was really bad."
♪♪ ...Got you in my sight ♪♪
Looking around for people who could sing the song
in The World Is Not Enough.
Looking at Shirley, and her attitude and energy,
it was like she could be in this film. Maybe she should've been in it.
♪♪ I think I'm paranoid
♪♪ They call me... ♪♪
She was so potent and unflinching,
it felt like she had the strength to make that lyric a proper event.
We were in London. David asked if he could meet for coffee.
I went into a Starbucks across the road from our hotel,
and he said, "What do you want?"
And I said, "I'll have a skinny latte."
He brought it to the table, plopped it down, and sat in front of me.
He said, "Do you want to know why I've brought you here?"
And I went, "Yeah, I do."
He went, "Do you want to sing the next Bond theme?"
(LAUGHTER)
She screamed in a way that I'd never heard anyone scream before.
I think she wanted to do one of those all her life as well.
I mean, I don't think I literally screamed like...
But I was freaking out.
For any vocalist to be asked to do that is a huge deal.
I couldn't really take it in very well, but of course, I said yes.
I had the wherewithal to say, "Yes. I would like to do that. Thank you."
With No Time To Die, it seemed right
that we have a song which was from the female point of view.
And I went to see Billie and Finneas when they were performing.
♪♪ She'll pity all the men I know
-♪♪ So you're a... -CROWD: ♪♪ Tough guy
♪♪ Like it really rough guy
♪♪ Just can't get enough guy
-♪♪ Chest always... ♪♪ -♪♪ ...So puffed guy ♪♪
BILLIE: She came to one of our shows,
which was perfect 'cause it was the best one.
I was excited she saw a good show.
Said, "Love to hear what you come up with," but if it's terrible...
It'd be crazy if they said, "We haven't heard it,
-"but you got it." -Totally.
It was an audition. It should've been.
The worst is if they don't choose it, you think, "I could've done a better job."
At least in our case, I was like,
-"I love this song." -We did our best.
"If they don't choose it, that's okay, but this is the best we could do."
It was awesome. We didn't hear anything for two months.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
Then they were like, "Fly to London. See the movie and work with Hans,"
-which was awesome. -So cool.
-So badass. -But it was crazy to not hear anything,
then, "Get on a plane."
I'm happy when we get talent.
And the talent's good.
And it has, fortunately, been incredible while I've been doing it.
I want the best song and the best score that we can get.
I felt very lucky to work with the talent that we had.
JASON: When you take part in Bond music,
you're very aware of the history of what you're getting into.
You are in charge of the baton, but just for a little while,
then you're handing it on to the next leg.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
JON: I think that the most successful Bond scores
are those that seamlessly combine elements of the Bond theme
and then whatever new music the new story requires.
The number of instances
of the Bond theme being revisited through the years
is just extraordinary.
It's absolutely unique in the history of film music.
Well, hi there.
(LIVE AND LET DIE THEME PLAYING)
JON: When you hear George Martin's arrangement,
it's a much harder-edged rock version than we'd heard before.
(THE SPY WHO LOVED ME THEME PLAYING)
When Marvin Hamlisch does it, it brings the sound of disco and Studio 54
into the world of Bond.
(TOMORROW NEVER DIES THEME PLAYING)
(GUNSHOTS)
And when David Arnold updates the theme,
he throws a little techno into the mix,
making Bond not only orchestral, but also electronic.
Classic sound, modern approach.
And, of course, in No Time To Die,
the James Bond theme is brilliantly deconstructed
so that there are elements of it throughout the film.
Done by somebody with more experience with action pictures than anybody.
Hans Zimmer.
It might be noise to you, but to us, it's making a living.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Hans Zimmer, he was very keen to bring in a lot of the old theme.
He was like, "It's good. We'll use it."
But then he adds Hans Zimmer to it.
(GUNSHOTS)
(BRAKES SCREECHING)
(ENGINE REVVING)
Zimmer comes to this new project well-versed in the history of Bond music.
I don't think I'd ever heard the Bond theme
used in such clever and creative ways in any Bond film to date.
(TIRES SCREECHING)
What people want is that sense of familiarity,
but turned so it catches the light in a slightly different way.
It occurred to both of us that the...
You couldn't put that into Skyfall. It was just too outgoing.
So the issue was,
how do you acknowledge Bond without the meter going to 11?
I think you lost your nerve.
Well, what do you expect, a bloody apology?
You know the rules of the game. You've been playing it long enough.
Tom was looking all the time for ways to weave the Bond theme in.
A good example is at the beginning of Skyfall.
Daniel's out-of-focus figure appears at the end of the corridor.
There's that brass stamp...
And you're like, "I'm in."
He's back! James Bond is back!
That's what's great about the idea.
There are those moments that the fans love.
You know they're gonna love it 'cause they're plain fun.
We've been trained for 60 years
to recognize what the music is doing with the Bond films
in a way that is not the case with any other long-running franchise.
In Casino Royale, the conception is to save the Bond theme
for the very end of the movie.
The whole point of Casino Royale was about this man who becomes
the James Bond we all have come to know and hopefully love.
(GRUNTS)
So it was very important to us that he earned that theme.
The studio were very concerned about it, obviously.
DAVID: The thing that maybe worried them slightly was,
"Why are we watching a James Bond film without the theme?"
They thought that was an intellectual step too far for an audience,
that they wouldn't understand.
Number one, you have a brand-new Bond.
Nobody's seen Daniel Craig do this before.
So the thought was,
"Maybe we need the Bond theme to remind us of who he is."
My counterpoint was,
we can't be ahead of where James Bond is in the film,
but what would be more interesting
would be teasing those elements throughout the film.
When he first puts on the tuxedo in the bathroom...
and he sees himself and considers himself in the reflection.
And in that shot, you're thinking about 20 other movies.
You're thinking about all the other times you've seen Bond in a tuxedo.
(CHUCKLES)
We're looking at him like, "He's getting closer."
Then at the end, the first time he says the line,
there's been an opportunity to say, "Bond. James Bond."
Welcome to the Hotel Splendide. Your name, sir?
James Bond. You'll find the reservation under "Beach."
Same with ordering the drink.
Vodka martini.
Shaken or stirred? Do I look like I give a damn?
DAVID: So we are done with convention in this film.
Then, right at the end, when Mr. White says, "Who are you?"
He says, "The name's Bond. James Bond."
We've been waiting two hours for that.
So when Mr. White gets out of his car,
I'm not really playing what's happening to Mr. White.
We're on the audience's side now,
waiting for this to happen.
-Hello? -MAN: Mr. White.
We need to talk.
Who is this?
-(GUNSHOTS) -(GRUNTS)
He gets shot in the knee.
(GROANING)
He's coming up the steps.
There's even a tambourine in it, the famous rhythm for the Bond theme.
Then the trombones start.
Then you see Bond's feet on the steps as he crawls up towards him.
So you know you're kind of careering towards this moment.
And we need access to it. We need permission.
The name's Bond.
James Bond.
(BOND THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
I've seen it three or four times in the cinema, and everyone went nuts.
I didn't even write it, you know.
All I did was position it in such a way that enabled that to happen.
The recording of the James Bond theme at the end of Casino Royale
was the most exciting recording experience I'd had in any film I'd done.
The band were waiting for that moment,
and this thing just exploded out of the speakers.
He's back, and the music's back, and the theme is back.
We used the David Arnold arrangement and recording at the end of Skyfall.
There was a moment where I thought, "Should I be writing something else?
"A different arrangement?" But it barked so well.
It was just a great performance.
I was gonna be chasing it,
try to make it as good, in which case, why bother?
Or doing something different for the sake of it,
and, you could argue, why bother?
DON: After Arnold had created that version of the Bond theme,
it wound up being used again and again
because, to cop a phrase, "Nobody does it better."
(MUSIC ENDS)
(ALL CHEERING)
Sounded great, that one. Thank you, guys.
If you look at the entire history of Bond music,
there are so many fascinating tales of incidences
that happened during recording sessions.
PAUL: It's such a big opportunity, doing a Bond theme.
There is a spirituality to how these things happened in the studio.
One story is that Nancy Sinatra came to London
to record You Only Live Twice.
NANCY: I was really scared going there
because I knew this was nitty-gritty, hardcore singing.
There was literally 20, 25 photographers and press people in the studio,
which is an impossible way to record.
If John Barry hadn't been there,
I would have just turned around
and run back to the hotel because I was so scared.
I think I tried to squeak out two or three takes.
I was a wreck.
They had to piece the recording together from as many as 25 different takes.
In some ways, Thunderball is my favorite story
because Tom Jones comes in,
has to hit this huge note at the end and hold it forever.
TOM: John said, "The last note...
"the music will go on,
"but hold it as long as you can.
Okay, here we go, live."
As soon as I hit "ball," I closed my eyes, I can't hold it any longer.
The room was spinning.
I had to hold on to the sides of the booth to stop myself falling over.
John said, "That's it. We got it."
DON: He did it in one take because he couldn't sing that again.
It's become part of Bond's mythology.
SAM: With Writing's on the Wall,
me and Jimmy wrote it in 20 minutes,
recorded it 20 minutes later, that was it.
We were actually re-recording a vocal to my song Lay Me Down.
Jimmy just played some chords, and it just flowed.
After writing it, we went next door...
...to RAK Studio 1 and recorded it.
And that was the take.
The vocal is the demo vocal, the first vocal I ever did for the song.
You can hear the piano in the back.
We're playing just live in the room.
It was very special that it was the first take.
It's all just in that moment.
♪♪ The writing's on the wall
♪♪ The writing's on the wall ♪♪
When I heard that all come together, it was a really magical day.
Such a big deal, a Bond song.
It's the dream gig to get.
DON: If you think about it historically,
it must be the series that has stayed relevant and timeless for the longest.
At the same time, it's managed to do that by not actually staying timeless,
but embracing wherever we were at whatever point in time we were.
FINNEAS: It's a snapshot.
The coolest thing about the Bond franchise is it's set in present-day,
so it's got to reflect the world that we live in.
If you went theme song by theme song chronologically
throughout Bond history
you also get a sense of human pop culture at the time.
Once you switch from Sean Connery and the big John Barry classics,
it's the Roger Moore era, which required different themes.
And the music of the Roger Moore era signals a little step shift.
We'd got into the songwriter-performers, like Paul McCartney,
who would compose the song and sing it themselves,
and they would do it in their style.
♪♪ When you were young and Your heart was an open book ♪♪
Broccoli and Saltzman
had wanted a good theme tune.
One of the team asked Paul McCartney if he would write a song.
PAUL: I said, "Okay, send me the book around."
They didn't have a script then, I don't think. He sent me the book.
I read it. I thought it was pretty good.
And that afternoon I wrote the song.
It was co-produced with George Martin.
I worked with George, which I hadn't done since the Beatles.
George took an acetate of it out to,
I think they were filming it in the Bahamas.
He took it to Harry Saltzman.
GEORGE: And I thought, "Well, he's gonna look me over."
And at the end of it, he said, "By the way,
"who do you think we should get to sing the song?"
I said, "Well, you do have Paul McCartney."
"Yeah. Yeah. What do you think of Thelma Houston?"
I said, "I think she's great,
"but Paul..."
"How about Aretha Franklin?"
I said, "Fantastic."
But Paul and I,
we suddenly realized that I had to put it to him as delicately as I could,
that if he didn't take Paul, he wouldn't get the song.
George said, "This is the real track, lads.
"Hope you like it."
♪♪ To live and let die
♪♪ Live and let die
♪♪ Live and let die ♪♪
It was rock and roll.
You hadn't had a Bond song that sounded like that.
That blew me off my seat.
I remember Dad playing the Paul McCartney song.
He had big speakers in the living room.
My sister and I just going crazy.
Going absolutely crazy.
It's a bit of everything. There's a strange reggae interlude.
It's not my favorite part of the song, I confess, but it's there.
♪♪ What does it matter to ya ♪♪
"What's it gonna matter..." No! Paul, what are you thinking?
Shouldn't make sense, but it does.
And it remains one of the great Bond themes.
Wouldn't you agree?
MAN: Live and Let Die, which got to number 9 in the summer of 1973.
With James Bond's changing, you get a change in the music.
Things that bring him along every time into a new era.
Again, John Barry's not available for The Spy Who Loved Me,
so what do they do?
They get the hottest young composer then working in America,
Marvin Hamlisch.
Just got back from London. Yes. Just got back.
I like it very much. I worked on a wonderful new picture,
-which is the new James Bond picture. -WOMAN: Hey!
I thought that was the reason they hired me, because of the similarity
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
between myself and James Bond.
-And James Bond? -Yes.
Marvin Hamlisch was a character.
He was a performer-composer, and he was another musical genius.
I remember Marvin Hamlisch sitting at our piano
we had in the upstairs kitchen
where he banged out Nobody Does It Better and sang it.
His voice was very different to Carly Simon.
(LAUGHING)
But, boy, did you know then that that was an incredible song.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)
It's so wonderful to hear it that way, before you orchestrate it,
before you get a professional singer,
and you see the enthusiasm that the composer has for it.
I was thinking about this film,
about how everything is bigger-than-life on a Bond film,
everything is bigger-than-life, so I went just the opposite.
Is this really what they do in Siberia?
Yes, but not how they do it.
I suppose he wanted to get away from the John Barry style
and make his own style. I think he succeeded.
It's very romantic.
This is where we get to see Bond emotionally stripped bare.
It was the song that did that.
MARVIN: I was working with my lyricist Carole Bayer Sager.
I said, "What do you think could be said about James Bond
"after all these years?"
She came up with the title, a modest title
called Nobody Does It Better.
We decided it was that vein, we should have Carly Simon sing it.
♪♪ Nobody does it better
♪♪ Makes me feel sad For the rest ♪♪
You're moving with the times into a pop era.
I remember hearing on my aunt's car, Nobody Does It Better.
You think, "Wow, that's a James Bond song."
Such a smart thing to do. You're drawing in so many other people.
♪♪ I wasn't lookin' but Somehow you found me
♪♪ I tried to hide from your Love light
♪♪ But like heaven above me
♪♪ The spy who loved me ♪♪
There's something about it feeling like it's from the woman's perspective,
that it's both celebratory and also slyly satirical.
Over the years, Nobody Does It Better has become synonymous with Bond.
Even to this day, when plugging Bond films,
you see Nobody Does It Better.
♪♪ Baby, you're the best ♪♪
Two-three-three, take one.
We were nearly 20 years into Bonds, and there'd been a lot of big hits.
If you've got 60 years of Bond songs,
not all, however many there are, will be number-one standards.
I still never know sometimes why things just don't come together.
SHIRLEY: That song didn't work.
Hated it. That's why I've never sung it in my act.
(STATIC OVER RADIO)
I suppose everybody thinks, "If only ours was as strong as Goldfinger."
All Time High was a nice song.
Yeah, it's all right, you know?
It's not my favorite.
The gentle ones have never been what I gravitate to,
but it works in the romantic sense of it.
I think they were lacking edge.
And it all seemed a bit M.O.R.
I'd have said anything to get a foot in the door.
(LAUGHING)
I rolled up to this party and I saw Cubby Broccoli across the room.
And I had that confidence of youth.
I said, "When are you gonna have a decent theme song again?"
(LAUGHING) And he said,
"You wanna do it?"
I said, "Hell, yes!"
Excuse me.
-Aren't you... -Bon.
Simon LeBon.
(POP MUSIC PLAYING)
Duran Duran, I thought that song modernized Bond.
It was hipper than it was getting to be at that point.
They were perfect for it.
They were the embodiment of the '80s, that sophistication, the suits.
It was just like, "Yeah, of course."
They were big, big Bond fans.
John telling you everything about every Bond movie imaginable.
I was getting the whole Bond experience.
I fell in love with the cars, the clothes, the girls.
But over time you realized how impactful the music was.
John Barry was the guy that gave pathos to Bond.
I must have written over 100 songs with John Barry,
but I've never written anything with him in the same room.
He wasn't very good at collaboration in the traditional sense.
John was amazing, I thought.
He was a dick, but he was an amazing guy.
Sometimes the collaborations that we had him get involved with
were challenging for him.
They just used to... I said, "How do you guys work?"
"We'll meet you at this rehearsal room at 11:00 one morning." We went in there.
And then they used to sit around.
Play a bit here, play a bit there, throw out ideas.
It was a totally alien way of working.
He was a tricky guy, but he knew what he wanted.
He didn't know how to get it politely.
-But the song was number one, so... -(CLEARS THROAT)
♪♪ Until we dance Into the fire
♪♪ That fatal kiss Is all we need ♪♪
The piece of music we made was a Duran Duran piece of music.
It had beat, that... (IMITATING DRUM BEATS)
There's a lot of energy in our Bond theme that is still a bit of a rarity.
JOHN: I wrote them as long as I could find something slightly new to do.
You had to keep within the bounds, and I think I exhausted the bounds.
And that's when I thought I better...
I better cut out of the situation.
In 1987, Variety did a special issue commemorating 25 years of James Bond,
and John Barry took out a full-page ad
to congratulate his old pal Cubby Broccoli,
uh, and to say thank you for the opportunity that it had presented.
It was a nice way to go out.
He always would be the man who created the sound of Bond.
But I can entirely see why there came a point where he just went,
"Not anymore."
And had an exquisite later career.
We've all got a list of people we think should've done a Bond song and never did.
Although, never say never.
Why hasn't Beyonce done one? She'd be fantastic.
Prince, or... Whitney Houston would've killed it.
Lana Del Rey. She should be the next Bond girl.
Stormzy.
I think Laura Mvula.
A Rihanna Bond song. Rihanna Bond song would be awesome.
Why didn't Queen get a Bond song?
Rami had to say Queen. It's just in his contract.
He has to promote Queen almost always. His contract's up in a year.
Missed opportunity? Perhaps.
There are people that have written and recorded songs
that for some reason never found favor.
Blondie,
Ace of Base,
Alice Cooper,
Pulp, Saint Etienne,
Radiohead.
With Spectre, we were talking to Radiohead.
Obviously, Sam and Daniel were huge fans.
This song is called Spectre.
Not to be confused with the James Bond film.
(CROWD LAUGHING)
Radiohead came in, all five of them, to talk about it.
I was slightly starstruck. And they did write something.
Which we couldn't use because they'd already...
They'd never released it, but it had been played on a live album.
And that wasn't the brief.
It needs to be an original song,
otherwise it's not eligible for Academy Awards.
But also it deserves to be a song,
you want to feel like it's written just for the movie.
We had to say, "We can't use this," even though it was great.
And we went off and explored other possibilities, one of whom was Sam.
Then Thom Yorke said, "We've written another song."
It was like, "Oh, no!
(LAUGHING)
"Now you tell me."
And he played it,
and it was absolutely beautiful and very melancholy.
♪♪ I'm lost
♪♪ I'm a ghost
♪♪ Dispossessed
♪♪ Taken host ♪♪
I loved it. I still play it because I love Radiohead so much.
It probably would've worked brilliantly,
but it was a beat too late by that time.
We have to do the graphics for the main title
and the images have to match the words.
Even the fact that we had a conversation with Radiohead is for me a...
It was a dream come true.
♪♪ Spectre has come for me ♪♪
SHIRLEY: I love that Radiohead song,
but, you know, you just get lucky sometimes,
and you get unlucky sometimes, too.
It's not a barometer of whether you're better than anyone else,
it's just whether you get that lucky call.
Please.
DON: We think about all of these things that might have been.
And maybe, most of all, what if
Amy Winehouse had been able to do the song for Quantum of Solace?
MARC: Barbara and Michael and I,
we sat down and discussed different artists.
We thought Amy would be a great choice.
She had the smoky Soho British roots.
There was a danger to Amy Winehouse that would've tied very well with Bond.
Amy would've done a brilliant one,
given her influence across British music since.
There's definitely influence from her within Adele's delivery, I think.
We had a meeting,
and she was extraordinary.
She was a combination of effervescence and fragility.
And we sat at the table,
she wanted to know the emotional theme of the film.
And she asked for a notebook and she was writing...
during the whole time I was talking, taking notes.
And Quantum of Solace was about him having his heart broken
and him realizing that revenge doesn't fill the void.
And when she left, she left the paper behind,
and she had just written "Blake."
"Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake."
She clearly wasn't in a place where she could do her work.
She was exceptional, exceptional talent,
and seemed like a really sweet, lovely person.
I'll never forget it. I'll never forget her.
The loss of Amy Winehouse leaves a kind of lingering shadow
that the Jack White song really couldn't escape.
He's a longtime Bond fan,
so he comes in and does Another Way to Die,
which is a duet with Alicia Keys.
First time that there's a duet in the history of Bond songs.
The best thing about it being the only duet,
strictly for pub quizzes in Britain.
That's its number-one appeal.
It was really raucous.
That's what I like about it. In your face, very bold.
♪♪ Yeah, a door left open A woman walking by
♪♪ A drop in the water A look in the eye ♪♪
I'd always wanted to do it, and here it might happen.
I thought, "This is also a great time for me
"to put things in that they would never have approved of
"if they had a year to think about it." (CHUCKLING)
The guitar solo alone,
you would never expect a guitar solo like that
to be part of any major Hollywood production,
let alone a James Bond song.
CELESTE: I am a huge fan of both of them.
I just really appreciated that Bond was daring enough
to bring these two people together,
whether it was going to work for everybody or not.
It's great when they choose people who will try to break it a little bit,
which is important with Bond.
It's the number-one most divisive thing I've ever been a part of.
I remember telling the engineer, "Some people won't like this song."
SHIRLEY: It doesn't matter how good the song is, you get so much shit.
It's funny 'cause when it happened to us, we got so much pushback.
It was almost, I would say, embarrassing.
It felt embarrassing how awful people were about the song.
You're joining into this plethora of a billion fans
that a portion of them cannot be satisfied.
When I met Prince, he said, "I like that James Bond song you did."
I said, "Wow, really? Thank you. That's incredible.
"I'm glad to hear you say that. A lot of people dislike it."
I remember exactly the way he said it, "I thought it was real strong."
(CHUCKLING)
When you're in there,
it's better to go down in flames than to try to play it safe.
I wanted it to be dangerous and strange, live in its own world,
but also be part of the family.
It's the strange cousin who came to visit.
Bond is really big on legacy.
The films have got a 60-year history to draw on now.
Just as the films nod to the past, the music has to acknowledge it, too.
No other film series has that shorthand
because no other film series has that history.
The fun of making a Bond film is you can tap into the history of Bond.
That's the joyful, if it's the cars, sound, songs, score,
whatever it is, one has to do that.
JAMES: Modern composers, modern filmmakers
are very keen to nod to that...
and to reference those songs
because Bond is all about the 60-year history.
Hans and I wanted to take it back to what John Barry did.
No Time to Die was very much akin to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
That was the first Bond that tackled his emotional life, really,
and his love life and loss.
I love you.
I know I'll never find another girl like you.
Will you marry me?
On Her Majesty's Secret Service has this wonderful love theme called
We Have All the Time in the World, which is a line from the end of the movie.
I said to Cubby Broccoli,
"I'm trying to think who can bring some kind of irony to that title."
I said, "I think it's Louis Armstrong."
So, Cubby was very, very for it.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
Armstrong had just come out of hospital, where he'd been for a year.
JOHN: And we came to New York and recorded it.
To finally walk in the studio with him, it was like, "Oh, my God."
He was an absolute dream to work with.
You're talking about a musical legend.
The man who has brought so much to music.
Here's a tune, folks, that I happened to sing
in the soundtracks of one of James Bond's pictures
that just opened in New York.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
♪♪ We have all the time
♪♪ In the world
♪♪ Time enough for life
♪♪ To unfold All the precious things
♪♪ Love has in store
♪♪ We have all... ♪♪
JOHN: And what almost broke my heart at the end
is when we were all through, he thanked me.
I was very moved, and I felt rather stupid.
But it was such a nice thing of him to do.
I get teary-eyed when I think about it because it was the last thing he did.
Out of all the songs, I like that probably the best.
It was the least Bondian of all the songs that we wrote.
♪♪ Only love ♪♪
We Have All The Time In The World is not just the love theme,
but it underscores the tragic finale.
There's no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world.
James Bond has just gotten married
and his new wife has just been murdered by Blofeld.
It is a shocking ending to the movie,
but an emotionally rich one.
There's gravitas in that song and there is history in that song
and there's history to Bond.
It's timeless, with some nostalgia and some heartbreak in it.
It just seems such an appropriate way of telling you
the history of the franchise and where it's going.
Can you go faster?
We don't need to go faster.
We have all the time in the world.
Daniel Craig says the line
and then we are immediately catapulted back into another era of Bond.
Louis Armstrong recorded that and was very close to death himself,
and therefore the music has a lot of emotion attached to it.
That's gold dust for any composer to twist it and turn it
and to incorporate it into the soundtrack.
We hear We Have All the Time in the World,
which is a kind of frightening premonition
that things may not work out as we hope.
DANIEL: I wanted it from the very beginning, that song.
Knowing where we were headed with the script,
it felt so right for this to end everything.
It does have hope, that song.
As sad as it is, it has hope in it.
It's so important to keep Bond fresh, to keep Bond current,
but also to keep referring to the old Bond themes,
so, on No Time to Die, you have the Billie Eilish theme,
which becomes the love theme of the movie.
You have the James Bond theme, which is brilliantly deconstructed
so that there are elements of it throughout the film.
And then you have the overall score itself,
done by Hans Zimmer and his co-writer, Steve Mazzaro.
And by the end of the movie, he combines them into a seamless whole.
It really brings the whole world of Bond together.
What we've been talking about is that there's an overall Bond language,
which was established by John Barry.
We always used that as our touchstone,
but on this film, especially towards the end, it gets deep.
It allows you to leave the John Barry world behind
and you do your own thing,
and start setting up what is happening to this character now
and really become his inner voice.
We've been making music together for a really long time,
and I can't think of any better occupation than doing what we do.
We make people quite happy sometimes with this noise we make.
And you guys make the best noise in the world, and you know that.
You really do.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
And this one's special. This one we know is special.
This is Bond, James Bond.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Thank you.
CARY: Working with Hans on a score, figuring out how to crack it,
trying to go from that tricky step of saying,
"Yeah, sure. That's a great feeling in terms of a standalone piece of music
"...but does it marry with picture?"
It'd come down to Hans jumping on his keyboard
and he'd hammer out something.
It's a very unusual thing in a Bond movie where you get to build an emotion
over however many minutes, and you're going,
"Hang on, is this really gonna go where I think this is gonna go?
"It can't be going there."
The music just takes you there.
It had a profound effect on the end of the film.
It was a very, very tough cue.
It's leading up to Bond's sacrifice.
Hans building that score with Steve and everyone,
it was a masterclass.
CARY: It's amazing to watch a master do his thing.
I said something on the way out, I'd given him some notes.
In post-production, you're in different departments.
I was about to go to my next stop, and I said,
"I just feel like something about this needs to sound like a requiem."
He's like, "Okay."
And I basically had my hand on the door handle,
he's like, "You mean like this?"
He hammers out these chords and I'm like,
"Yes, like that. Keep going. What was that? Keep going."
As we morph slowly into nearly a requiem,
but you still got the romantics of chords in there.
You still have the elegance of Bond hidden in there.
There's a mystery within a mystery within a mystery.
He just sat there and played 30, 45 seconds of something.
I say, "What's that?" He says, "Don't know.
"Someone was recording that, right?"
I think everybody knows what that means, right?
It's really just three chords.
But then they let you go any way you want.
If you think about it, somewhere in there is complete tragedy.
It was important that there's a finality to the whole thing.
Bond has that kind of...
which is not very emotional,
but when you turn it on its head a little bit
and kind of go to that chord,
it's so much more powerful and so much more emotive.
You made me do this, you see?
So we incorporated the Bond theme and Billie's song into the score.
There's a line that we wrote where it's just this...
which appears throughout the film as a basic motif.
And we've superimposed that over the Bond theme,
which keeps growing and growing.
Would you put Madeleine on, please?
Once Bond gets to the point where he tells Madeleine he's not coming back,
is when we start to fragment Billie and Finneas's tune.
WOMAN: Have you left?
No. I'm... I'm not gonna make it.
What?
No.
-But you promised. -Madeleine.
(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING)
Just as a little taste.
Hearing the orchestra play the melodies of the song was astounding.
I mean, just, you know...
(VOCALIZING)
And, like, these beautiful moments.
Me and Finneas were like, "Oh, my God," sitting there.
It was crazy.
And so it really all ties everything together.
It was really important to us to honor Bond's past and John Barry's style
while looking to the future.
We just need more time.
If we only had more time...
(SOBBING)
You have all the time in the world.
The whole last section of this film without the music, it doesn't soar.
That's what the music brings to this. It makes it do, it makes it fly.
That closing scene and the music
really connects with you emotionally in your gut, in your memory,
and reminds you of all the Bonds that you've seen before,
all the many different iterations of Bonds
and the sense of that coming to an end.
I'm getting chills just remembering it.
Somehow, Bond music became a universe of its own.
When you listen to the songs,
you're reminded of how groundbreaking it was.
You struggle to argue with the success they've had around the world.
Music has this ability to connect to our unconscious
and bring on emotions that we are not aware of or understand,
but we feel them.
And that's what John Barry, and David Arnold, Tom Newman,
and Hans Zimmer are masters of.
When you talk about the music of Bond, you're diving into a history lesson.
Bond, in his own way, has more to do with our culture
than people will ever probably admit,
because he's been with us for 60 years now. It's truly astonishing.
(MUSIC STOPS)
♪♪ The way that you hold me
♪♪ Whenever you hold me
♪♪ There's some kind of magic Inside you
♪♪ That keeps me from runnin'
♪♪ But just keep it comin'
♪♪ How'd you learn to do The things you do?
♪♪ And nobody does it better
♪♪ Makes me feel sad For the rest
♪♪ Nobody does it
♪♪ Half as good as you
♪♪ Baby, baby
♪♪ Darlin', you're the best
♪♪ Baby, you're the best
♪♪ Baby, you're the best ♪♪