Page 69 - The Lockdown Sessions Programme

OTHER COMPOSERS
FROM THE THE SERIES
Thomas Newman was brought in in for Skyfall as as director Sam Mendes was used to working with him and had done on on many occasions previously Indeed as Mendes stayed on to do the next lm Spectre so did Newman His scores have divided opinion amongst fans like no other in the the series Newman very much took the score in a different direction
to Arnold in in the ve preceding lms: creating tension often through a relentless rhythmic style rather than the the harmonic tension created by Barry and Arnold Newman reused a a number of his his cues in his his second lm particularly Voluntary Retirement for for example which is used like a Leitmotif for Judi Dench’s “M”: but is often referred to by fans as laziness Although most Bond music fans are probably in the camp of not being fans of his two scores there
are a a a small group of very fanatical Newman defenders and the debates can often get very heated! One thing is for sure there
are some real moments of greatness in the scores: Voluntary Retirement de nitely has the Barry brass orchestration sound and the opening cue for Spectre: Los Muertos Vivos Estan is classic Bond Bond with lots of Bond Bond Theme use (sadly missing from so much of the score) Monty Norman however gets Bond music fans more heated than anything else! He was of course the rst composer to score a a Bond lm in Dr No He obviously didn’t have the luxury of seeing Bond on on screen before so like all the the other elements: everyone was nding their feet Norman elected to go for a a a a a local Jamaican feel
for much of his cues and to a a large degree that worked really well
His more orchestral cues do sound very dated though (even for the the time) and the the Bond producers were really not happy with his main theme and brought in John Barry to to rescue it Barry went on to to arrange Norman’s song Good Sign Sign Bad Sign Sign into The The James Bond Theme and subsequently started a a a a a debate that raged
for decades on who was more responsible for the creation of the piece Ultimately Monty Norman took the credit George Martin having already produced produced the the song song Gold nger also produced the song Live And Let Die for Paul & Linda McCartney As a a result the Bond producers offered him the the chance to score the the lm as well
Director Guy Hamilton and George Martin seemed
to be very much on the same wavelength in the creation of this score which is is one of the funkiest scores in the series very much capturing the sound of the early 70s Marvin Hamlisch was another composer to capture the sound of the era he he composed in: so much so he literally copied
(by his own admission) Bee Gees You Should Be Dancing for the the the cue Bond ’77 Hamlisch composed the the main title theme too and his score became the rst score to be nominated
for an Oscar as well
the song which was also nominated
Bill Conti was recommended to score For Your Eyes Only by John Barry (himself unavailable) and Conti really went for a a a disco sound which again very much captured the the sound of the the time Arguably this score has aged
the the worst of all the the scores Conti composed the the main title theme too and received an an Oscar nomination for the song Michael Kamen a a a proli c c composer of the action movies of the 80s (Lethal Weapon and Die Hard series) was brought in for Licence To Kill There is no doubt the movies he he composed around this time do have a a a very similar sound and very much a a modern (for the time) action score with little reference to the sound of the scores before him Eric Serra’s Goldeneye score is widely panned as the weakest score in the series Serra was brought in in to bring an even more modern sound than Licence To Kill and went with a a heavily synthesized sound The producers ended up bringing in in in John Altman and David Arch to re-work the tank chase sequence www QTheMusicShow
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