JOHN BARRY OBE 1933-2011

When I heard that composer John Barry had died over the weekend, I felt a genuine sense of loss. Not because I knew the man, but because, to a certain extent, it was his music that was the soundtrack to my youth and which introduced me to the whole world of “grown up” music for the very first time.

I didn't even know that such a thing
could even have existed...

I know that I was telling you about my less than trendy record buying past a couple of weeks ago, but when I heard the news, I was reminded of an incident that must have occurred when I was about twelve or thirteen. I was in WHSmiths in Stockport fairly late on on a Saturday afternoon, browsing disinterestedly through their record department when I came across an album that excited me beyond my wildest dreams, the tenth anniversary edition double album James Bond collection. At that point in my life I didn’t even know that such a thing could even have existed and I remember being utterly astounded at finding it.

Now I think I’ve already mentioned how musically unsavvy I was back then, so I wasn’t very aware of record shops and music generally. But in 1974, ITV had started showing the Bond films on television for the first time and, like many young boys of my age, I’d very quickly become hooked on them. Now this was in the days before home video was widespread and so to find this small fragment of those movies in a format that I could enjoy over and over again was an amazing thing to me.

I remember dashing home to ask permission if I could spend my £6.00 savings on this object of desire, and then tearing, panic stricken back to the store to get my copy, hoping against hope that no-one else would buy it before I got back. In those days I had no real idea of how retail worked and was probably convinced that this was the only one left in the world. I think that this may well have been the very beginning of my later retail obsessions and addiction to collecting and completism.

I got home and loaded up the music centre, put on dad’s chunky old headphones so as not to disturb the television viewing and played that album to within an inch of it’s life. Sometimes I’m told that things you experience at certain points in your life, when you are at your most “spongelike” are the things that stay with you most, and for me, every single note of those four sides of vinyl are still as vibrant and vivid in my memory today as when I first heard them late on that long ago Saturday afternoon. The music of those films still came very vividly to mind long after it became less than cool to admit to enjoying the actual films any more, which I think is testament to just how great John Barry’s music was.

His theme to “The Persuaders!” is another one of the most haunting melodies that reaches back into my childhood memories and plucks at them, but there was so much more to Mr Barry than just action and adventure or Bond. Films ranging from “The Lion in Winter” to “The Black Hole”, and “Zulu” to “The Ipcress File” benefited from his ability to turn mere visuals into true art, and we mustn’t forget his many Oscars for films like “Born Free”, “Out of Africa” and “Dances with Wolves” as well as his many other  awards like Grammies, a Bafta and a Golden Globe. Somewhere along the way he even composed the memorable theme to “Juke Box Jury” which is part of the soundtrack to the teenage years of another generation.

One of Mr. Barry’s greatest scores for me was his soundtrack to the 1969 James Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” starring George Lazenby in the title role. That was the score on which he managed to persuade “Satchmo” himself, the legendary Louis Armstrong, to record a performance once last time, on the haunting song “We have all the time in the world”, and it still surprises many people when then find out that something so timeless and beautiful was written for a James Bond film.

The instrumental main title theme for “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” remains one of the tunes that I would select in the unlikely event that I was ever asked to go on “Desert Island Discs” because it evokes such strong memories in me and was probably one of those tunes that changed me from being someone who just watched films into someone who was interested in films. I know that it’s a subtle difference, but it is also a significant one.

I wonder whether the composers of movie soundtracks will be as revered by history as the classical composers are? I imagine that the Mozarts, Chopins, Beethovens and Bachs would probably been working on movies if they were alive in modern times. John Barry will no doubt become one of music’s immortals just because of his arrangement of the James Bond theme, and that would be more than enough for anyone I would imagine, but I do hope that his other work lives on and is played and enjoyed for many, many years to come.