John Barry (composer)

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John Barry

Background information
Birth name John Barry Prendergast
Born November 3, 1933 (1933-11-03) (age 74)
York, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Genre(s) Film score
Occupation(s) Composer, conductor
Years active 1959 - 2001

John Barry, OBE (born John Barry Prendergast on 3 November 1933 in York, England) is a renowned Golden Globe and five-time Academy Award-winning English film score composer.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Barry was educated at St Peter's School, York, and also received composition lessons from Francis Jackson, Organist of York Minster. Living in his native England until the mid 1970s, Barry spent some time in Spain (for tax reasons) but has since lived in the United States, mainly in Oyster Bay outside New York.

Barry suffered a rupture of the oesophagus in 1988 which has left him vulnerable to pneumonia.[1]

Barry has been married four times. His first three marriages ended in divorce: Barbara Pickard 1959-63; Jane Birkin 1965-68; and Jane Sidey 1969-71. He married his current wife, Laurie Barry on 3 January 1978. Barry has three children, one each from his first, second, and fourth marriages.

[edit] Career

His family was in the cinema business, but it was during his National Service that he began performing as a musician. After taking a correspondence course (with jazz composer Bill Russo) and arranging for some of the bands of the day, he formed the John Barry Seven. Barry then met Adam Faith, and composed songs, along with Les Vandyke, and film scores on the singer's behalf. When Faith made his first film Beat Girl in 1960 Barry composed the score that was not only Barry's first film, but the first soundtrack album to be released on an LP in the U.K.. Barry also composed the music for another Faith film Never Let Go.

These achievements caught the attention of the producers of a new film called Dr. No who were dissatisfied with the score given to them by Monty Norman. Barry was hired and the result would arguably be the most famous signature tune in film history, the "James Bond Theme". (Credit goes to Monty Norman, see below.)

This would be the turning point for Barry, as he would go on to become one of the most celebrated film composers of modern times, winning five Academy Awards and four Grammy Awards, with such memorable scores written for The Lion in Winter, Midnight Cowboy, Born Free, and Somewhere In Time.

Barry is often cited as having a distinct style which concentrates on lush strings and extensive use of brass. However he is also an innovator, being one of the first to employ synthesisers in a film score (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), and to make wide use of pop artists and songs in Midnight Cowboy. (Note that while The Graduate came a few years before, those songs had mostly been previously released.)

Barry is also known for the famous score he wrote for the theme tune for TV series The Persuaders!, also known as "The Unlucky Heroes", in which Tony Curtis and Roger Moore were paired as rich playboys solving crimes. The theme went to be a hit single in some European Countries and has been re-released on collections of 1970s disco hits. The instrumental recording features Moog synthesisers. Barry also wrote the scores to a number of musicals, including Passion Flower Hotel (lyrics by Trevor Peacock). the successful West End show Billy (lyrics by Don Black) and two major Broadway flops, The Little Prince and the Aviator and Lolita, My Love, the latter with Alan Jay Lerner as lyricist.

During 2006, Barry was the executive producer on an album entitled Here's to the Heroes by the Australian ensemble The Ten Tenors. The album features a number of songs Barry wrote in collaboration with his lyricist friend, Don Black.

Barry's orchestration very often combines the horn section with the strings in a way that makes his music immediately recognisable. By providing not just the main title theme but the complete soundtrack score, Barry's music often enhances the critical reception of a film, notably in Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa, and Dances with Wolves.

October 2007 saw John Barry announce a deal with Universal Music France for 2 albums scheduled for early 2008. These will be his first solo works for 7 years, and are expected to be a jazz based album and another concept orchestral album along the same lines as The Beyondness of Things and Eternal Echoes.

[edit] James Bond series

 This section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (February 2008)

After the success of Dr. No, Barry scored eleven of the next 14 James Bond series films; his first, as lead composer, was From Russia with Love (1963).

In his tenure with the film series, Barry's music, variously brassy and moody, appealed to film aficionados, as witnessed in the sales of the soundtrack albums. For From Russia With Love he composed "007", an alternate James Bond signature theme, which is featured in four other Bond films (Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker). The theme "Stalking", for the teaser sequence of From Russia With Love, was covered by colleague Marvin Hamlisch for the The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). (The lyrics for From Russia With Love's title song were written by Lionel Bart, who went on to write Oliver!)

In Goldfinger he would perfect the "Bond sound", a heady mixture of brass, jazz and sensuous melodies. There is even an element of Barry's jazz roots in the big-band track "Into Miami," which follows the title credits and accompanies the film's iconic image of the camera lens zooming toward the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.

As Barry matured, the Bond scores concentrated more on lush melodies, as in Moonraker and Octopussy. Barry's score for A View to a Kill was traditional, however his collaboration with Duran Duran for the title song was contemporary and one of the most successful Bond themes to date, reaching number one in the United States and number two in the UK Singles Chart. Both A View to a Kill and the Living Daylights theme by a-ha blended the pop music style of the artists with Barry's orchestration. In 2006 a-ha's Pal Waaktaar complimented Barry's contributions "I loved the stuff he added to the track, I mean it gave it this really cool string arrangement. That's when for me it started to sound like a Bond thing".[2]

David Arnold, a British composer, saw the result of two years' work in 1997 with the release of Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project, an album of new versions of the themes from various James Bond films. Almost all of the tracks were John Barry compositions and the revision of his work met with his approval — he contacted Barbara Broccoli, producer of the upcoming Tomorrow Never Dies, to recommend Arnold as the film's composer.[3] Arnold also went on to score the subsequent Bond films: The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. Industry trade papers reported during the late 1980s that the studio decided to go for "a new sound", coinciding with Timothy Dalton assuming the role of James Bond (replacing the departing Roger Moore).[citation needed] This occurred after The Living Daylights, Dalton's first film in the series, which was Barry's last Bond score-to-date. However, there are reports on the internet that Barry will return to the Bond series in 2008 to assist singer Beyonce on songs for the newest Bond film, Quantum of Solace (which will be scored mainly by David Arnold).[4]

[edit] Authorship of the "James Bond Theme"

Sole compositional credit for the "James Bond Theme" is attributed to Monty Norman, who was contracted as composer for Dr. No. However, Barry, while not publicly denying that, has implied otherwise. Some 30 years later, authorial matters came to a head in court when Norman sued The Sunday Times when that claim was published in a 1997 article naming Barry as the true composer; Barry testified for the defence.[5]

In court, Barry declared he had been handed a musical manuscript of a work by Norman (meant to become the theme) and that he was to arrange it musically, and that he composed additional music and arranged the "James Bond Theme". The Court also was told that Norman received sole credit, because of his prior contract with the producers; Norman won the lawsuit and was awarded damages. Nevertheless, on 7 September 2006, John Barry publicly defended his authorship of the theme on the Steve Wright show on BBC Radio 2.[6]

[edit] Other major film scores

[edit] Musicals

[edit] Television themes

[edit] Other works

  • The Americans
  • The Beyondness of Things
  • Eternal Echoes
  • Jazz Album (untitled) 2008
  • Concept Album 3 (untitled sequel of Eternal Echoes and The Beyondness of Things) 2008

John Barry was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Monty Norman v. The Sunday Times: The "James Bond Theme" Lawsuit. The John Barry Resource. Retrieved on 2006-11-24. “...pneumonia. His ruptured oesophagus in 1988 has left him vulnerable to this illness”
  2. ^ Waaktaar, Pal (interviewee). (2006). James Bond's Greatest Hits [Television]. UK: North One Television.
  3. ^ Macnee, Patrick (Narrator). The Bond Sound: The Music of 007 [DVD (Documentary)].
  4. ^ "Beyonce's Destiny with Bond", The London Paper. Retrieved on 2008-06-05. 
  5. ^ Monty Norman v. The Sunday Times: The "James Bond Theme" Lawsuit. The John Barry Resource. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
  6. ^ John Barry On The Bond Theme. MI6.co.uk (2006-09-09). Retrieved on 2006-11-24.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Monty Norman
Dr. No, 1962		 James Bond title artist
From Russia with Love, 1963		 Succeeded by
Shirley Bassey
Goldfinger, 1964
Preceded by
Nancy Sinatra
You Only Live Twice, 1967		 James Bond title artist
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1969		 Succeeded by
Shirley Bassey
Diamonds Are Forever, 1971
Preceded by
Monty Norman
1962		 James Bond film score composer
1962-1971		 Succeeded by
George Martin
1973
Preceded by
George Martin
1973		 James Bond film score composer
1974		 Succeeded by
Marvin Hamlisch
1977
Preceded by
Marvin Hamlisch
1977		 James Bond film score composer
1979		 Succeeded by
Bill Conti
1981
Preceded by
Bill Conti
1981		 James Bond film score composer
1983-1987		 Succeeded by
Michael Kamen
1989