Mister 8

The Best of James Bond 30th Anniversary Collection

Music by Monty Norman, arranged by John Barry

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[See the full tablature]

There are probably hundreds of tablature versions of the James Bond theme on the internet. So why bother putting up a new one? There are two reasons:

Because many, if not most, of the tabs aren’t even close to sounding like the Bond theme, or only feature little bits, or get wrong the EmM79 (thanks to Spy-Fi for the correct name! see comments below) chord at the end. This one at least sounds mostly right.

And because, though it’s overplayed, overexposed, and perhaps overhyped, it was the original. Through all the imitators, the James Bond Theme remains one of the best, most memorable pieces of film music ever.

For detailed information on the lawsuit over who actually created the song, check out the John Barry Resource.

Dr. No Soundtrack

(Ignore the fact that yesterday I said we’d be moving on from James Bond, and bear with me one more day!)

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[See the full tablature to "Dr. No's Fantasy"]

[See the full tablature to "The James Bond Theme"]

One of my guilty spy soundtrack pleasures is Monty Norman’s score for Dr. No. Though most of what is heard on the soundtrack appears only there and not in the film itself, I enjoy the Carribean style flair that Norman provides for the first James Bond adventure. Norman tells his version of the creation of the James Bond theme on his website, and this includes how he came to work for the Bond producers. Long story short, Cubby Broccoli was a producer on a musical called Belle, or The Ballad of Dr. Crippen, for which Norman had provided the music and lyrics. The production failed, but Broccoli admired Norman’s work, and so hired him on to produce the soundtrack for the first film made from the recently acquired James Bond rights.

And so, in Jamaica, surrounded by tropical atmosphere, Norman composed most of the score for Dr. No, including the song Underneath the Mango Tree, sung by both Ursula Andress and Sean Connery in the film. But the James Bond film still needed a theme. The legend, from Norman’s viewpoint at least, goes that, working with a young orchestrator named John Barry, Norman turned a song from an abandoned V.S. Naipaul musical into the classic Bond theme.

But the legend also goes that this wasn’t his first attempt. There on the soundtrack is a song called “The James Bond Theme” that is not the familiar tune.

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According to defense attorneys for the Sunday Times, during the infamous libel lawsuit filed by Norman, the song titled “Dr. No’s Fantasy,” was the original submitted theme for 007. Norman dismisses this as a myth, saying that he considered, but rejected this song without submitting to producers, and that he had nothing to do with the titles used for the final album. However, “Dr. No’s Fantasy” was cited by Norman and his attorneys as influencing the middle section of the final Bond theme.

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In any case, the riff appears multiple times on the album, in the two songs above and in the well-known “Twistin’ With James,” which is in the same key as “Dr. No’s Fantasy,” with intense sax solos that…well, I didn’t feel like figuring them out. If you want to play “Twistin’ With James,” then improvise!