Mister 8

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

John Barry’s theme for The IPCRESS File has an interesting place in the genealogy of the thriller score, both built on the work of the past, and, as with his scores for the 007 movies, influencing the future.

e|--7--7-7---7--|
B|--8--8-8-8-8--|
G|--9------9----|
D|--9-----------|
A|--7-----------|
E|--0-----------|

[See full tablature]

According to Barry in Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979, Barry’s score was influenced by Anton Karas’ zither work in one of the earliest espionage classics, Carol Reed’s The Third Man:

Like Bond, Palmer had the benefit of spying to a John Barry score. Along with The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The IPCRESS File represents Barry’s only significant non-Bond spy scoring. The composer made a distinct effort to differentiate the Palmer sound through mood and, most noticeably, instrumentation. Barry avoids the bombast of a typical Bond score by using smaller scale orchestration featuring vibes, piano, guitar, and most notably, a cimbalom (a melancholy-sounding stringed instrument traditionally played by Hungarian Jews or gypsies).

“The IPCRESS File was like my homage to The Third Man,” Barry recounted. “I knew that was how I wanted to do it from the start, but obviously I wasn’t going to use a zither.” (Pan Macmillan, p. 170)

Some of IPCRESS‘ quieter passages that rely on trombone, French horn and the piano’s lower register would not sound out of place on Thunderball, but the general absence of shock and awe rhapsodies helps differentiate IPCRESS from the Bond scores. In fact, some of the jazzier sections wouldn’t sound out of place on one of the crime jazz scores of the ’50s. And, years later, some of the murkier cues turned up on the exemplary trip-hop compilation Coffee Table Music. Among that album’s contributors was Grantby, a British production duo named for the villain in The IPCRESS File. The score is the most memorable of the three Palmer soundtracks.

After IPCRESS, the cimbalom became a mainstay of the serious thriller, turning up in Michael Small’s score for Klute, Lalo Schifrin’s for The Eagle Has Landed, and Roy Budd’s theme for The Sandbaggers, and was also featured in Barry’s theme for The Persuaders, which, like IPCRESS, featured the work of John Leach (who wrote a history of the cimbalom that can be found, if you have access, on JSTOR). The cimbalom was originally supposed to be featured in Barry’s score for King Rat, but the American cimbalom player couldn’t hack it, so the theme was played on a guitar instead.

Rumor has it that producer Saltzman wanted to separate the composer from his volatile director, Sidney J. Furie, but that the two met in secret and Barry hummed the score he’d so far completed. In Royal S. Brown’s
Overtones and Undertones, Barry says that his music was inspired by the different take on the thriller that Furie was making:

All the Bond scenes were all loud noises and up close. But in The IPCRESS File, Sidney Furie did this lovely fight scene outside of the Albert Hall, where they’re in the distance, on the top of the steps, and I have that arpeggio music going against it, and it was wonderful. Because you saw these two stupid men. It made you realize how stupid physical violence is. It had such a different effect, and I think a very penetrating effect, from what violence in the movies is all about.

Barry’s IPCRESS theme didn’t only have an effect on film score composers, but on contemporary electronic musicians, who often sample the cimbalom riff. For instance, the spytronica band Portishead use Barry’s work as the starting point for their song / short film To Kill a Dead Man:

The original release of The IPCRESS File on Decca Records featured an essay on Barry’s role in creating the spy music genre:

With the growing popularity of the “spy” novel, depicting the world of intrigue and violence of the secret agent, a new sound was born in contemporary music. One of the leading and most successful exponents of this new sound is John Barry, a 31-year-old composer of prolific output, who has soared to the pinnacle of his profession through his brilliant and imaginative writing for television and films.

His most recent achievement was his score for “Goldfinger,” the third in the James Bond 007 series starring Sean Connery still breaking box office records wherever it is played. This exciting and provocative score with its plentitude of inventive ideas was perfectly related to every mood and aspect of the film. The music, like the picture, was an immediate success, and the sound track album attained the number one position in the national best selling LP charts.

John Barry’s score for The Ipcress File will surely achieve the same kind of success.

Unlike the Bond films, The Ipcress File is not set against some exotic background with glamorous women and preposterous villains. This is the story of an anti-hero, played out against everyday settings in London, where a secret agent seems only unusual by the ordinariness of his protagonists.

It is the story of kidnapped scientists, of brain washing, and of the suspect undercover men of great power who will stop at virtually nothing to accomplish their diabolical deeds. The music of John Barry helps to create moods that are as exciting as they are unusual for this film. His effects are striking, urgent, compulsive, sinister--and even haunting--and are achieved through the use of a harp, flutes and the unusual Hungarian instrument called the cymbalum.

One of the reasons for the success of John Barry is that he makes the unusual acceptable. His compositions, particularly those for “Goldfinger” and The Ipcress File, and television shows (like “The Human Jungle,” a highly popular and successful series) introduce us to sounds that seem almost esoteric, yet they are never less than contemporary.

John Barry is a composer who is very much a part of the everyday scene, yet a man who is constantly moving ahead in his work. He is as experimental as he is practical and precise, and his music is as expressive and economical as it is rich in text and mood. Not so many years ago John Barry was playing with a beat group in London’s reknowned Soho, but since then his progression has been almost meteoric. He became widely known with his own group, The John Barry Seven, which did the exciting and colorful backings for the hit records of Adam Faith. From that period in his career he has never looked back, and few composers are more in demand for television and motion picture scoring than he.

“The Ipcress File” is the latest brilliant composition from this inventive and imaginative talent; and shortly John Barry will be in Hollywood to write the music for yet another major production. Here is a young man who has already achieved fantastic success in the world of music and who is destined for even greater success in the future: JOHN BARRY!

And here, in case you’d like to play along at home, is John Barry’s theme from The IPCRESS File:

I’d planned to have a recording of my own, demonstrating the correctness of my tablature, but unfortunately, my recording computer died shortly into my first draft. Here’s 33 seconds of a loosely edited guitar version of The IPCRESS File, played by yours truly:

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