The Persuaders Theme

July 1st, 2009

The Persuaders Theme

I’ve been searching high and low, and it seems that while information about the film scores of John Barry, who also wrote the music for some series about a spy named James something or other, is abundant, much of the history of his work for television, including today’s spotlighted theme, has been lost to the ages.

    Am    Am9  Em   Em9
e|---5----7----7----7---|
B|---5----5----8----7---|
G|---5----5----9----9---|
D|---7----7----9----9---|
A|---7----7----7----7---|
E|---5----5-------------|

[See full tablature]

The Persuaders wasn’t really a spy show. It’s more of a buddy adventurers show, starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as a pair of playboys who help people in trouble. Still, the Barry connection, plus the supreme awesomeness that is this theme made it irresistible for me (with the help of Simon Rigot) to tab out. The theme was featured in what has to be one of the greatest opening sequences of all time:

One of the few bits I could find on the theme comes from this unsourced section of Barry’s Wikipedia entry:

One of Barry’s best known compositions is the theme for the 1971 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 score for the series was composed by Ken Thorne.The theme went on 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.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call the Persuaders a disco theme. It’s got more in common with Roy Budd’s later theme for The Sandbaggers, and Barry’s own theme for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, than anything Gloria Gaynor ever did. Still, the track was definitely a product of its time, and was marketed as a single through this strange performance by Pan’s People on Top of the Pops:

Filed Under : John Barry, The Persuaders

About

Mister 8 is a blog about secret agents, spies, international crime-fighters and other characters and tropes of spy fiction, and an occasional comic featuring the titular Mister 8 and his work for DOS. This blog is published as often as the author can muster the energy to do so, and content ranges widely from talk of TV shows and movies, to scans of out-of-print comics, to tabs and chords from the great spy themes.

We welcome any feedback, either via the comments section of each post, or through our contact page!

Field Reports

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Debbie Mazar, better known as “Tatia Loring” on the I Spy forum, recently got her hands on some unproduced scripts written by Ernie Frankel, and, while she can’t share the scripts themselves, is posting her copious notes for the rest of us to peruse! Up first: “The Day They Gave the Bride Away”.

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Greg Hatcher at Comic Book Resources’ Comics Should Be Good blog takes a look at young adult novels today, including a lengthy look at Christopher Cool, a character created by James Bond comic strip writer James Lawrence.

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Discussion (2)¬

Tanner says:

Wed | Jul 01 | 2009 at 9:17 pm

Man do I love this show… AND its music. It’s really cool that you figured out the guitar tabs. If I played, I’d be all over that! But I don’t just love Barry’s theme, I also love, love, LOVE all of Ken Thorne’s incidental music. The prospect of an eventual five-disc soundtrack set from Network, ala their soundtracks for other ITC shows, has me positively salivating! I really, really hope that happens. The Persuaders! was full of great music.
A.S. says:

Sun | Jul 05 | 2009 at 1:39 pm

Now that they’ve done the Protectors, they HAVE to do the Persuaders, right? Right?

Mister 8