Musical conspiracy
Just in time—in some territories at least—to celebrate James Bond’s Day. Here is an analysis and deconstruction of the iconic Nintendo 64 cartridge that brought 4-player couch multiplayer to universities and family houses everywhere alongside a little history about the music of the series.
Who says a game based around a tie-in license of an action movie cannot be good? Well, everyone since here we are dealing with pretty much the exception rather than the rule; and what an exception, considering we are dealing with a genre defining project that created new avenues for the shooters to explore other than run from A to B killing everything. In order to accomplish this your game only needs to come out the unheard amount of two years after the fact, be entrusted to the group of the most inexperienced developers at the company and offer them little direction or input in handling one of the biggest properties in media. That is the state in which developers at Rare operated while creating the game based around the famous agent James Bond and his latest movie meant to reinvent him as a less campy, modern spy taking on the Soviets. It was the first film in the series not to utilize any story elements from the works of the original novels of Ian Fleming (it just took the name GoldenEye from the author’s villa, which was in turn named after Ian Fleming’s love for the Carson McCullers’ novel Reflections in a Golden Eye).
For some bizarre reason the insular, almost all-in-house, family friendly Nintendo ended up acquiring the video game rights to this film perhaps as a way to expand their base of players into more adult territory in order to compete with the likes of Sony who had entered the market recently. They pitched it to their trusted British partners at Rareware who were reluctantly at first to work on it since they were also trying to focus on broad appeal games. Nevertheless, they still got the gig after a junior programmer at Rare fond of the Bond films pledged for the project and was entrusted the B-team(or even C-team) at Rare since the more experienced developers were working on other projects. They were very passionate though and were given almost total freedom and little time pressure from publisher Nintendo or the filmmakers, a situation that would be ridiculous nowadays, especially for such an iconic license.
This particular set of circumstances allowed the team to produce a polished and revolutionary first person shooter that took the 3D shot-everything-that-moves to new heights of stealth, strategy and true spy missions that expanded on the serious thriller aspirations of the movie.
Among the first timers working on the project was composer Grant Kirkhope, who joined in to help Graeme Norgate since he was busy with other soundtracks at the time. The musicians were allowed the license to use and hopefully not kill what is perhaps the most well known piece of film music in any way, shape or form they wanted. Something that other license holders were not granted with as much liberty. They played around with its core elements throughout the entire soundtrack, extracting every possible angle with their arrangements from the infinite source which is the sensual, cool and dangerous theme of the famous British secret service agent. Just like various famous musicians do when they are called to provide the Bond songs that accompany each movie. These core elements are well known and dissected, specially since the famous piece has with it its own particular story of intrigue and espionage, culminating in the nasty dispute about who actually wrote the iconic James Bond theme.
So here we get an opportunity to pivot into the most iconic piece of film music thanks to the game. We are getting into the details of this prominent piece of film music whose elements pervade all Bond media and are instantaneously recognizable. And which fortunately have been dissected by professional musicologists in a court of law because of the ongoing dispute between composers Monty Norman and John Barry. It is an interesting case that blurs the lines between what is a composer and what is an arranger, where one role starts and the other begins, what is meant by the ‘theme’ and how the rights to authorship should work. We are talking about millions of British Pounds in royalties that are on the table here. Since being the composer of the James Bond tune entails you to money from each and every piece of media where it is featured, including GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 which had a substantial impact on those royalty payments as was disclosed in court. So who really composed the theme? Was it one time composer of the very first film, Monty Norman or traditional series composer John Barry who went on to score the subsequent films? Well, we are legally required to say Monty Norman is the composer of the James Bond tune since he was the ultimate winner of the case, dubbing the following analysis hollow, void of merit and which in no way represents the true views of the Official Music Tracks channel, its viewers, the Video Game Music Shrine or Google LLC.
The James Bond Theme
The ingredients of the James Bond Theme, from which composers and songwriters take at liberty whenever something Bondy is on screen and which continue to be present in the DNA of the scores for the series have been already laid out by a professional. These are the parts of the theme that usually accompany the Bond barrel sequence at the beginning of each movie ( the ones foreshadowing the stardom of the agent in the FPS genre) as they were kinda dissected in court:
The James Bond Theme in Em originally written in 1962 for the film Dr. No:
Numbers indicate the time stamps.
- (0:00 – 0:07) The 007 Vamp: These four chromatic notes (in a minor tonality context) are enough to instantaneously situate us in the world of Bond. It is the basis of the harmonic profiles of the series and is naturally found all over the N64 game; bonus points for maintaining some pedal notes while the vamp happens. It is indeed the most fundamental ingredient of the James Bond sound but still too generic to merit a copyright or settle any dispute (that the vamp goes up to the 007 second mark was totally on purpose).
- (0:07 – 0:17) The guitar riff: Curiously the original was not even recorded with a proper electric guitar but instead an acoustic one with a pickup installed. As we will see later, its origins are in Hindustani music (the number 7 seven keeps appearing on the time stamps as an easter egg; this is truly the work of a mastermind).
- (0:17 – 0:20) The coda of the guitar riff: a chromatic descent that arrives at the important D# blues note.This is a key moment, specially for the court case, since these bluesier notes are a fundamental part of the main melody of the piece that will play in the jazz sections. A particular quirk of the GoldenEye 64 soundtrack is that Grant uses the E instead of the D# on the riff tail, reducing further the jazzier tendencies of the original and making it sound less playful and less coherent with the main melody that features D# as a core note. No way to know if this was intentional or if it is just the way Grant heard it; in any case with more strict licensers who knows if they would allow to modify this note.
- (0:20 – 0:30) Repeat of guitar riff: with brass foreshadowing the main melody
- (0:30 – 0:34) Guitar riff coda
- (0:34 – 0:41) Repeat of the 007 Vamp: the brass is roaring to go
All this should be considered pretty much the pre-intro and a long intro. Some people argue that the guitar riff should be considered the Bond main theme. This is one of the key points of contention in the legal dispute. This does not make sense as far as a theme is and this entire part was not even used to open the first movie since the film begins with the bebop sections which are next.
- (0:41 – 0:54) The Bebop 1 (A Section): This is the main melody, two question-answer blocks using blues notes and chromatic trombone responses
- (0:54 – 1:07) Bebop 1 repeat: Higher pitches equals excitement (of course the A section runs till the 07 mark too. Pure genius)
- (1:07 – 1:14) Bebop 2 (B Section) – melody based around the guitar riff notes
- (1:14 – 1:17) B Section climax: which will go on to become the Opening Fanfare in future arrangements of the theme, including GoldenEye 007 (not even the Bible has this much focus on the number 7)
- (1:17 – 1:21) The 007 Vamp: It is shorter than the first time around
- (1:21 – 1:31) The guitar riff
- (1:31 – 1:34) The guitar riff coda
- (1:34 – 1:41) The coda of the full piece: Also based around the notes of the main melody
- (1:41 – ) The 007 chord: an E minor major 9. A unique blend of notes that results in a striking, dissonant sound. The chord can sound mysterious, dangerous, and even slightly unsettling – precisely the feelings required for the thrilling Bond world.
The theme encapsulates everything about the spy genre; daring, sleek, dangerous, suave sophistication, danger, intrigue, you name it, combining popular trends of the era like the twangy, reverb surf electric guitar with big band sounds and strings. It is the theme that keeps on giving; we are talking about a series that has its own movie dedicated exclusively to the music so it is a big deal. The full theme was not used on the first film though but instead chopped in parts throughout it.
This sound for the spy genre can be traced back to its codification by American composer Henry Mancini in the Peter Gunn television series. James Bond just made it more mysterious, seductive and dangerous
This is a more happy and less ruthless James Bond yet the sinister chromaticism and fusion of cool jazz with recent guitar centric genres like surf and rock n roll is already present; Bond just adds more dramatic flair. Virtually every producer of cop and detective shows that followed demanded jazz scores for their heroes, including those of the British secret service agent. Even today we hear it in scores ranging from The Incredibles to Cowboy Bebop.
The kernel of the 007 theme song and the first thing that came into existence was indeed the guitar riff. It has a strange origin. There is a reason why it can sound Oriental and that is because this ostinato (derived from the Italian word for obstinate) was originally meant for a piece in a stage musical based on the A House for Mr Biswas novel written several years earlier that was shelved due to high production costs. It was a story about an Hindu struggling abroad. The song was titled ‘Bad Sign, Good Sign’ and was your typical Hindustani music. Written by Monty Norman, a contributor to West End musicals in the 1950s and 1960s, the full song was only recorded in recent times in order to showcase how it would have sounded.
Monty Norman was invited to write the film score of the first James Bond movie because the producers liked his work on the 1961 theatre production Belle. Norman was busy with musicals, and only agreed to do the music for Dr. No after they arranged for him to travel along with the crew to Jamaica. He wrote the score but the team was not sure about the opening theme for the movie. They wanted something modern, commercial, something that captured the confident swaggering of their character. Monty originally proposed a theme for opening the film, the Western sounding Dr No’s Fantasy:
The plot thickens since in court the musicologist for Norman argued that this piece contains the inspiration for the main melody of what became the James Bond theme, the bebop 1 part. The piece certainly follows on the steps of Peter Gunn and other detectives, specially the focus on the twangy guitar and the chromatic ostinatos. So the ideas were there. However, the theme was deemed as not as exciting as it could be, so the producers called John Barry in, a popular musician at the time in the UK with his jazz combo famous for combining the cool jazz sounds with the driving rhythms of rock’n’roll. He was called as an arranger to flesh out some of the ideas of Monty Norman for the main theme. The pair talked and Barry was given the lead sheet for the Indian song Bad Sign, Good Sign that Norman felt captured the essence of James Bond.
Here is where the bitter battle over the “James Bond Theme” which has been waged for years, begins. There is contradicting information about how much the two men discussed or whether all that John Barry went with was the melody of the guitar riff. What is true is that the final product is unmistakably in the John Barry orchestra style, with exciting brass arrangements and bold melodic movements.
The 007 vamp, which are the four chromatic notes, was definitively a contribution by John Barry. He even had used in earlier songs like ‘Poor Me’ by Adam Faith:
In any case this is a common phrase used in multiple songs and a trick well known by arrangers, like the original inspiration for John Barry, ‘Nightmare’by Artie Shawn. They are just four notes after all that nonetheless will be forever associated with Bond.
So the vamp and the guitar riff have clear origins. When it comes to the rest of the composition, specially the bebop 1 and 2 that were delivered by John Barry, the defense of Monty Norman argued successfully that they all come from the guitar riff and somehow the ‘Dr No’s Fantasy’ which was the first option for the opening theme. Both the main melody of the theme and the coda of the guitar riff, which feature prominently the minor second interval between D# and D were supposedly taken from guitar chords that play in ‘Dr No’s Fantasy’ (roughy at the 0:33 mark). Even if this stretch was true, the melody from the A section is completely original and it is a part that goes beyond simple arrangement; it is the A section after all, the part that anyone on the street would hum as the James Bond song. The bebop 2 section was said to be derived from the guitar riff. This claim makes more sense since they have the same notes yet a melody is not only the notes but also the rhythm in which they are played, which in this case is different from the guitar riff. So it would be correct to say they are derived but not that they are an ‘arrangement’ of the guitar riff.
So, to not make the story too long, pretty much all the jazzy parts of the piece plus the idea for 007 vamp comes from arranger John Barry; his combo recorded the theme too. While the guitar riff is the only thing that comes directly from Monty Norman. Due to the way the deal for the movie was made back then this meant that Monty Norman was credited as the sole composer of the theme while John Barry was only paid an arranger’s flat fee of £250 and the promise of future work in the James Bond series. He signed the contract knowing that this was gonna be the case (although he did not expected the theme to be used all over the film).
Monty Norman has collected royalties for the Bond theme ever since which just from 1976 to 1999 were disclosed to be around £600,000 and probably much more due to the incredible success of the new installments in the new century.
Just so you can see the impact of the video game GoldenEye 007 and the Brosnan era in royalties here are the disclosed amounts between 1992 and 1999:
1992: £29,000
1993: £20,000
1994: £23,000
1998: £112,000
1999: £213,000
All from the guitar riff that kickstarted the composition.
It is safe to say—or not if the Monty Norman state is reading this—that the end result was a collaborative endeavour and that the definition of arranger was taken too far. In a fair world John Barry should have been credited at the very least as a co-composer. He technically never sued since all the legal disputes were between Monty Norman and other parties. Still, he was never too worried about the royalties since he was indeed selected to score and give musical identity to the James Bond franchise, identity which was controversially revamped alongside the James Bond cast and tone for the 1995 film GoldenEye, which brought us the game and brings us back to its soundtrack.
For anyone wanting to go down the rabbit hole of the legal proceedings here is an account of them and how the verdict was arrived at: http://www.jollinger.com/barry/lawsuit.htm
GoldenEye 007
Going back to the game, the main inspiration for the music from GoldenEye 64 is, naturally, the controversial score by Eric Serra for the 1995 film. What was criticized in the movie as not being in line with the classic John Barry jazz scores worked wonders for the video game and was embraced by a new generation of Bond enthusiasts just as the producers of the new era hoped. It just was in a different medium. French composer Eric Serra was initially called on to give a more modern take on the music for Bond in order to bring what the script itself acknowledged as a “dinosaur of the Cold War era” into the 90s. The Bond producers liked very much the industrial, synth heavy sounds of Serra’s Leon: The Professional and wanted something with that flavor for GoldenEye. However, they did not expected such a departure from the classic sound, as Serra delivered an avant-garde score that did not please James Bond purists. Director Martin Campbell, who has by now revitalized the series in the same way twice as he was also the director of Casino Royale, felt that Eric Serra was difficult to work with, with very little communication between them; he even asked the composer to rewrite an entire scene of a tank chase since the music did no fit at all. They wanted at least a little bit of the bashing Bond theme. After Serra declined to do so they called in another composer to rescore that scene.
In any case the soundtrack deemphasizes the sultry, playful jazz elements in favor of sounds more akin to a serious spy thriller which is what the movie was trying to accomplish anyway. Even the gun barrel sequence opening is unlike any other Bond film.
The Industrial score for GoldenEye already includes what would come to be an iconic sound of the game and 90s thrillers, the metal clang that sounds like the sonar of a Soviet submarine or a factory pipe being hit underground.
The composers for the N64 start from this sonic landscape created for the film: the beat based industrial percussion, the almost non existent bebop sensibilities, the synth sounds, the unnatural sounding choirs and of course the sonar sound that sets the mood. The composers went into the trouble of finding the particular sample in the E-MU Proteus FX sound module—named sfx:Infinite—and ran with it, making it an indelible part of the score.
Here is the sample in its original form: https://freesound.org/people/stringly/sounds/197904/
It needs to be pitched up 1 and a half semitones to be exactly the one.
Which the sound designers themselves created in turn most likely by striking a tambourine with something metallic and then pitching it down. Here is what is most likely the original pitch of the sample and how the sound is arrived after pitching it down:
Yet, unlike the Eric Serra score, the game is more melodic, rocks harder and embraces more the James Bond tradition by using its theme as the basis of pretty much every single cue. Grant Kirkhope and Graeme Norgate job was to just play around with the different parts of the James Bond Theme and incorporate them with the industrial beats they conjured. They mostly limit themselves to the 007 vamp, the guitar riff and bebop 1 (A Section); bebop 2 does not receive as much love. There are callbacks to other James Bond soundtracks like the Goldfinger song (and its use of the elephant brass sound that was brought to great effect throughout the N64 soundtrack), or The A View to Kill song; Grant Kirkhope has said that he studied closely all of the Bond songs. Even the rejected Eric Serra tank chase music is used as the basis of a GoldenEye 007 track.
Musical Analysis
But only Grant Kirkhope and his love of mallet sounds—or rather the fact that they didn’t require a lot of memory to sound good— can bring a music box sound into a James Bond OST. The same music box that was used for the tender ‘Piranha Plant Lullaby’ in Super Mario 64 now personifies the cold ambient of a Severnaya bunker. This is Christmas music for the Soviet Union. The ominous music box showcases the 007 vamp at its most clear form, an unrelenting progression in Am leaving three pedal notes C, B, A while the base note changes in the 007 chromatic fashion E – F – Gb – F. It forms the chords Am – F – Gbdim – F. And that is all you need to kickstart your Bond song. As long as there are these four chromatic notes you have the sound (for example you could replace the Gdim for D major (or D7 to keep the pedal notes) and since it also includes the Gb and A notes it would still sound like Bond, as heard in the chord progression for the Casino Royale and Skyfall songs.
The rest is just standard procedure, using the James Bond signature melodies in creative ways. In the Bunker 2 atmospheric cue written by Grant Kirkhope we can hear the male choir in an unnatural sounding register and the low strings also playing with the 007 vamp; The high strings, trombones and synthesized brass (the elephant sample) are doing their own version of the guitar riff. The entire ambient of the track is built with only those two elements. No sight of the bebop parts here. Since we are in a Russian military bunker, this is one of the few tracks not reliant on the Serra industrial beats but instead a traditional military march snare.
The lack of memory back then meant that composers had to reuse sounds throughout their soundtracks, meaning these sounds sort of became characters themselves and gave the games personality and an identity.
The success of the GoldenEye 007 video game which was more transcendental than the film itself, something very few licensed products can say, means that Grant Kirkhope and Graeme Norgate have become an important part of the prestigious tradition of James Bond music.
As a fun fact, since the developer avatars can be found in the game as soldiers, pictured here in the visualization are two Grant Kirkhopes shooting their guns.
What other GoldenEye music or games would you like to see featured?
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