Back in the 80s, when streaming was the fantasy of science fiction writers, if you wanted to listen to an album without actually buying it you had to go to the library. Fortunately Luton Central Library - a beautiful 1960s building which, I am sad to report, has been horribly modernised and has lost all its charm - had a great record library. From there I managed to get a loan of this album: James Bond Greatest Hits.
All the James Bond themes, plus some extra tracks from the soundtracks. This being the 1980s, I immediately made a copy of it, recording it to a blank C90 tape. (Home taping didn't kill music, as it turned out). And then I played that album into the ground, along with my cassette of the Licence To Kill soundtrack. To this day, when I'm listening to Bond music, there's a part of me that expects Bond 77 to be followed by Moonraker.
The music companies have continued to issue albums of Bond themes, no longer needing to pad them out with instrumentals, and usually turning up when a new film comes out. Sometimes they add on a rarity - a remix of the James Bond Theme, or the superb Parodi/Fair backing track from the GoldenEye soundtrack - but usually it's pretty simple. Twenty-odd tracks.
Except it's not that simple.
In this age of streaming and playlists, it should be easy to create a definite track listing for the 2020 version of James Bond Greatest Hits. But you can't, because there are a load of side issues that nag at someone like me who has an overanalytical mind.
Let's start with the number of tracks on the playlist. Twenty-five, right? One for each film? (For the purposes of this discussion we are discounting Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again, because that's a whole different layer of complexity). Except: On Her Majesty's Secret Service has two themes - the instrumental title track, and We Have All The Time In The World. Do you put just one of them in, and if so, which one? No, the correct procedure is to put them both in, meaning your playlist now has twenty-six tracks. But... does that also mean we should be including one or all of the songs from Dr No, since that film also has an instrumental theme playing over the title sequence? In fact, Three Blind Mice shows up while Maurice Binder is still playing around. Is that as much of an alternative theme as We Have All The Time In The World?
Let's say no, and put them in the category of secondary themes. We can of course agree that the secondary vocal tracks cannot be included. No Make It Last All Night, no Where Has Every Body Gone, no Surrender, no matter how much better than Tomorrow Never Dies it may be. And yes, sadly, that means no The Experience of Love. So now we're adding the theme tunes, and it goes like this:
1. James Bond Theme (1:48)
2. From Russia With Love (2:35)
3. Goldfinger (2:50)
4. Thunderball (3:03)
5. You Only Live Twice (2:47)
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (2:35)
7. We Have All The Time In The World (3:15)
8. Diamonds Are Forever (2:43)
Hang on. Let's just pause for a second with that track. The usual version of Diamonds Are Forever is roughly 2 minutes 43 seconds long (I'm taking all the timings from my iTunes, so there may some slight variation with what it says on your platform of choice). That one has a ten second intro until The Bass starts singing.
However, in 2003 the Diamonds Are Forever soundtrack was remastered and reissued. This new issue includes the title song as it is heard in the film: a crashing opening note, then an extended intro, meaning it's 20 seconds until we get the vocals. The new version is 2:53. So which is the correct version to put in our theoretically definitive playlist?
Instinctively, I would say "the version that's in the film", so the longer version with the initial note that scared the bejesus out of me the first time I listened to the new soundtrack goes in.
8. Diamonds Are Forever (2:53)
And we have immediately created a rod for our own back. The next film, Live and Let Die, features a title song that runs to 3 minutes 13 seconds on the soundtrack. That's standard. The title sequence, however, as seen on this YouTube video, is only 2 minutes 47 seconds long. Even taking into account the fact that the running speed is faster, there's a chunk missing: the distinctive falling strings after one minute. If we're going to apply the rule that we use the version of the title song that's in the film to Diamonds Are Forever, then we should surely use the same for Live and Let Die? Unfortunately, this version doesn't seem to have been released anywhere, so we're left with the full album version on our playlist.
9. Live and Let Die (3:13)
10. The Man With The Golden Gun (2:37)
Tragically there's no room for the awesome Goodnight, Goodnight/Sleep well, my dear/No need to fear/JAMES BOND IS HERE! end credits version of The Man With The Golden Gun. That belongs on an entirely different playlist.
For The Spy Who Loved Me, we once again have a division between the album version and the film version. On the album, there's a fade-out; in the film, there's a "baby, baby, baby, you're the best" and then a final note. The fade out version does appear at the end, but there it's preceded by a camptastic male voice choir version, so that's not right either. Once again, however, there's no commercial release of the title sequence version, so we're stuck with the album track, and a gnawing sense that it's just not right.
11. Nobody Does It Better (3:13)
12. Moonraker (3:12)
13. For Your Eyes Only (3:07)
14. All Time High (3:06)
15. A View To A Kill (3:35)
As you may have noticed, the length of these tracks has been slowly creeping upwards. With The Living Daylights, we got our first Bond theme to cross the four minute mark, coming in at 4:17. This obviously could not stand for Maurice Binder; there were only so many nipples he could put onscreen before things got silly. Rather than create his own edit, however, he simply faded the track out after two and a half minutes. Again, this short version has never been released, so the full album version will have to do. Deploy your volume control to simulate the film experience.
16. The Living Daylights (4:17)
Now we've reached Licence To Kill, and this is where things get complicated. Normally you would turn to the soundtrack album for the definitive version, but track one there comes in at a full five minutes seventeen seconds. There's a much longer intro, plus some repetition in the chorus, which meant a single version was released that was a whole minute shorter. Interestingly, even the compilation creators couldn't decide which version to use - for 2002's The Best of Bond they use the album version, but for 2008's The Best of Bond... James Bond they revert to the single version. There had been single versions before - in 1967, Nancy Sinatra released a groovetastic version of her own - but this was the first time the producers put the different version in the film.
Adding an extra frisson of difficulty is the fact that the single edit is still too long for the titles, so Binder chops out the entire first verse and chorus, meaning Gladys Knight's first proper line after her intro scatting is "Hey babe!", which doesn't seem very respectful. We'll be going with the single edit, because that's the shortest version available.
17. Licence To Kill (4:12)
In retrospect, Licence To Kill was a sign of things to come. From here on out the soundtrack album contained only one theoretical version of the theme tune. It's not necessarily going to be the definitive version because (a) they might have chopped out a load of the song to make it fit the titles and (b) there could be a single edit which is different yet canonical. GoldenEye is a case in point. The soundtrack has a longer intro and at the end, it fades out with Tina Turner repeating the title. The single edit has the doesn't have the range "GoldenEYYYYYYYYYYYE!" with the crashing final notes, and that's the ending that makes it into the film. A bit galling if you've bought the soundtrack album. The single therefore goes into the playlist.
18. GoldenEye (3:30)
Once again, for Tomorrow Never Dies, a thirty seconds shorter single version was released; this has an instrumental midsection and ends faster. That can go in the playlist.
19. Tomorrow Never Dies (4:24)
Good news! For the 19th Bond film, both the soundtrack album and the single version were the same length, 3:58.
Bad news! In the title sequence, they cut out an entire verse (it's the one with there's no point in living if you can't feel alive, so maybe it was done for spoiler reasons). So The World Is Not Enough makes it onto the playlist direct from the soundtrack album, but it's still kind of wrong.
20. The World Is Not Enough (3:58)
Another single edit for Die Another Day, this time 3 minutes 31 seconds long versus the 4 minute 39 seconds of the album version.
21. Die Another Day (3:31)
With Casino Royale they got round the whole album vs single mix by not including the theme song at all. Which was annoying. But more annoying was the fact that, for the first time ever, the commercial version of the song differed from the film version lyrically. At the two minute point in the 4:02 single, Chris Cornell sings:
"...I've seen diamonds cut through harder men..."
In the film, he sings:
"...I've seen this diamond cut through harder men..."
So a Bond nerd (that's me) in search of the proper version must instead turn to Chris Cornell's album Carry On, which actually does include the film lyric. (The Best of Bond... James Bond has the "this diamond" version, so I think we can safely say this is the preferred wording).
22. You Know My Name (4:00)
23. Another Way To Die (4:24)
24. Skyfall (4:49)
25. Writing's On The Wall (4:39)
In the case of the last three Daniel Craig themes, the single edits are longer than the version in the titles, but they're all we have to use so I'm afraid that's what we have to settle for.
26. No Time To Die (4:02)
Which brings us right up to date. The soundtrack to No Time To Die will apparently include the theme song for once, though who knows what version this will be: perhaps there will be an extra minute at the end of Billie Eilish noodling. All in all, I think we can agree that until the producers release a compilation album that consists only of the music ripped directly from the title sequence, there will be an eternal debate about the contents of the perfect Bond playlist. At least in my head.
NEXT TIME: we compare the four remixes of Die Another Day on the CD singles and ask: which one is shittiest?
