The James Bond Theme You've Never Heard

It didn't work out very well.

I’ve never been much of a fan of James Bond pictures, which tend to seem like the same damned movie over and over again, with the locations changed and different breast sizes on the girls, and I don’t find the whole Bond thing as amusing as some people do.

I know that at a certain point in the past they were supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I guess I had better things to do with my tongue.

The only Bond movies I’ve ever paid to see in a theater, for whatever reasons, are The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), which I can barely remember, and some Pierce Brosnan tedium machine from around 1996 that I can’t remember at all, except that it seemed like I could pick Brosnan up and toss him across the room if the mood were to strike me. (Not so with Daniel Craig, who appears capable of removing my spleen with a set of car keys).

Back in the 70s, though, there were maybe one-tenth as many franchise movies as there are today, so Bond’s return to the screen was always viewed as a “special event,” even if the movies themselves had long ceased to be anything but a rehashed series of sex and gadget-related tics, if they were ever anything more than that to begin with.

There was, however, one rather entertaining aspect of this Pavlovian mass hyperventilation—each picture, without fail, was accompanied by a pounding theme song performed by a carefully selected, vaguely inappropriate recording artist. Even if they weren’t very good, these releases almost always became ubiquitous radio hits during the eight or nine weeks that the picture itself was packing them into theaters.

The key to a good Bond theme was lots of overheated drama—screaming brass, rumbling drums, and someone shouting over the top of it. Once in a while, a catchy Top 40 ballad broke through, like “Nobody Does it Better” in 1977 (even though Carly Simon, as was her custom, sings much of it off-pitch), but bigger was usually better.

“Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney and Wings (aka “Paul McCartney”) is a perfect example. It may be ridiculous coming from McCartney—imagine him even trying to load a gun—but there’s no denying its glossy gargantuanism. It was a huge hit all over the planet.

That goofy, galumphing passage (“What does it matter to ya...”) adds just the right touch of cheekiness, something that tells you you’re not supposed to take this all that seriously, although the fact that McCartney hadn’t taken anything whatsoever seriously for at least five years before he recorded the tune should have been a strong enough clue.

So, yeah. I think loud, stupid stuff works best in this particular situation. Some folks go for “Live and Let Die,” and some go for Shirley Bassey driving the point home straight from her six-packed diaphragm with “Goldfinger.” But my favorite Bond theme has to be Tom Jones’ rendition of “Thunderball,” which is nothing less than a tribute to selfish, arrogant testosterone.

It is not subtle.

Wow! Decca Records obviously spared no expense on their packaging! Did they even know Tom Jones?! I hope they didn’t have to wait too long for the pharmacy to develop the film.

Jones, whose macho voice and unapologetic crotch-thrusting persona I’ve always very much enjoyed, sells “Thunderball” as if his family will be shot if the record doesn’t make it to number one.

Frankly, the intensity level of that makes Jones seem a bit crazy. It’s not as if the timpani-riffic arrangement is designed to keep him in check, either. I love it. I’m not sure what it means for a person to “strike like thunderball,” but it must be pretty heavy stuff, given the degree of histrionics involved.

If the story is to be believed, Jones almost passed out in the recording studio when he pushed for that Big Finish. "I closed my eyes and I held the note for so long,” he later said, “when I opened my eyes, the room was spinning."

---

With that kind of commitment to way too much, it might surprise you who the producers originally hired to write and perform the theme to Thunderball way back in 1964. I’d tell you to guess, but there’s no way you’d ever get there, even if I gave you a list of the fifty top musical acts from the period—I actually know the answer and I still can’t believe it.

So drop those visions of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett or, you know, the Righteous Brothers. Or even Question Mark & the Mysterians. You’re not even warm. Try instead...

Johnny Cash.

Yep. That Johnny Cash. And if you’re thinking that would sound ridiculous, you’d be 100% correct. Get a load of this while you imagine Sean Connery running around in a tuxedo and dragging a babe in a torn evening gown by the arm.

Understand—I fully appreciate Johnny Cash. He was a brave, confrontational musician, and he recorded a lot of great music.

But come on. A James Bond theme?!! Was Roy Acuff too busy?

To be fair to Cash, the Bond series’ brilliant composer, John Barry, wrote and twice recorded a Thunderball theme called “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (coincidentally, a former nickname of mine) with Bassey and Dionne Warwick, respectively, but United Artists rejected it both times because it didn’t contain the oft-used word “thunderball.”

I don’t know whose idea it was to contact Cash, but that person was thinking so far outside the box it makes the very concept of boxes seem quaint. This guy was thinking outside the universe.

The whole situation is so dumbfounding it’s hard to even make a joke about it. Frankly, the situation is the joke, and how nobody put the kibosh on it before Cash was actually in the studio playing his signature “chick-a-boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom” is beyond me.

I’ll tell you what, though, I would have loved to have been there when some poor underling was forced to call Johnny Cash and tell him the producers rejected his song because he sounds too much like Johnny Cash.