Who actually wrote the James Bond theme?

Grab a martini as we investigate this mystery...

Beth Collier

Oct 15, 2021

No Time to Die (2021) - Photo Gallery - IMDb

While some debate the merits of Connery vs Craig, I’m more interested in the music from the films.

Especially the James Bond theme.

There’s something about that mix of horns, strings, and surf guitar.

You can feel the tension as the strings slowly build.

It’s mysterious, exciting, and full of intrigue.

But who wrote the James Bond theme?

It seems like a simple question to ask, but the answer is complicated.

When I looked up the song on Apple Music, I found John Barry’s name attached.

But when I looked online, I found Monty Norman credited.

How could there be two people attributed with the song?

I was curious...

After producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli acquired the rights to the James Bond novels, he reached out to Monty Norman, a British theatre composer he had worked with a few years earlier on the musical, Belle or the Ballad of Dr. Crippen.

“Cubby Broccoli rang me and asked me to come to his office to meet his new partner,” Norman said.

“He said they had just acquired the rights to Ian Flemming's James Bond novels and were going to turn them into films. The first one was going to be Dr. No and would I like to do the score?”

Broccoli made Norman an offer he couldn’t refuse – the chance to work on the music for James Bond – during an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica, where they were shooting the film.

Norman headed to Jamaica, and soaked up the island atmosphere while he worked on the film’s music.

But his inspiration for the theme came from his bottom drawer – and a song he had written for a musical called A House for Mr. Biswas (based on the book by VS Naipaul).

Norman’s musical featured traditional Indian instruments, but it never made it to the stage.

But the song Bad Sign, Good Sign that he wrote for the musical was the inspiration for that guitar riff that is the ‘dum-di-dum-dum-dum, dum...’ in the Bond theme.

“I thought ‘What would happen if I split the notes?’,” Norman said.

“And immediately, the moment I did that, I realized that this is what I was looking for. His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness – it's all there in a few notes.”

But despite creating a memorable riff, Norman admits he needed help with the orchestration. Other accounts suggest that Norman’s rough draft of the score fell a bit flat with the Bond producers.

Either way, that’s when a young composer named Steve Barry came onboard.

Barry was an up-and-coming musician who had just composed and arranged the music for the 1960 film Beat Girl.

The Bond producers were keen for Barry to infuse some of the jazzy feel of Beat Girl into Bond – and Barry was eager to get the exposure the Bond film might offer him.

Norman was given full songwriting credit (and royalties) for his work on Bond, and legally, he is the composer of the James Bond Theme.

Barry, on the other hand, was paid a flat fee of £250 for his musical contributions to the film. His friend, 25-year-old guitarist Vic Flick, was said he was paid a whopping $15 US for playing the infamous guitar riff in the surf style (though he began receiving royalties in the mid-90s).

Dr. No was a smash - and so was the music associated with the film.

For the next Bond film, producers hired Oliver! composer Lionel Bart to compose the score. But Bart only got through the title song before Barry was hired to compose the rest.

Barry also created the scores for 11 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1987, and went on to become a celebrated film score composer, winning five Academy Awards for his scores for films including Born Free, Out of Africa, and Dances with Wolves.

Norman didn’t work on any other Bond films, but had an award-winning career writing West End and Broadway musicals.

But Barry’s name became synonymous with 007, and his continued involvement led many to believe he had written the Bond theme.

007 Skyfall GIF - 007 Skyfall James bond GIFs

In fact, the UK Sunday Times wrote an article in 1997 that said Barry composed the theme based on Norman’s idea. Norman sued for libel.

During the trial, the James Bond Theme was broken down into six sections, and experts argued over who created the ‘vamp’ (the repetitive rhythm underneath the melody that sets the tone for the piece), the ‘riff’ (the main guitar melody famously played by Flick), and ‘bebop 1’ and ‘bebop 2’ (Badap ba daa ba da daa...), the first and second parts of the iconic brassy jazz section.

The case was complicated, but the jury found that Norman had been libelled when the Sunday Times claimed John Berry was the true author of the theme. They awarded him £30,000 in damages.

Barry died in 2011. He and Norman never buried the hatchet over the Bond theme. When asked if Norman had any regrets about that, he replied:

‘None whatsoever. I did not like him.’

BONUS: I was still curious…so I went to the source material.

If you listen to Norman’s Bad Sign, Good Sign you can hear the riff from Bond.

But if you listen to Barry’s music from Beat Girl you can hear the jazz and orchestration that also feels like Bond.

Perhaps we can agree that Bond benefitted from the contributions of both musicians?

**If you really want to go down the rabbit hole tracing the music’s possible inspiration, listen to the opening lines of Barry's arrangement for the 1960 UK hit song Poor Me.

But then listen to Artie Shaw’s Nightmare from 1936.

And the big band swagger you might associate with the 1960s Bond can also be heard in Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme, which came out in 1959.

***PS: that ‘dum-di-dum-dum-dum, dum...’ in the Bond theme sounds a lot cooler when you aren’t associating it with an unlucky sneeze.

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