John Barry (born John Barry Prendergast on November 3, 1933) is a renowned British film composer. His family was in the cinema business, but it was during his National Service that he began performing as a musician. After taking a correspondence course and arranging for some of the bands of the day, he formed the ‘John Barry Seven’. Barry then met Adam Faith, and composed songs and film scores on the singer’s behalf.

John Barry in concert.

It was this notoriety that caught the attention of the producers of a new film called Dr No who were dissatisfied with the score given to them by Monty Norman. Barry and the JB7 were hired and the result would arguably be the most famous signature tune in film history, the James Bond Theme.

After his success with Dr No, Barry would go on to score 11 of the next 14 Bond films, starting with his first as lead composer, From Russia with Love in 1963.

During his tenure with the 007 series, Barry’s sound, variously brassy and moody, clicked both with fans of the films and their soundtrack albums. For Russia, he created an alternate Bond signature theme, the punchy 007, which figured in five Bond films (From Russia With Love, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, and Moonraker) and the opening themes of various US news programmes in the 1960s and 70s. Barry’s track for the pre-credit sequence of Russia, “Stalking,” is one of the most suspenseful in the James Bond series and was replicated by colleague Marvin Hamlisch for the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. To this day, many people consider the Russia film and its soundtrack to be among the best of the 007 series.

In Goldfinger he would perfect the “Bond sound”, a heady mixture of brass, jazz and sensuous melodies. There’s even an element of Barry’s jazz roots in the big-band track “Into Miami,” which follows the title credits and accompanies the film’s iconic image of the camera lens zooming toward the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.

As Barry matured, the Bond scores concentrated more on lush melodies, as in Moonraker and Octopussy. However Barry showed a strong return to form in his final 007 film, 1987’s The Living Daylights, which many aficionados cite as his best 007 score since 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

See also:

• Black, Don
• Bond films: Soundtrack