GoldenEar: A John Barry Obituary 

Screen composer John Barry, who died this week at 77 of a heart attack at his home in New York State, defined film music in the 1960s and went on to compose some of the most enduring cinema scores during the last decades of the 20th Century. Best known for his unforgettable input to the James Bond series, he was a five time Oscar-winner as well earning numerous other accolades including an OBE in 1999.

He was born John Barry Prendergast in York, on November 3rd 1933. His father ran a string of the last great picture palaces of the region, and the young man saw many film classics, as well as meeting the stars who routinely passed through on promotional tours. A love of classical music – by composers such as Sibelius and Beethoven and, later, Chopin and Shostakovich – married with seeing a huge amount of films at such an impressionable age, put Barry on a path that would lead him to the very pinnacle of film music.

Barry’s instrument of choice was the trumpet, and after taking a correspondence course in musical composition, he began to receive positive feedback about his work from the likes of bandleaders Johnny Dankworth and Jack Parnell. Forming his own band, The John Barry Seven, he attracted a lot of attention with his inventive arrangements and distinctive sound, augmented by Vic Flick’s twanging electric guitar – which would soon come to the fore when Barry arranged Monty Norman’s now famous ‘James Bond Theme’ for the first 007 film, Dr No (1962).

Film work began to take a prominent role in his life, and Barry was asked to write the full score to the second Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963). With his classical training, and pop music apprenticeship, John Barry’s musical sensibilities were perfectly placed to take the high ground of the Silver Age of 1960s film music. His endlessly inventive scores were almost all marked by a clear and indelible melody, and his style, despite the typecasting of the Bond films, was only consistent in its sheer variety. From the swinging Sixties cool of The Knack (1965) to the regal majesty of The Lion in Winter (1968); from the African Savannahs of Born Free (1965) to the dangerous world of the New York subway in Dutchman (1966), his flair and creative powers seemed unlimited.

Producer Sam Spiegel gave Barry a huge boost by assigning him to score his Deep South melodrama The Chase in 1966; Barry was now heard by American audiences as a composer adept at almost any genre. He reserved some of his most unusual work of the Sixties for director Bryan Forbes, with whom he forged a close professional relationship. Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965), and The Whisperers (1967), among others, saw Barry exploring a minimalist approach to great effect.

As the decade turned, Barry moved to America. His scores in the Seventies showed a slight disillusionment with the material he was being offered but, even with assignments such as Bruce Lee’s Game of Death (1978) and yachting drama The Dove (1974), he was still a master of his profession. The Eighties and Nineties proved to be decades of great resurgence, with Barry finding a whole new audience to go along with a more elegiac style. Somewhere in Time (1978), Out of Africa (1985), Dances with Wolves (1990) and Chaplin (1992) saw Barry exploring a more sombrely romantic palette, and audiences responded with huge praise...

His legacy is hard to underestimate. Composer David Arnold acknowledges the vast debt he owes the Yorkshireman, while Jarvis Cocker, Portishead, and Goldfrapp all tip their musical style in Barry’s direction. He will inevitably be best remembered for the Bond films, which he not unkindly labelled ‘million-dollar Mickey Mouse music’, and his contribution to Bond is enormous. But his body of work contains some of the most gorgeous, memorable, and magnificent film music in the last half of the 20th Century.

John Barry (November 3rd 1933 – January 30st 2011)

Steve Saragossi is a film historian, author and lecturer. He is currently writing James Coburn's biography.

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