The erotic secret behind Shirley Bassey’s Bond barnstormer
MY wife Shirley opened the post one morning and called out to me: ‘Don! Look at this letter, you’ve got an OBE! What wonderful news!’ I thought: ‘Well, it’s not a knighthood but it’s the perfect place to start.’ And a split second later, I thought: ‘That’s it! That’s my second line. Yes!’
For days I’d been stuck on the second line of my lyric for the latest Bond theme — the song began with the movie title, The World Is Not Enough, and then I didn’t know where to go. Now I had it: ‘The world is not enough/ But it’s such a perfect place to start.’ That’s life as a songwriter. You never know when the words you need are going to pop into your head.
The song went on to be performed by Shirley Manson from the Nineties Britpop band Garbage. It was a full 30 years since I had written my first number for 007.
People often ask me how I go about writing a Bond song. Well, I always believe it should be provocative, seductive and have the whiff of the boudoir about it.
There should be the lure of the forbidden, a kind of theatrical vulgarity as you are drawn into Bond’s mysterious world.
I also think that Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey should sing them all. As Terry Wogan used to say: ‘They don’t sing songs, they bite lumps out of them.’
WHEN I was first approached to collaborate with John Barry on the theme for the fourth Bond film in 1965, I had to look up the word ‘Thunderball’ in the dictionary. It wasn’t there.
I wasn’t a fan of Ian Fleming’s books, so all I had to go on was an idea that James Bond was a man’s man. That gave me the first line: ‘He always runs while others walk,’ and the rest came easily.
The producers wanted Tom to sing it because he was a man’s man himself, with such a muscular voice. It has often been said that Tom fainted when he sang the last note of Thunderball, and that’s almost true.
It wasn’t actually a proper faint, more of a brain-rush, woozy thing, and he soon got over it.
One of my most embarrassing moments occurred during an evening with Tom Jones. We were both staying at the Continental Hyatt House on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, and Tom’s agent at that time was a man called Lloyd Greenfield — who also looked after Liberace. Lloyd wanted Tom to see Liberace in concert.
This did not appeal to Tom at all and he begged me to keep him company. As soon as Liberace came on and started his flowery way of playing, I could see Tom was finding it painful. Then the diamante maestro said he wanted to introduce ‘two people who have come from far away to be here tonight. The Oscar-winning lyricist Don Black — I’ll be playing his song Born Free later — and the great singing star whose song It’s Not Unusual is a hit all over the world... Tom Jones.’
We took a bow and a few minutes later Tom said to me: ‘I can’t take any more of this, let’s go get a drink.’ We waited for an opportune moment and scooted quickly to the bar where Tom had a few screwdrivers. After some time I said to Tom: ‘We’d better get back, the show will soon be over.’
But I was too late. As we were coming out of the bar we heard Liberace saying: ‘I want to thank Don Black and Tom Jones for being here tonight’ — and a spotlight highlighted our two empty seats. I still get night sweats about that moment.
THUNDERBALL was written with the great John Barry, winner of five Oscars for his movie scores. I knew John from my days in the early Sixties as a writer on the New Musical Express in London’s Denmark Street, before my career as a lyricist took off.
In those days John was the coolest man on the planet. He drove a white Maserati, he wore handmade suits and he had a fabulous bachelor apartment overlooking the Thames.
He was handsome, successful and famous — I don’t know what those beautiful women he dated could have seen in him. Since Thunderball I must have written over a hundred songs with John and, I think it’s fair to say, I was his only true friend. He was a loner and an introvert, and hated being with people he considered phoney or artificial.
He drank too much and that’s when his Yorkshire bluntness came bursting through.
Only the best was good enough for John, mind you. It had to be Dom Perignon Champagne, it had to be Stolichnaya vodka, it had to be Puligny-Montrachet wine, it had to be Delamain brandy... and then we’d have lunch.
John was never a big eater; in fact, compared to him Gandhi was a glutton. In 50 years of lunches with John I don’t remember a single time when the waiter hasn’t whispered: ‘Is everything all right, Mr. Barry?’ America never changed him one little