LAURIE JOHNSON 1927-2024
The man who made The Avengers swing
FOR THE AVENGERS PRODUCER Brian Clemens, the music of Laurie Johnson was “the final icing on the cake”, a score that encapsulated all the panache and whimsy of the outlandish spy series.
Born in Hampstead, London, Johnson studied at the Royal College of Music, tutored by Ralph Vaughn Williams. He entered the entertainment industry in the ‘50s, arranging for the Ted Heath Band, before his first screen credit on 1957’s The Good Companions.
A prolific career as a composer encompassed big screen and small, from Stanley Kubrick’s satiric Cold War masterpiece Dr Strangelove to Animal Magic, Jason King and This Is Your Life. “I used to call them musical visiting cards,” he said of his contagiously memorable title themes. “The first five or ten seconds should furnish the room for the audience to walk into.”
In 1964 producer Julian Wintle engaged Johnson to score The Avengers. The series was moving from videotape to glossy 35mm and needed a new musical identity to match its ambitions for the international market. “Laurie was an asset and the score was brilliant,” said Roy Ward Baker, director of “The Town Of No Return”, Diana Rigg’s first episode as Emma Peel. “It was modern, it was jazzy, it was big and it was lush.”
Johnson scored three seasons of The Avengers then partnered with producers Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell to create The New Avengers in 1976, giving it an urgent, decidedly funky signature theme in sync with the times.
Gritty cop show The Professionals followed in 1977, with its own gloriously adrenalised strut of a title tune. Hammer’s Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1972) was another memorable Clemens collaboration.
Eventually retiring in the early ’90s, Johnson was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to music.