20 Things You Didn’t Know About On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
6. Forgetting Sean
Peter Hunt instructed John Barry that he wanted the soundtrack for OHMSS to “sound lush, big, and beautiful”, resulting in one of the most memorable Bond film scores and the first to experiment with electronic music.
Barry explained at the time that “I have to stick my oar in the musical area double strong to make the audience try and forget they don’t have Sean.... You could have said: ‘We’ve got a new Bond, let’s try to go a new way,’ but what I did instead was to over-emphasise everything that I’d done in the first few movies, and just go over the top to try and make the soundtrack strong. To do Bondian beyond Bondian”.
Leslie Bricusse, who had collaborated with John Barry on Dame Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger and Nancy Sinatra’s You Only Live Twice, attempted to write lyrics for Barry’s main title theme in the form of a march, but Barry knew that it was hopeless as the title was far too unwieldy. Instead, the sinister and adventurous edge to Barry’s instrumental main title theme informed audiences that the new Bond was just as dangerous as the last.