Sticking closer to the source Ian Fleming novel than any of the other movies in the series, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is widely considered to be one of the finest James Bond movies. The character has a vulnerability not seen in many of the others, as he genuinely falls in love – gets married! – and then of course things take a darker turn in that relationship. It’s got brilliant action sequences, the requisite stunning locations – it’s got everything really, except for Sean Connery, which is such a great pity. The hapless George Lazenby does his best but I’ve always struggled to take it seriously.
The music, too, is frequently cited as marking the series’ highpoint – and on that I won’t disagree. John Barry took a “same but different” approach as part of a drive to reassure people that this was still the James Bond they had grown to love from the previous movies – just with a few changes. One of the most striking musical changes was that there was no main title song – instead, Barry crafted an instrumental theme for the opening credits (the third and final Bond movie to have one of those).
It’s not just any old instrumental theme, either – it’s pure dynamite, full of the spirit of the swinging sixties and all the excitement you’d expect from a James Bond movie. The “…but different” aspect of the composer’s modus operandi on this one is his prominent use of a Moog synthesiser, which he uses so brilliantly to bring additional energy to one of his most memorable melodic creations. From the smack-in-your-face blast that opens the piece, it never lets up: while it’s blaring Goldfinger and Thunderball trumpets that other composers tend to focus on when they try to ape Barry’s Bond sound, for me it is this piece that sums the whole thing up – in a career littered with great work, perhaps these two-and-a-half minutes are the greatest of all.
And while there may not be a main title song – there is a song, and it’s not just any old song either. It too could perfectly reasonably be assessed to be the greatest of all Bond songs – “We Have All The Time in the World” has gone on to become a standard, and is now so familiar it’s easy to forget the devastating way it is used in the film, where it turned out that Bond and Tracy did not in fact have all the time in the world after all. Louis Armstrong’s vocal performance proved to be his last ever recording, his trademark rasp so perfect for Hal David’s intelligent lyrics and Barry’s endearing, timelessly beautiful ballad.
The score in the movie opens with “This Never Happened to the Other Feller”, five minutes of musical bliss – after the gunbarrel sequence of course, and which starts off in the expected way – then right away the composer turns to the Moog. The spectacular pre-credits piece focuses on three different themes as it magnificently underscores the action sequence unfolding – the Bond theme (part of the “same but…” thinking), the OHMSS theme (primarily its opening hook) and a great action theme, which the composer returns to later in the score.
Following the main title piece come a couple of lounge tracks – an instrumental of “We Have All the Time in the World” before the brilliant “Try”, which opens with vibes and percussion before silky-smooth strings join in. “James and Tracy” includes a gorgeous rendition of the song (serving now as the love theme) and then in “You Have an Appointment” Barry adds a very catchy little motif to it as he presents it in a more up-tempo form. The theme-and-variations continue in “The Capu”, with silky-smooth strings offering one of the most sublime takes on the melody.
“Gumbold’s Safe” is a piece of vintage Bond suspense music, which in the classic Barry style from the 60s Bonds takes a little phrase which gets repeated over and over, building in intensity as grander forces are gradually added to it before the tension reaches fever-pitch – and then gets brilliantly released.
Another classic piece is “Journey to Blofeld’s Hideaway”, which opens with a slow fanfare related melodically to the opening bars of the main theme and of the main melody from the song – from this the full orchestra swells so beautifully into such a gorgeous passage of music before another great device is introduced for the final section, strings swirling around a trumpet version of the love theme.
There’s a return to suspense in “The Usual Comforts”, the synth being used here to give a really unsettling feel before the briefest glance towards the Bond theme leads into another reprise of the Blofeld’s Hideaway arrangement of the song, only with more pace this time. A comic little motif (not unlike the one Barry would use more extensively in the series’ next movie) opens “Twelve Gorgeous Girls”, which leaps from there into a bit of nod-nod-wink-wink sultry orchestral jazz in “Heraldry”. In “Eight”, the composer goes for the emotional jugular with a brilliant mixture of romance and anguish – that oboe solo early in the cue is one for the ages.
We head into new thematic territory in the first part of “It’s True! / The Hidden Persuader / You’ll Need to Be” and again it’s stunning – a melancholic melody with a hint of tragedy (later recorded as “Who Will Buy My Yesterdays?” by Barry on his Ready When You Are, JB album) it is another marvellous creation. The unusually dissonant electronics that close the cue are jarring, as intended.
“Escape from Piz Gloria” begins a set of world-class action tracks that play almost without pausing for breath up to the end of the score. It begins with a dark arrangement of the OHMSS theme before it plays out as in the opening title; later “Ski Chase” passes an ominous little figure from horn to trumpet – and then more of that glorious main theme. The last minute or so of the piece features some particularly dramatic string writing – again that sense of tragedy, this film offering Barry so much opportunity for emotional music alongside the usual adventure.
“Over and Out” is another classic, with a sonar-like three-note figure from the Mood repeating endlessly over a slow version of the main theme. That theme then gets a brilliant new arrangement in “Battle at Piz Gloria” with a new action motif variant on it making one of the score’s strongest cues and indeed perhaps my favourite action piece of the 25-film series. For “Bobsled Chase” Barry takes the score full circle by bringing back the action motif from the opening cue, adding an urgent synth pattern on top this time; and then everything ends in a glorious finale, a heartbreaking, swooning version of the love theme leading into a dynamic blast of the Bond theme.
Fans of the score had to wait 34 years to hear more music than was featured on the original album. It was worth the wait of course but, like the other expanded Bond albums released at the time in 2003, the album left something to be desired in the way it presented the music, with the original album programme playing out before the new music followed (and liner notes that didn’t even mention the music!)
We now have the perfect OHMSS album, courtesy of La-La Land’s definitive release. Not only does it feature the whole score in sequence (I’m not always a fan of such presentations, but it’s the best way of experiencing this masterpiece) – in crystal clear sound – adding some wonderful additional music which didn’t make the 2003 album – with an absolute knockout of an album cover – and liner notes by Jon Burlingame – it does the world a favour by not featuring “Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown?” as part of the main programme. You can however listen to it as part of the remastered version of the original album on the second disc.
Some of the album edits we’ve become so used to over the years are presented in their fuller film versions – at first it was a bit jarring after all these years to hear the couple of extra bars at the end of the main title, or the slightly more florid arrangement of the Louis Armstrong song – but I’ve already got used to them.
The best of the previously-unreleased cues is the exceptional “Prelude for Guitar and Strings”, a beautiful piece which does exactly what it says it does. It feels like a kind of companion piece to “Theme from Romance for Guitar and Orchestra”, in particular its arrangement on the previously-mentioned Ready When You Are, JB compilation (in my opinion the finest track on what may well be the finest John Barry recording of all).
For my money this is the best Bond score: not only does it feature the greatest single cue of the entire series, it’s got perhaps its finest song, some glorious action music and the added flavour of genuine emotion rather than the usual wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am “romance”. While John Barry continued to write brilliant music for James Bond films in the two decades ahead, OHMSS represents him at the peak of his creative powers. It’s as good as it gets.
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