It’s inter­est­ing that James Bond theme songs are remark­ably recog­nis­able as such. They share cer­tain styl­is­tic ele­ments and motifs that clear­ly sig­nal their asso­ci­a­tion with the famous fran­chise, and it’s all thanks to the involve­ment of one son-of-York, John Bar­ry, who was by far the biggest con­trib­u­tor to Bond scores and theme songs. Of all the Bond themes, the first and most famous – and the one then reg­u­lar­ly used in sub­se­quent films — is that writ­ten for Dr No in 1962. The orig­i­nal score was actu­al­ly com­posed by Mon­ty Nor­man (though this was dis­put­ed by John Bar­ry) but most notably arranged and per­formed by John Bar­ry and his orches­tra.

The score was a mas­ter­piece of expres­sive film music and estab­lished a clear tem­plate for the quin­tes­sen­tial Bond theme: unnerv­ing orches­tral chords, raunchy brass, clash­ing cym­bals and of course that zesty surf rock gui­tar played by Vic Flick. Flick played his famous riff on a 1939 Clif­ford Essex Paragon Deluxe elec­tric gui­tar plugged into a Fend­er Vibrolux ampli­fi­er. Its inter­play with the orches­tral instru­men­ta­tion pro­duced a thrilling sound­track that man­aged to encom­pass and express the sin­is­ter world of the spy, just per­fect for the new film. The song ends just as thrilling­ly on that sin­gle Em/maj9 chord so famous it’s known as the “James Bond chord”. If you’re a gui­tarist, you might find it fun to repro­duce this final chord yourself…it’s this:

Bar­ry went on to score ten more Bond films, but this orig­i­nal score is the one that every­one instant­ly recog­nis­es as the Bond theme. Here’s the ver­sion record­ed for sin­gle release by the John Bar­ry Sev­en, reach­ing num­ber one on 1st Novem­ber 1962.