Mojo - The Music Magazine

In MOJO 209 Bob Stanley, Jonny Trunk and David Arnold all pay tribute to the late, great film composer, John Barry, who passed away on January 30. For his own personal tribute to one of the greatest composers the UK ever produced Deputy Editor Andrew Male presents twenty screen highlights from one remarkable, constantly evolving career. Ready when you are, JB.

1) Beat Girl (1960)

In Barry's first moment of career triumph he captures the swinging, jiving, constantly moving groove of a city scrabbling towards adolescence. It sounds like three youth movements all blaring at once.

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2) The L-Shaped Room (1962)

Early proof that Barry was able to imbue his jazz club ambience with the requisite amount of high-tar, low-cut bedsit sleaze.

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3) From Russia With Love (1963)

And here is jazz club Barry amped up with boisterous brass and giant electric guitars for his first full 007 soundtrack.

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4) Zulu (1964)

The sweeping, swirling strings, heard beneath the gradually advancing military horns, would return in force in the '70s and '80s. Think of this as a pounding, proto-Out Of Africa.

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5) Séance On A Wet Afternoon (1964)

A transitional soundtrack for Barry, the percussion and jabbing strings of Bond draped in a sinister, Autumnal English shroud.

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6) The Ipcress File (1965)

Heard in context, the pizzicato strings and beat rhythms are still there but Barry's use of woodwind and zither bring a wintry W1 melancholy to the whole proceedings. Barry as much as Caine made companionless cool.

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7) The Knack... And How To Get It (1965)

And here Barry made loneliness romantic, and hipsterdom tragic with a soundtrack just as responsible for swinging London as The Beatles and Vidal Sassoon. ________________________________________________________________________

8) The Quiller Memorandum (1966)

Some might say it's Born Free meets The Ipcress File, but with added music box and fairground calliope. Others might say, and what the hell is wrong with that?

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9) Deadfall (1968)

Barry's cameo in Bryan Forbes' over-ambitious robbery flick, conducting Guitar Concierto De Juan Barri (after Rodrigo).

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10) Boom! (1968)

Barry's greatest work wasn't always for the greatest films. This effort, not just one of the worst films ever made, is also the worst Burton & Taylor film ever made. Ergo, one of John Barry's most beautiful soundtracks. A surprisingly delicate, minimal score for such an overblown film, it was also somewhat influential on Roy Budd's Get Carter score.

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11) The Lion In Winter (1968)

A significant development for Barry, introducing a model that he would return to throughout his career, in which the JB palette was bolstered by grand elements of classical tympani and early music polyphony.

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12) Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Another evolutionary step for Barry. As Jonny Trunk writes in MOJO 209's Barry tribute, "harmonica and guitar fronting large orchestra, musical panoramas, 3/4 trot to sadness somehow painting a modern American soundtrack no-one knew existed."

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13) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Simply the best Bond/Barry score ever. If you only own one JB soundtrack etc...

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14) Walkabout (1971)

Maybe one bright spot in the sad death of John Barry will be the availability of such impossible-to-find original soundtracks as this, sparse, sad beauty from "just about the most different film you'll ever see".

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15) The Persuaders (1972)

Barry goes pop, Moog and (almost) heavy on this sweet '70s Madeleine of groovesome import.

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16) The Adventurer (1972)

A good example of how 'Barry-by-numbers' - it's effectively a speeded-up Ipcress File with added electronic heaviness - could still be a thing of exotic, riffing joy.

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17) Somewhere In Time (1980)

In which John Barry invents the modern, sweeping romantic soundtrack that dominated cinema for the next twenty years. John Williams is a fan.

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18) Body Heat (1981)

Almost a remixed, reworked 'Greatest Hits', with ghosts of The Ipcress File, Bond, Mary, Queen of Scots and others, referenced and reworked with odd shades of stealthy church organ and sleazy sax throughout. Another soundtrack begging for a reissue.

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19) Out Of Africa (1985)

Possibly lacking the nuance, detail and edge of earlier scores, this is still a thing of sweeping, shimmering beauty, a score whose influence can still be heard in the modern blockbusters of today. It comes to something when a work like this can be described (by this writer at least) as the weakest in the list. So long, John Barry, you will be missed.

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20) Dances With Wolves (1990)

With his late scores Barry delved into his past, referencing such previously unloved work (by him) as 1966's Born Free. But if purists found fault with the broad romantic strokes of Dances With Wolves, American filmgoers didn't, and the soundtrack has been adopted as something approaching an alternate national anthem.