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| Barry |
The Living Daylights: (John Barry) Alas, all good
things must eventually come to an end. In the 25th year since
introducing the character of James Bond to audiences in 1962, the 007
franchise was experiencing a transition. The softer side of the
character of 007 was retired along with actor Roger Moore, who declined
to return. And while Pierce Brosnan was the first choice as a
replacement, he frustratingly couldn't accept the role due to
contractual reasons. The producers then turned to Shakespearian actor
Timothy Dalton, who had been among the original candidates to replace
Sean Connery early in the 1970's. Dalton took the character in a
direction that Brosnan would follow: the more serious and gritty Bond
that was true to the Ian Fleming novels. Director John Glen continued
his own trend of pressing storylines that were earthbound and realistic,
and
The Living Daylights makes use of both the Cold War tradition
as well as the then-current war between the Soviets and Afghanistan.
While Dalton would only appear in two Bond films before lawsuits tied up
the franchise until the Brosnan era, he was quite effective, and along
with both the well-grounded plot and a significant role for music in the
film,
The Living Daylights is among the strongest of the 1980's
Bond films and grossed almost $200 million worldwide, the fourth highest
total in the franchise at the time. The film also represented the 11th
and final Bond adventure for composer John Barry, who was well engaged
in a final phase of his career that brought him Oscar gold for his broad
dramas for lush orchestras. All indications are that Barry would have
liked to have contributed further to the franchise, but after the single
entry by Michael Kamen for
Licence to Kill and a disastrous score
for
Goldeneye by Eric Serra, young Brit David Arnold firmly
rooted himself as the new (and retro-conscious) sound of the franchise.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Barry's departure after
The Living
Daylights is the fact that the score was among his very best for the
franchise, topping many collectors' lists along with
On Her Majesty's
Secret Service.
Barry was himself adapting to meet the needs of the
franchise as well, directing both the score and songs in such a way as
to remain viable in the digital era while maintaining the consistently
jazzy style of their roots. Without a doubt, he managed, along with the
producers and director, to provide
The Living Daylights with the
precise balance that remained elusive through even some of Arnold's
later efforts. Part of the reason for this success is the simple fact
that music played a bigger role in the story of the film. The love
interest is a cello player whose performances are integral to the plot,
one of the songs is used as direct source material for a villain, and
Barry himself makes a brief cameo as a conductor of an orchestra in the
film. The incredible success of Duran Duran's song for
A View to a
Kill, which blasted through music charts in both the U.S. and U.K.,
caused several changes in philosophy regarding the songs, too. Not only
would one popular rock band of the era be contracted to perform, but
two. Barry had decided that the franchise's tradition of repeating the
same song over the opening and end credits had become too generic, and
in the process of selling the idea of being able to market multiple
songs per Bond film, this idea met with enthusiasm from the producers
and studio. In the end, two different bands ultimately contributed three
songs for the picture, all of which co-written by Barry, giving the
composer a wealth of material to adapt into his underscore. To match the
appeal of Duran Duran for the opening title song, Barry worked with the
Norwegian band
a-h
a and its lead writer, Pal Waaktaar, to
produce a straight rock song. The melody of the song is quite strong, as
is some of the orchestral and synthetic accompaniment Barry arranged for
the song's instrumental interlude. The distinctly European sound of
a-h
a caused the song to perform far better in Europe,
reaching fifth on the charts in the U.K. Perhaps by no coincidence, the
film's other singing contributions came from the band The Pretenders,
who were red hot at the time and offered a greater appeal to American
listeners.
Barry's work with singer, writer, and mainstay of The
Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde, yielded results far more true to the
traditional sound of the franchise. Her primary contribution to
The
Living Daylights was the love ballad to be heard over the end
credits (the formula that Barry was arguing for at the time), though she
would also be responsible for a source song representing the villain's
henchman, Necros. While the ballad, "If There Was a Man," is predictably
alluring and reached success on the British charts, the spirited and
harder rock song "Where Has Everybody Gone?" representing Necros
achieved greater heights on American charts. There has been significant
speculation that Barry may have lobbied to have "Where Has Everybody
Gone?" made into the title piece of the film, and the synchronization of
the wild, descending brass motif at the end of each bar of the song with
the words "living daylights" is perhaps no coincidence. Ultimately, this
song's only vocal use in the film coincided with the henchman's
headphones during the buildup to an assassination attempt. Barry quickly
made use of this theme for the character throughout the film, as well as
the incorporation of the love ballad for the Russian cello-playing spy,
Kara. The title theme was adopted, usually with the same rock
instrumentation, as an action motif similar in style of usage as the
theme to
A View to a Kill. Unique to the score are the continued
references to Monty Norman's original theme for 007, as well as a lush
motif for the location of Afghanistan. Minor suspense motifs with
connections to Bond scores of the previous generation are a bit more
sparse, but Barry does continue to develop on some of them in this final
effort. The score for
The Living Daylights is often heralded as
one of the great successes of the franchise if only because of the fact
that it has so many melodies to choose from that almost every cue makes
reference to one. There are only a few standalone cues of dull suspense
and, in fact, there are quite a few dramatic touches of
Somewhere in
Time and
Out of Africa, as well as the composer's 1960's
epics, referenced as well.
The title theme is ironically the least-referenced in
Barry's score, fueling some of the speculation about Barry's possible
dissatisfaction with it. Its major, synth and drum loop-backed
performance for snazzy brass layers is heard in "Hercules Takes Off" and
briefly in "Assassin and Drugged" (and a suspenseful organic
interpretation is explored in the latter half of "Murder at the Fair").
Similar synth and loop mixtures are provided for the Necros theme in
"Necros Attacks" and "Inflight Fight." Identical treatment for Norman's
franchise theme is heard at length in "Ice Chase" and "Exercise at
Gibraltar." The mixture between synthetic and orchestral elements in
these cues is the best that Barry ever achieved in the franchise, going
all the way back to the electric guitar and synthesizer in
On Her
Majesty's Secret Service. Their rendering in
The Living
Daylights is more refined than equivalents in
A View to a
Kill, perhaps possibly due to improvements in digital mastering. The
bridge between the electronic and orchestral music in
The Living
Daylights is the love ballad for Kara, and this theme receives the
most frequent performances on album. Some might suggest that it's
treated by Barry as the title theme for the picture. For "Into Vienna,"
a cue absent from the film, Barry uses essentially the backing for the
vocal performance for a pleasant light rock ambience. He recorded an
alternate version of this theme for strictly the orchestra, and if not
for the considerably slower tempo, would be identical to the format of
the electronic version. As per tradition, Barry recorded a solo woodwind
performance of this theme for the actual on-screen meeting of the
characters. The bass flute heard here in "Kara Meets Bond" is far more
seductive than the sweeter and higher tones heard on flute in
A View
to a Kill. While Barry seemed attached to these woodwind
performances of the love theme (or title theme) in the later John
Glen-directed films, the use of the flute in
The Living Daylights
doesn't make much sense considering that the character of Kara is a
cello player. As such, the question is: why not use a cello to
perform the love theme in this case? Or is that too obvious?
Outside of the four major themes, Barry's filler
material is far more interesting than most of the stock stalking and
suspense music that he had carried over through many of the previous
Bond films. The main suspense motif in
The Living Daylights is
more convincing, introduced in "The Sniper Was a Woman" with the same
dramatic weight of the secondary theme for the title character of
Octopussy. The music for the Mujahadin is beautiful in parts and
quite rousing in others. The theme for Afghanistan, heard in full in
"Mujahadin and Opium," eventually merges with the suspense motif for the
film. The tapping percussion late in this cue and "Afghanistan Plan" is
a precursor to
The Scarlet Letter, and the bombastic variation on
the idea late in the latter cue has the epic scope of the title theme to
Zulu. A more simplistic and forceful minor-key alternation joins
one of the usual Bond action motifs from the franchise in "Air Bond." A
singular theme, likely representing the Russians, exists at the outset
of "Airbase Jailbreak," a somewhat fluffy little march that eventually
yields to more traditional, snare-tapping Bond action. The opening
gunbarrel sequence in provided with the usual burst of Norman's theme.
Interestingly, no truly engaging performance of the theme for the
traditional small-band jazz elements exists in
The Living
Daylights. Together, all of the elements of the score merge very
well for a cohesive whole that successfully combines all of the film's
songs and franchise themes into one intelligent work. The score's
greatest weakness is that it doesn't really adapt the themes --outside
of the versatile love ballad-- into various circumstances for different
sections of the ensemble. The synth and drum loop performances of a
theme in one track, for instance, will be completely identical to those
in another. The "Final Confrontation" cue is somewhat anti-climactic,
which is understandable given the conversational nature of the scene,
but its solitary bass string movements aren't that impressive. Barry's
alternate orchestral recording of the end title song, however, is a
lovely tribute (in tone and style) to where he began with
From Russia
With Love.
As for the fate of the songs,
a-h
a has
dated badly, even compared to Duran Duran's more famous 80's sound for
A View to a Kill. Chrissie Hynde's voice, however, endures as a
perfect fit for the Bond franchise. The ballad has aged well and even
the song for Necros has the sassy attitude that franchise coveted
earlier in its run. The deeper tones of Hynde's voice, like k.d. lang
for
Tomorrow Never Dies, are the kind that has been long sought
for the franchise, and fans can only hope that sultry voices like these
make a return to the 007 films' songs at some point in the future. At
any rate, the songs together pushed significant sales volume at the
time;
The Living Daylights debuted at that awkward time when LPs
and CDs were concurrently released. Because of this transition, Warner
Brothers only pressed minimal copies of the album on CD in 1987,
featuring the same 35 minutes as the LP. In 1998, Rykodisc released
three scores from John Glen's Bond films, and
The Living
Daylights was easily the most important. Ryko was contractually
required to provide the original 12 cues (of 35 minutes) in order, but
they then tied every loose end by adding 25 minutes of previously
unreleased material. Unlike the other two albums, this one does not
suffer from dialogue from the film. The additional material does, as
mentioned before, offer some of the more interesting interpolations of
the three major themes, as well as the opening cue and Barry's sadly
nostalgic orchestral recording of the love ballad. Fans of Barry's
1960's dramas will also hear more or the composer's nod to an era past
as well. The album's only flaws were with Ryko's production of it, which
included the lack of proper ordering (which wasn't their fault) and the
damn booklet, which like the other two albums, will frustrate anyone who
can't fold a map correctly once it's been opened. The Ryko album
eventually went out of print, but was still more readily available on
the secondary market than its siblings. In early 2003, EMI re-released
all of the Bond scores through
Goldeneye for rock bottom prices,
using improved sound quality and availability as their selling point.
Unfortunately, in this case, the EMI album continued to suffer from the
same unsequenced ordering and offers no improvement in sound quality.
Overall, in 007 history,
The Living Daylights stands with
Tomorrow Never Dies as the best score of its era.
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- Music as Written for Film: *****
- 1987 Warner Brothers Album: ***
- 1998 Rykodisc Album: *****
- 2003 EMI Album: ****
- Overall: *****
| Bias Check: |
For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85
(in 27 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.54
(in 28,651 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
John Barry can be seen conducting in a scene from The Living Daylights. He can also be seen vigorously
conducting an orchestra in Deadfall. Neither appearance is credited.
Both the expanded albums (from 1998 and 2003) have extensive notes about the film and score,
including material by Geoff Leonard and Pete Walker. As with its two sister releases, the
1998 Ryko album is an enhanced CD with credits, notes, trailer, and a few multimedia extras.
The correct order of the tracks on the 1998 and 2003 albums is as follows: 13, 1, 3, 6, 2,
7, 14, 5, 4, 15, 16, 17, 10, 18, 9, 11, 19, 20, 12 (tracks 8 and 21 not used).
Lyrics for "The Living Daylights":
Hey driver, where're we going
I swear my nerves are showing
Set your hopes up way too high
The living's in the way we die
Comes the morning and the headlights fade away
Hundred thousand people...I'm the one they blame
I've been waiting long for one of us to say
Save the darkness, let it never fade away
In the living daylights
All right, hold on tighter now
It's down, down to the wire
Set your hopes way too high
The living's in the way we die
Comes the morning and the headlights fade in rain
Hundred thousand changes...everything's the same
I've been waiting long for one of us to say
Save the darkness, let it never fade away
In the living daylights
Comes the morning and the headlights fade away
Hundred thousand people...I'm the one they frame
In the living daylights
