| CLOSE WINDOW |
|
FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The Living Daylights (John Barry)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you're looking for one John Barry score from the James
Bond franchise to start a collection with, for The Living
Daylights is the ultimate maturation of the composer's work for the
concept.
Avoid it... if the addition of synthesizers and drum loops to the jazzy orchestral tradition of the franchise could be just as obnoxious to you here as it was in A View to a Kill.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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-ha 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-ha 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-ha 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.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1987 Warner Album:
Total Time: 35:14
* track not heard in film 1998 Rykodisc and 2003 EMI Albums: Total Time: 65:17
* track not heard in film
NOTES & QUOTES:
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. 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
Copyright ©
1998-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Living Daylights are Copyright © 1998, Warner Brothers, Rykodisc USA, Capitol/EMI and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/19/98 and last updated 4/16/08. |
