James Bond franchise producer Barbara Broccoli spoke with EW this week to promote “The Sound of 007,” a documentary about the history of the James Bond film themes.
The doco, helmed by Mat Whitecross, goes into the various tunes by the likes of Shirley Bassey, Duran Duran, Wings, Garbage, Adele and Billie Eilish that have all served as themes for different 007 films.
It also touches upon some of the songs that didn’t make it – most notably tracks by the late Amy Winehouse and Radiohead, which were to serve as the themes for Daniel Craig’s second and fourth Bond outings “Quantum of Solace” and “Spectre” respectively.
Broccoli recalls having a meeting with the troubled Winehouse about her recording the song:
“Well, that was a very, very distressing meeting, she was not at her best and my heart really went out to her. She was very fragile emotionally and, you know, you understood how she could create such moving material, because she has a great depth of feeling, and it was very, very tragic. What an incredible talent, what an incredible voice, what an incredible person she was, and it was very, very sad.”
The comments follow on from those made by musician Jack White earlier this year to The Independent who revealed he was recruited at the last minute once Winehouse exited the project. White and Alicia Keys ended up recording the rock-heavy brassy number:
“I got in because Amy Winehouse wasn’t showing up to the sessions or wasn’t delivering the song that they were asking her to do. So it was, ‘We were running out of time, we need somebody else…’ And I thought, ‘Oh, this was great, because now I’m gonna get away with murder; I’m gonna put things in this song [and] they would never approve of this.’ And that happened. The music director was not down with anything. He was trying to convince me to turn it into a ballad or something like that.”
“The Sound of 007” will premiere on the Amazon Prime Video service this coming Wednesday (October 5th), timed with the release of all 25 official Bond films on the service on the same day.
