Bloody Pit of Rod: Alice Cooper's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN Theme Song

Saturday, January 07, 2017

Alice Cooper's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN Theme Song

I wish some enterprising, clever person would find a way to marry this song to the film's opening credits, but I'm willing to take this version for now.

3 comments:

chiops said...: Interesting story behind this song. It was never commissioned by the Bond producers, but instead, it was submitted unsolicited by Cooper thinking it would get used. It was a case of "Thanks but no thanks".; Saturday, January 07, 2017
Dr. Gangrene said...: Not true. Cooper was asked to record that song by the producers, but they chose Lulu's version instead for whatever reason. It has always been commonplace for Bond producers to solicit multiple musicians and select what they prefer from the batch, and this is just another case of that.

The band worked their ass off on that one. About it, Cooper said "It was supposed to be the Bond theme, but it actually came in a day too late, and by the time they heard it, they’d already signed for Lulu’s song. I went, "You're gonna take Lulu over this?" [Laughs.] 'Cause it was perfect for The Man With The Golden Gun. It had helicopters, it had machine guns—it had the Pointer Sisters, Ronnie Spector, and Liza Minnelli doing background vocals! We went to every single one of those John Barry albums to try and invent the perfect James Bond song, and even Christopher Lee, who played Scaramanga in the movie, said, “Oh, man, why did we take the Lulu song? This song is the one!” [Laughs.] So, yeah, we lost out on that one, but I still put it on the album. I said, “I don’t care, I’m going to do a James Bond track no matter what.”; Sunday, January 08, 2017
chiops said...: This is actually all very interesting, and those comments seem to contradict his own liner notes for the song on the Life and Crimes album set.
"I was reading James Bond novels even before the first film came out. Everyone in the band loved Bond movies and especially the John Barry soundtrack music. I had found out that the next Bond was going to be called "The Man With The Golden Gun." I figured, Perfect, I'll beat them to the punch and use that title for our own song, figuring that they would want to use it. When it came time for them to do the soundtrack, they used a song by Lulu. Lulu?!?" (A.C.)

Considering the types of artists the Bond producers ended up using (and the ones not used: Dionne Warwick, Lorraine Chandler, Julie Rogers, Blondie, etc) I find it hard that they would consider one from way off left field like Cooper to do a song.; Tuesday, January 10, 2017