Goldfinger

The first blog post of this New Year 2023 and I would like to start with wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year! Stay tuned here for all the Bassey magic!

A week a go this video appeared on Reddit. Dame Shirley Bassey and Jimmy Page about the recording of Goldfinger.

Music by John Barry, Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley

Recorded August 20th 1964 and released in 1964 on soundtrack album, and on many singles and EPs. The UK single was release in September 1964 (DB 7360) and the US single followed in December 1964 (UA 790). Both the original mono single version and the stereo soundtrack version are available together on the 1995 US collection Goldsinger – The Best of Shirley Bassey. The stereo soundtrack version is also available on many collections.

Goldfinger is the song which Shirley Bassey is most known for. As a result it is performed at most concerts, and is available performed on most live albums and videos and DVDs.

A remix of the 1964 single version has been done by the Propellerheads in 2000 and released on The Remix Album…Diamonds Are Forever.

Background

This is the title song from the 1964 James Bond movie ‘Goldfinger’, with Sean Connery as James Bond and Gert Froebe as Goldfinger.

It was the third movie in the record-breaking James Bond series and the first to feature a vocal track over the opening credits.

This song was a worldwide hit, and sold more than a million copies in the USA alone and gave Shirley Bassey a Gold Disc in May 1965. The Peak US Billboard position was No. 8 for the United Artists single and the soundtrack LP reached No. 1. In the UK the song reached a surprisingly modest No. 21 on Columbia. This was Shirley Bassey’s first song for a James Bond Movie. Diamonds Are Forever followed in 1971 and Moonraker in 1979. Nobody else has been asked to record more than one James Bond.

Shirley Bassey said about Goldfinger: “John Barry wrote the music. We were touring in England at the time and he was conducting for me. One day he said, ‘There is this new song for the James Bond film Goldfinger and we’d like you to do it. I know your rule that you will never listen to a song unless there are words. There are no words, I must warn you – there’s only the music, which I have done. And we’re waiting on the lyric.’ And because we had such a wonderful relationship on our tour I said to John, ‘Well, I’ll listen to it. I’ll break my rule.’ And thank God I did, because the moment he played the music to me, I got goose pimples, and I told him, ‘I don’t care what the words are. I’ll do it.’ And fortunately the words were great.”

In the sixties composer John Barry did share a bachelor pad with Michael Caine. In Caine’s autobiography, he recalls being kept awake, off and on, till dawn one night. He found Barry slumped over the piano having just finished Goldfinger. Harry Saltzman, the Bond producer, hated the Goldfinger theme and much of the rest of what Barry came up with – John Barry said: “Harry would start with, ‘This is crap!’ And it went downhill from there.”

In an actual survey among Bond fans about all Bond films, Goldfinger won in multiple categories.

Sleeve Note from the 30th Anniversary Bond Collection

On August 12, 1964, Ian Fleming died. Four months later, “Goldfinger” premiered. With its high-profile images of a fully-armed Aston Martin DB5, a nude woman painted from head to toe in gold paint, the mute Korean manservant – Oddjob – with his steel-rimmed bowler, Bond’s near-emasculation by a laser beam atop a gold table, and the concept of a raid on Fort Knox – this third adventure brought cinema’s James Bond to a new level of popularity. Certainly contributing to this was the first “important” Bond title theme and the series’ first title vocal, composed and conducted by Barry. Shirley Bassey’s powerful rendition of “Goldfinger” not only added a rich shimmer to this third James Bond movie, it created the first American hit song out of a Bond title theme – shot to #8 on the U.S. charts and to #20 on the U.K. charts – and transformed Bassey into an international singing sensation.

“Goldfinger” (the song) is Barry’s personal favourite of all his many Bond titles. “Shirley Bassey was perfect casting,” he noted. “She brought such conviction to it.” The first Bond for which he was given full musical authority, Barry feels that “Goldfinger” was the first time that “the musical style [in a Bond] really came together. Everything culminated with that film.”

Indeed, it did. Although it was only No 3 in a series that would continue to propagate for decades, “Goldfinger” represented, in many ways, a peak.

Film Synopsis

Beginning innocently enough with a murder, James Bond finds himself investigating Auric Goldfinger, a gold dealer who the Bank of England suspects is stockpiling huge amounts of gold bullion. However, he soon uncovers a far more sinister plot called Operation Grand Slam and has a fair bit of bowler-hat-dodging to do from Goldfinger’s manservant, Oddjob.

Lyrics

Goldfinger
He’s the man, the man with the Midas touch
A spider’s touch

Such a cold finger
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
But don’t go in

Golden words he will pour in your ear
But his lies can’t disguise what you fear
For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her
It’s the kiss of death …

From Mister Goldfinger
Pretty girl, beware of his heart of gold
This heart is cold

Golden words he will pour in your ear
But his lies can’t disguise what you fear
For a golden girl knows when he’s kissed her
It’s the kiss of death …

From Mister Goldfinger
Pretty girl, beware of his heart of gold
This heart is cold
He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold
He loves only gold
Only gold
He loves gold