Barry remembered by Arnold...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2011/dec/11/john-barry-obituary-david-arnold

Quote :

I was eight when I heard John Barry's music for the first time – at a children's birthday party in a British Legion hall when they showed You Only Live Twice. The opening just about took the top of my head off: a giant, alien-like spaceship consumed a smaller spaceship while John's music pounded underneath. It looked exotic and sounded incredible.

Then, in 1995, I was introduced to him by Sir George Martin. I was doing a cover record of some of John's Bond songs, for the album Shaken and Stirred. He was really friendly. We just yakked about the industry and about his experiences working with Cubby Broccoli (the Bond films producer), Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford among others.

He was an amazing storyteller and could be very cutting. He didn't take kindly to fools. When we went out for dinner, I was the eater and he was the drinker. He particularly liked champagne cocktails in those days. Shortly after that, I got my first Bond movie. I am sure somewhere along the line John had given me the thumbs-up.

Our conversations were about very ordinary things – work, family, mutual friends. Although he was effortlessly elegant and cool – he was "the man" in the 60s, after all, who lived in Cadogan Square and drove an E-Type Jag and courted glamorous women – he never succumbed to the Hollywood razzmatazz. He was always a Yorkshireman.

He was married several times, but I know he found great joy in his relationship with his fourth wife, Laurie, whom he married in 1978, and also with his children . But I think he was probably happiest when he was writing for films. His music was so distinctive. You could listen to a John Barry piece – "The Ipcress File", "Goldfinger", "Out of Africa" – for five seconds and know that it was his music, his voice, and yet know exactly what that film would be about.

His music was very elegant, beautiful, stylish and harmonically complex, particularly in the way he used jazz chords to accompany his lyrical melodies. The overall effect was very simple, however. You heard it once and you felt you had heard it a thousand times before.

Nothing that hasn't been said a thousand times before and thousand times better since the Guvnor's passing, but a nice tribute nonetheless.

Mr Arnold wrote:

The overall effect was very simple, however. You heard it once and you felt you had heard it a thousand times before.

Sorry David, but that description fits your Bond music a million times more than it ever will John Barry's. There are people far closer to John Barry whom I would have expected to have spoken out, yet instead we have to endure Arnold's predictable and tasteless "elevation by association" schtick as the "heir" role is obviously now up for grabs. Want to do something to honour John Barry's legacy, Mr Arnold? Resign from Bond.