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Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
How Paul McCartney landed the title theme for a James Bond film
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Jan Dunn
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Jan Dunn.
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Paul McCartney
It was the first rock song to be the title track for a James Bond film. For the first 007 film to star Roger Moore as Bond. To create it, Paul McCartney was reunited with Sir George Martin for Martin's first big post Beatles success. Live and Let Die was a series of firsts and the longevity of the song is remarkable. Let's get into the history of how it came to be one of McCartney's most popular hits in this episode of behind the Song. If you like this episode, give it a like at the end. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Paul McCartney had been approached to contribute to the James Bond franchise musically before this this film. One of the producers, Albert R. Broccoli, knew Ron Cass, head of McCartney's Apple Records, and there had been talk of him writing the title song for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever. That opportunity fell to the wayside because of contractual issues, but it opened the door for McCartney to contribute to the next 007 film, the eighth in the series, 1973's Live and Let Die. He was commissioned to write the title track and McCartney says in his book the lyrics that writing a Bond song is a bit of an accolade, especially for a British musician. So he was very keen to do it. The timing was great. This was in 1972 when McCartney and Wings were already recording the Red Rose Speedway album, booked into Martin's Air studios in London. The screenplay for the film wasn't yet done at this point, so McCartney was sent the Ian Fleming novel the film is based on to read, which he devoured in Just One Day. By the following day, he said that he knew how to approach it and include the title of the film in the song by coming at it from a place of letting go. In his words, don't worry about it when you've got problems, just live and let die. Once he had that thought, he sat down to write it at his piano and he said that Linda McCartney, who's credited as the song's co writer, helped on the reggae bit. He then played what he had written, the riff and the main song structure for George Martin, the person he knew he could trust with what he called the Bondian arrangements. McCartney left the orchestrations and the explosions that he knew it would need to be a Bond worthy title track completely to Martin. The result was what he called Pure George. That perfectly stated balance of grandiose without being over the top. McCartney and Wings recorded their part of the song during the Red Rose Speedway sessions, with Martin bringing in the orchestra to record the arrangement he had written for it at night. When it was done, Martin flew to the Caribbean, where filming was all already taking place, with the pressing of it to play for the producers Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. The story goes that when Saltzman heard it, he assumed that it was just a demo because there'd been talk of the track being sung by a female singer like Thelma Houston or Dame Shirley Bassey, who had performed other Bond themes. The producers brought this up to Martin, who responded, you've got Paul McCartney here. This is the record. It was agreed upon. And it actually ended up being put in the contract that McCartney would only contribute the song to the film if he and his band performed it under the opening title. There is still a female singing the song in the film. American soul singer BJ Arnault performed it as a cabaret act in one scene. Because of the work George Martin did on the production and orchestration of this title track, the producers hired him to compose the score for the entire movie instead of composer John Barry, who had an artistic falling out with Saltzman over the theme for Diamonds Are Forever. Barry found the lyrical content on the theme for that film, which was sung by Shirley Bassey, to be, in his words, scandalously dirty. Even though he had a long history with the franchise and was incredibly important in shaping the scene of the Bond movies. Going back to his arranging work on the original Bond theme song in 1962's Dr. No, he had to sit out Bond film 8. Barry returned to the Bond franchise for 1974's the man with the Golden Gun. And in all, he composed the scores for 11 Bond films before and after Live and Let Die. But this one went to Sir George Martin. Wings co founder Danny Sewell said that watching actually write the song with something that he would never forget. He said that once he had the story in his head and how he wanted to approach it, he just sat down at the piano and it was written in 10 minutes. McCartney has joked that he was just grateful he didn't have to write the theme for the Bond film Quantum of Solace, because it would have been a lot harder to get the title of that film into a song. Live and Let Die goes like this. When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say, live and let live. You know you did. But if this ever changing world in which we're living makes you give in and cry, say Live and let die. Now some critics at the time called out a grammar issue with the lyric they thought they heard in which we live in, but McCartney said he was pretty sure he wrote in which we're living instead. And then Martin's bombastic Bondian orchestration kicks in, followed by Linda's reggae bit, as McCartney called it, what does it matter to you when you got a job to do? You got to do it well. You got to give the other fellow hell. One might say this is McCartney's own motivation as being the commissioned writer of a James Bond title song, landing the job and making sure to nail it. The first verse in the chorus repeats, with all the explosions and symphonic touches perfectly in place in between, and the title track for the eighth Bond film was complete. Live and Let Die was released in theaters in the States on June 27, 1973. The song did not appear on the original release of Red Rose Speedway, which came out a few months before in April, but it was released as a single accompanying the movie soundtrack. It was an Instant hit, spending three weeks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it went to number nine on the UK singles chart. It became the most successful Bond theme up to that point. I mentioned firsts at the beginning of this episode, and here's another Live and Let Die was the first Bond theme to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song. Sir George Martin's contribution to the song won the Grammy for Best Arrangement accompanying vocalists. In 1984, Weird Al Yankovic wrote a parody of the song called chicken pot pie. McCartney, a longtime vegetarian, requested that it not be included on an album, and Yankovic, who's a vegetarian himself, agreed, although he has performed it live. And it had another resurgence in 1991 when guns and Roses covered it for their Use youe Illusion 1 album, which went to number five on the Billboard chart and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Both versions are still heard on radio stations to this day. In fact, back in 2012, McCartney was given the Millionaire Award from music publisher BMI for 4 million performances of his composition in America alone. About the GnR cover, McCartney says that he liked it and finds it to be a huge compliment when other bands perform his songs. He shared that back in the early 90s, when his children were going to school, their friends didn't believe them at first when they said their dad wrote the song that Guns N Roses were making popular all over again. For McCartney, the song remains a showstopper on tour, often with killer pyrotechnics and a laser show to go with Martin's Orchid, and it was the only non Beatles song played during his halftime show at the 2005 Super bowl in 2023 to mark its 50th anniversary. The song was remixed in Dolby Atmos by who else but George's son Giles Martin. Live and Let Die paved the way for other rock bands to contribute the title theme to one of the world's best known film franchises, and it's a glowing example of how serendipit the relationship was between Paul McCartney and George Martin, the fifth Beatle. It also provides some insight on how workmanlike McCartney can be when commissioned to create something. As the song says, when you've got a job to do, you've got to do it well. He's said that he wasn't sure how it would hold up against other classic Bond themes at the time, but that he's happy with how it's been received, and that he actually liked the pressure of doing a song of that magnitude for hire. Be that as it may, you may actually have to be Paul McCartney to sit down and write a James Bond theme song in just 10 minutes. I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. Check us out on TikTok and you can find me on the air weekdays from 9 to 2 Central and 97.1 FM the Drive in Chicago and@wdrv.com on the way, much more classic rock and roll.