John Barry - RIP

Why is it all the talented ones keep going and leaving us with the crap? Doesn't seem fair.
 
Damn.

If there is a composer I had really come to appreciate over the past few years, it was John Barry. Even though I like his music I had always kind of glossed him over in favor of Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. His score for "Walkabout" has been my favorite for some time now with "Midnight Cowboy" a close second.

He wasn't the most technical of composers, or orchestrators, but he had an unparalleled gift for melody that most of the hacks working today would give their right arms for.
 
Unlike a lot of the more symphonic-sounding composers, like Williams, his stuff relied less on rips from classical music. Tons of SW, Close Encounters is made out of bits of Holst, Stravinsky etc., and that's fine for those films, but Barry's music never really sounded like anything that had gone before at all. Even the incidental orchestral music - as opposed to the often big band or song main titles - was always totally unique and original. The eerie flute-based passages in the underwater scenes from Thunderball are a good example of that - incredibly evocative musical innovation. The guy was a true original, a genius. Like Morricone, he had a great influence on pop and rock music too. And, to echo the post above, the colour he gets into his melodies in songs like Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Goldfinger, Born Free, You Only Live Twice is something that today's hacks can only dream about...
 
Oh yeah, he was also the originator of smooth ambient 'chill' stuff. Here's the dreamy, orgasmic, 'Ecstasy' from 'The Knack', a wonderful British sex-themed comedy from 1965:
YouTube - JOHN BARRY - 'ECSTASY' from 'The KNACK....'

(This track consists of just two chords for its entire length. Apart from its minimalism, it contains a harmonic relationship that would become an absolute staple of psychedelia two or three years down the line, with Pink Floyd in particular making massive use of its 'cosmic' potential. It crops up constantly through Barry's work, forming the guts of You Only Live Twice, notably.)
 
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Barry had a knack for making bad movies sound good. From King Kong to Mr. Moses to The Black Hole to The Cotton Club, he was the desperate director's best friend.
 
I've got quite a few of his tracks on my ipod....sad to hear that. His legacy will live on through his works.

For a lot of his music one can almost hear someone singing the words...his music sings.
 
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