Bund, Kamar Bund

Every once in awhile, Mr. Everything Is Indian turns out to be right. The composer of the James Bond theme says he originally wrote it for a musical version of V.S. Naipaul’s comic epic A House for Mr. Biswas (thanks, Soozy):

Monty [Norman] was commissioned to write the soundtrack for the first Bond movie Dr. No. He decided to pull the forgotten song out of his drawer… “I looked at the basic melody of ‘Bad Sign, Good Sign.’ I decided to take out the Indian slur notes and turned it into split notes. It was then I immediately realised this was the theme for James Bond.”

Now the sitar twanging classic can be heard in its original form… on his latest album, Completing The Circle. [Link]

Monty Norman has been credited with writing the “James Bond Theme”, and has received royalties since 1962. For Dr. No, the song was orchestrated by John Barry, who would later go on to compose the soundtrack for 11 future Bond films. [Link]

[A House for Mr. Biswas] was later adapted as a stage musical… A two-part radio dramatisation, featuring… Nitin Ganatra [and] Nina Wadia… ran on BBC Radio… [in] 2006. [Link]

It’s ironic that a song for the ineffectual, Trini Walter Mitty would become the theme for the archetypical British assassin. That a novel so dilatory would stand in for a character so direct. And that the composer now resembles the aging Sean Connery

Let’s play identify the sample — check out the original melody, ‘Bad Sign, Good Sign,’ and compare it with the original Bond theme on the same page. The original, with a guy singing in a horrible Indian accent over tabla and sitar, sounds like one of those badly exoticized songs from Aladdin or Gunga Din:

I was born with this unlucky sneeze
And what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round
Pundits all agree I am the reason why
My father fell into the village pond and drowned. [Link]

But the signature is still recognizable.

Even funnier, one of the songs for Dr. No is called ‘Underneath the Mango Tree‘

Caterina Murino, Daniel Craig

I saw Casino Royale and… eh. The parkour fight scene was very cool, as was the aviation fuel truck setpiece, but my, what a long poker game, and where are the gadgets? My vote for best Bond couple is still Pierce Brosnan and Famke Janssen.

Ennis has more.