Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey song)

Background

Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were asked to create the lyrics for the song. But when its composer John Barry played them the first three notes, Bricusse and Newley looked at each other and sang out: ". . . wider than a mile," to the melody of "Moon River," the popular theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Barry was not amused.

One source of inspiration was the song "Mack the Knife", which director Guy Hamilton showed Barry, thinking it was a "gritty and rough" song that could be a good model for what the film required. Bricusse and Newley were not shown any film footage or script excerpts, but were advised of the fatal gilding suffered by the Jill Masterson character, played by Shirley Eaton. Bricusse would later recall that once he and Newley hit upon utilizing "the Midas touch" in the lyric, the pattern of the song became evident and the lyrics were completed within at most a couple of days.

The first recording of "Goldfinger" was made by Newley in a May 14, 1964 recording session, with Barry as conductor, which produced two completed takes. Barry would recall that Newley gave a "very creepy" performance which he, Barry considered "terrific". Newley's recording, however, was made purely as a demo for the film's makers. According to Barry, Newley "didn't want to sing it in the movie as they [Newley and Bricusse] thought the song was a bit weird".

Shirley Bassey was Barry's choice to record the song; he had been conductor on Bassey's national tour in December 1963 and the two had also been romantically involved. Barry had played Bassey an instrumental track of the song before its lyrics were written; the singer would recall that hearing the track had given her "goose bumps". She agreed to sing the song whatever the lyrics might eventually be. Bassey recorded the track on August 20, 1964 at London's CTS Studios in Wembley: the track's producer credit named Bassey's regular producer George Martin, but the session was in fact overseen by Barry. Vic Flick, Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan are all said to have been guitarists on the session, and Page has acknowledged his involvement, recalling that Bassey had nearly collapsed after the final note.

The recording of "Goldfinger" lasted all night as Barry demanded repeated takes due to musicians' or technical glitches, not any shortcomings in Bassey's vocal. Bassey did initially have issues with the climactic final note which necessitated her slipping behind a studio partition between takes to remove her bra. Bassey would recall of the final note: "I was holding it and holding it - I was looking at John Barry and I was going blue in the face and he's going - hold it just one more second. When it finished, I nearly passed out."

The iconic two-note phrase which is the basis for the song's introduction was not in the original orchestration, but occurred to Barry during a tea-break, following an hour and a half of rehearsal. By the time the musicians returned, twenty minutes later, he had written the figure into the orchestration.

The hit single was released in mono, with the album stereo issues (on the film soundtrack, Golden Hits Of Shirley Bassey and subsequent releases) using an alternate mix in which the instrumental take is the same, but Bassey's vocal is different; a shade less intense and with a shorter final note. Newley's version was later released in 1992 to mark the 30th Anniversary of James Bond on film, in a compilation collector's edition: The Best of Bond...James Bond.

Bassey's title theme was almost taken out of the film because producer Harry Saltzman hated it, saying, "That's the worst *** song I've ever heard in my *** life". Saltzman would also dislike Bassey's subsequent Bond theme, that for Diamonds Are Forever. However there was not enough time for a replacement song to be written and recorded.

Release

The release on vinyl of Bassey's (mono) version, UA 790, sold more than a million copies in the United States (Guinness Book of Records), and it also reached #1 in Japan, #4 in Australia, and the Top Ten of many European countries including Austria (#7), Belgium (#9 on the Dutch charts), Germany (#8), Italy (#3), the Netherlands (#5), and Norway (#7). A #24 hit in France, Bassey's "Goldfinger" was not one of Bassey's biggest hits in her native UK, its #21 peak being far lower than that of the nine Top Ten hits she'd previously scored, but despite Bassey subsequently returning to the UK Top Ten three more times, "Goldfinger" would ultimately become her signature song in the UK as well as the rest of the world. In 2002 poll in which BBC Radio 2 solicited listeners' favourite piece of popular music from the last fifty years performed by a British act, "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey ranked at #46.

Re-recordings

Bassey re-recorded "Goldfinger" for her 2014 album Hello Like Before. In doing so she addressed two notes that she thought "sounded wrong" in the original.

Recorded covers

Live and televised performances

Soundtrack appearances

Remixes and samples

Parodies

Parodies of the song include "Dr. Evil", written by They Might Be Giants for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and "Max Power", from the The Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max".

Inspired songs

In 1989, after the release of the James Bond theme song "Licence to Kill", from the film of the same title, it was felt to significantly reuse important elements of "Goldfinger", and so the songwriting credits for the former were adapted for all subsequent releases.