John Barry's status as one of the key composers of cinema and film tunes is set in stone- or celluloid maybe. His work on the James Bond films alone guarantees him that. Better still is his music for Midnight Cowboy which featured in this series back in March. The Ipcress File from 1965 broke ground as a flipside to the Bond films, a downbeat, unglamorous, grittier spy film that contrasted 007 with a working class, almost film noir spy, caught up in red tape and workplace difficulties.
John Barry's theme tune is deliberately non- Bond too. The catchy electric guitar riff is replaced by a off kilter melody line picked out on a cimbalon while piano plonks away discordantly. It's London gloom, fog and a 1960s still in black and white.
The Ipcress File was directed by Sidney J. Furie and starred Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, a role that came between his one in Zulu the previous year thta made him a star and his leading part in Alfie in 1966 that launched him the USA.
In 1969 John Barry and Hal David wrote We Have All the Time In The World, a Bond theme sung by Louis Armstrong for On her Majesty's Secret Service. In 1993 My Bloody Valentine covered it for the Peace Together compilation, an album to promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. An unlikely cover version pair up, John Barry and Louis Armstrong with MBV- but they play it fairly straight and it works.