Robertson, who had written hits for Cliff Richard and Mike & the Mechanics, was invited to pen the words. In addition, Kamen hoped to turn his main theme into a song, just as predecessors Barry, Hamlisch and Conti had done. Issues involving payment for Clapton’s participation further complicated matters, and as a result the track has never seen the light of day. He was vamping, and this was the wrong time to do it." Remembered Flick: "It was kind of a bluesy, bendy tune, with Clapton fooling around from the outline of a theme on top of a basic backing track and me providing the dark-guitar countertheme in the bass end." Flick (who had brought his original 1960s guitar) recalled that "all day we worked on this composition and by the close it was sounding pretty good." McLaughlin recalled it as "a big Bond-y tune, and it also had a kind of quote of the Bond theme."Īccording to Flick, a video shoot for the commercial took place the next day "in the attic of a riverside wharf London dock area." Kamen summed it all up years later by saying that the session "didn’t really bear any fruit." Sill dismissed it as "terrible," and together with the Broccolis a decision was made to shelve it. What actually happened that day depends on who’s telling the story. Clapton and Flick joined Kamen, drummer Steve Ferrone and percussionist Ray Cooper at London’s Townhouse Studios to record the music for a TV commercial that would also cross-promote the movie. As on Lethal Weapon, he brought in guitarist Clapton, and, at the suggestion of engineer Stephen McLaughlin, original Bond theme guitarist Vic Flick (who had not played on a Bond since the 1960s). I have bolded certain relevant parts.īy early February 1989, Kamen had come up with a theme. The following text is taken from Jon Burlingame's book, The Music of James Bond. Still, we can analyze the piece of music by ourselves and see if it is consistent with what we know about the unreleased LTK instrumental. Unfortunately, there has been no response to date. You'll understand I took a skeptical position about what I was seeing and hearing, so I left a comment asking for a second confirmation that the uploaded piece was indeed the unused LTK instrumental, and asking for information on how this piece was found. The uploader seems to specialize in Eric Clapton music. Recorded at the Townhouse Studios, London February 1989." The piece was uploaded to SoundCloud on January 2nd, 2022. The description reads: "The unreleased EC track from the 007 film, License to Kill. The title reads: "James Bond Theme - License to Kill - Eric Clapton outtake". In the end, it wasn't used and, to the best of our knowledge, it has never been released.Ībout two weeks ago, I was listening to something on SoundCloud and I ran into this: Given the notability of this piece of music, I think this deserves its own thread.Īs you might know, an instrumental piece was composed by Michael Kamen for Licence to Kill, and was recorded featuring both Eric Clapton and Vic Flick on guitars. It's the original audio downloaded from SoundCloud (no re-encoding): Ī YouTube video with the track has also been deleted "due to a copyright claim by Michael Kamen." It's worth noting that copyright claims can be falsified, though in this case, the domain of the email used for the claim was ".uk" ( source). Link to the relevant post (check the comments section): His full comments can be found in the "James Bond Music" Facebook group. Vic Flick has said that from what he can remember, the SoundCloud track sounds nothing like the 1989 LTK sessions. Here is a link to a follow-up post by the person who contacted Flick: Link unfortunately not available (it's a private group). The full comments can be found in the "James Bond Enthusiasts" Facebook group. Flick won't say the SoundCloud track isn't the right one but won't authenticate it either. He says the original piece was more subtle and Bondian, and had no brass. Vic Flick has restated that the SoundCloud track doesn't fit with his memories of the 1989 LTK sessions. In the same thread, a person who contacted the original uploader of the SoundCloud audio gives more details on how the track was obtained.
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