Whatever the reason, it led to Barry's long partnership with lyricist Don Black, as by the time the decision to change the song had been taken, Bricusse had also gone to work in America and wasn't available. Obviously if the song wasn't used at all, there could be no case to answer! Then, at the last minute they got cold feet and decided to have a song called 'Thunderball'.' The official reason for the change of mind was that the original song-title may have been considered to have sexual connotations in conservative America, but rumour has it that there may have been a threat of court action from Bassey following her replacement by Warwick. I had about twelve cow bells on it with different rhythms, along with a large orchestra, and thought it a very original piece. The Bond team had even chosen the singer - Dionne Warwick, who sang her own arrangement, after Shirley Bassey's original version had failed to impress.īarry takes up the story: 'Dionne's was a marvellous song and she did a great arrangement for it. Accordingly, Barry based the entire score around this title song which had lyrics written solely by Leslie Bricusse (Newley was working in America at the time). So they decided to use the name by which Bond had become known in Italy and Japan - Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Writes Geoff Leonard in 'Bond by Barry: The Story of James Bond Music': For Thunderball, the fourth film in the Bond series, the producers for this outing felt it a good idea to do away with the normal title song, ('Thunderball' was thought to prove difficult lyric-wise in any case). Kiss Bang Bang' from the uploader of the video, dibotis: The song was originally recorded by Shirley Bassey, but was later rerecorded by Dionne Warwick, whose version was not released until the 1990s. The title was taken from an Italian journalist who in 1962 dubbed agent 007 as Mr.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which was written by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse. The original title credit theme to Thunderball was entitled 'Mr. Sean Connery's favorite Bond film, and the one he thought was the best, Thunderball (1965), had two title tracks.

Mr kiss kiss bang bang john barry