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For tonight’s final Bond on Vinyl post for the year, we’re listening to music that didn’t make it into any James Bond film!
The California rock band The Beach Boys played a major role in establishing the surf rock scene in the 1960s. Following the band’s sixth album, band leader and composer Brian Wilson took a break from touring (while the rest of the band continued with session musicians) to focus on writing the group’s next album. Wilson sought to transition the band out of the surf rock era and create the most progressive pop album ever. The concept album proved to be a success and is still recognized for its influence six decades later.
At this same time, Brian Wilson (like many of us) became enchanted with the music of the James Bond films. The title track of the 1966 album ‘Pet Sounds’ was in fact Wilson’s attempt at a Bond theme. Likely not a main title theme, but rather an instrumental of easy listening music with a touch of the exotic. The original name for the ‘Pet Sounds’ track and potential film theme was ‘Run James Run.’
In the book The Making of Pet Sounds, Wilson shared, “It was supposed to be a James Bond theme type of song. We were gonna try to get it to the James Bond people. But we thought it would never happen. So we put it on the album.” Unfortunately, it looks like the timing was off for Wilson to realistically submit the track to Bond producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. They had already selected John Barry to score his third Bond soundtrack, long before the Thunderball soundtrack was recorded in October of 1965.
A song with the working title ‘Run James Run’ was recorded on November 17th, 1965, by Wilson and several session musicians to play the variety of instruments involved. Even with no other members of the Beach Boys present, the song was renamed and included as the penultimate track on ‘Pet Sounds’ when it was released in May of 1966. While the track may have worked for the tropical settings of Thunderball, it would not have been as good a fit for the sound of You Only Live Twice, which was recorded by John Barry in April of 1967.
Finally, to complicate matters with this song even more. Brian Wilson released this double-LP, 180 Gram compilation album in 2017, ‘Playback: The Brian Wilson Anthology.’ The last track on the record is also titled ‘Run James Run.’ This is not, however, an alternate version of ‘Pet Sounds,’ but rather a completely unrelated song (with lyrics) that was a previously unreleased outtake from Wilson’s 2015 album ‘No Pier Pressure. ’ 😛
Here’s the original version from Pet Sounds:
156. Brian Wilson – Playback: The Brian Wilson Anthology
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