Vic Flick, guitarist who played 007’s original theme, dies at 87

He was a prolific session musician in Britain, working with singers including Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and Dusty Springfield.


British guitarist Vic Flick performs with the Fab Four, a Beatles tribute band, in 2002 at the House of Blues in Southern California. (Mel Bouzad/Getty Images)

By Harrison Smith
November 20, 2024 at 7:33 p.m. EST

Vic Flick, a prolific session guitarist who helped give the James Bond franchise its signature sound, playing the hard-driving guitar riff in the 007 theme, died Nov. 14 at a nursing home in Los Angeles. He was 87. ... He had Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, Kevin Flick.

Along with composer Monty Norman and arranger John Barry, Mr. Flick played a key role in shaping the “James Bond Theme,” a jazzy fanfare that became as closely identified with 007 as his classic black tuxedo and preferred choice of cocktail (martini, “shaken, not stirred”). Propelled by horn blasts, a swing-style drumbeat and Mr. Flick’s twangy dum di-di dum dum guitar part, the song set the tone for the film series, playing over the opening gun-barrel sequence and title credits of its first installment, 1962’s “Dr. No.” ... “Sound-wise, it represented everything about the character you would want,” composer David Arnold, who scored five Bond films, told Variety in 2008. “It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable.”

Mr. Flick was 25 when he was brought in to help punch up the theme a few months before the film’s release. Norman had already composed the music, adapting the melody from “Bad Sign, Good Sign,” a song he had written for an unproduced musical adaptation of V.S. Naipaul’s novel “A House for Mr. Biswas.” But “Dr. No’s” filmmakers, along with Norman himself, agreed that they needed to find a way “to ratchet up the excitement level,” according to journalist Jon Burlingame’s 2012 book “The Music of James Bond.”


The Bond team turned to Barry, who had fused pop and jazz sounds as the leader of the John Barry Seven and scored films including “Beat Girl,” a 1960 teen movie with a guitar-driven theme. He soon called on Mr. Flick, who played in Barry’s band and was featured on the “Beat Girl” soundtrack, for a meeting at his apartment, where they discussed the guitar part and ideas for the arrangement. ... “I said, ‘Take it down an octave. Make it grungy like ‘Beat Girl.’ Get that sound going.’ That and the brass punched the Bond films to success,” Mr. Flick told Guitar Player magazine.


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Mr. Flick, left, with lyricist Don Black and composer Bill Conti at a 2012 event, “The Music of Bond,” organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (Araya Doheny/FilmMagic)

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Mr. Flick later composed music for movies and television shows, working with Merchant Ivory Productions on period dramas including “The Europeans” (1979) and “Quartet” (1981). ... But he remained best known for the “James Bond Theme,” which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. Mr. Flick began receiving royalties from the song in the mid-1990s, according to NPR, three decades after he received a modest payment for his work on the theme: 7 pounds, 10 shillings, or about $15.

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By Harrison Smith
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago.follow on X @harrisondsmith