Vic Flick (1937-2024)
19th November 2024
Famed session musician Vic Flick who performed the original James Bond Theme guitar solo has died
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 - Famed session musician Vic Flick who performed the original James Bond Theme guitar solo has died)
Born in Worcester Park, Surrey on 14 May 1937, Vic Flick was raised around music: his father a music teacher, his mother a classical singer. Flick’s parents insisted he learn a musical instrument, and uninspired by the piano and violin he was drawn to the guitar after discovering a second-hand Gibson Kalamazoo. “I practiced the instrument until the tips of my fingers bled.” Music was not Flick’s original vocation. After leaving school he worked for Barclays Bank and then trained as a heating and ventilation engineer. It was an advert in Melody Maker looking for an in-house guitarist at Butlin’s Holiday Camp that set Flick on his path to success, “I discovered I knew more tunes and more about music than any of the other musicians.”
Later, Flick secured steady work as a freelance session musician. In 1958 while on tour around the UK performing with the Bob Court Skiffle Group, he met John Barry whose band was on the same supporting bill for the Canadian American singer, Paul Anka. Flick was invited to join the John Barry Seven. The following year Barry was asked to score his first film Beat Girl starring Adam Faith, a portrayal of the emerging ‘beatnik’ culture set in the coffee bars and strip clubs of Soho. The idea of using a pop musician to score a film was revolutionary at the time. Barry’s biographer Eddi Fiegel noted, “John’s unique combination of Stan Kenton-inspired big-band jazz styles with Vic Flick’s edgy guitar wang was unprecedented at the time.”
In 2020 Flick told authors Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury that the film’s main theme would play a vital role in the genesis of the James Bond Theme, “Peter Hunt had heard the music for Beat Girl. Barry was handed this piece of paper with the jottings of [the James Bond Theme]. We were never guided and did not want to be guided by Monty Norman. We took it away and worked it up into a Beat Girl kind of thing. What they wanted was punch and hidden excitement. We tried to get the atmosphere of a spy into the music. I leaned into these thick low strings with the very hard plectrum, played it slightly ahead of the beat. It had the punch, energy and drive that was needed to portray who James Bond was.”
The James Bond Theme was recorded on 21 June 1962 at CTS Studios in London. Flick recalled the session took about an hour, for which he was paid seven pounds, 10 shillings for his work, “I played it on a 1939 Clifford Essex paragon deLuxe acoustic guitar with a DeArmond pickup which gave it that cutting sound. I should have used my Fender guitar, but it was stolen a month before at a gig.” Later Flick accompanied John Barry to a screening of 'Dr. No', “We were surprised that the music we recorded together as a theme tune kept creeping into the film.”
Flick played on the soundtracks of the first five Bond films. On 'From Russia With Love' Barry asked Flick to improvise in the style of gypsy guitar music using a Spanish guitar. Within a few minutes Flick worked out a piece of music which formed the basis of the cue ‘Gypsy Camp’. Flick told author Jon Burlingame, “The next time we did a take, and that was it. So, whether it was going to be good or bad was kind of down to me, which is what the session business is all about.” He performed another solo on 'Goldfinger', this time on a banjo, which scored scenes set on the villain’s Kentucky stud farm.
Flick played on hundreds of records including hits such as Petula Clark’s Downtown, Tom Jones’ It’s Not Unusual and What’s New Pussycat?, Bee Gees’ Spicks and Specks, and Ringo’s Theme (This Boy) for the Beatles’ 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. Over the years he worked with the likes of Jimmy Page, George Martin, Cliff Richard, Eric Clapton, Nancy Sinatra and Dusty Springfield.
In 1989 Flick worked with Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton on a remix of the James Bond Theme for the Licence To Kill soundtrack that was later aborted. He recalled Clapton telling him, “Michael Kamen and I have come up with this theme. It is an instrumental and we’d like you to be involved in it. It was all low guitar. Pop-y but dramatic.” Music supervisor Andrew Glen (son of director John Glen) detailed, “It was Vic Flick playing the Bond theme that we know and love. And then the music would change completely and go into a blues-y improvisation by Eric. And then back to the Bond theme and back to a blues-y improvisation by Eric.” The experience was somewhat of a reunion for Flick having first met Clapton back in the 1960s during the John Barry Seven days at the New Musical Express concerts with other stars such as Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. While the track was abandoned, Flick was called in to play the James Bond Theme on the final soundtrack for the opening gun barrel sequence.
He moved to the United States in the mid-1970s and finally settled in Las Vegas. In 2008 Flick wrote his autobiography Vic Flick Guitarman: From James Bond to The Beatles and Beyond’. He later sold the original guitar on which he performed the most recognisable piece of film music in cinema history for $55,00 to American businessman and reality television personality, Rick Harrison.
Vic Flick died following a battle with Alzheimer’s. He was 87. He is survived by his wife Judy and his son Kevin. His daughter Jayne Marie predeceased him.
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