Q The Music at London's O2 Indigo '24

I was thrilled to attend 'Q The Music''s 'James Bond Spectacular' at the O2 Indigo in North Greenwich on Sunday evening for a wonderful series of performances by Warren Ringham and his band, entertaining an audience of hundreds of fans and concert-goers. (I was just there for the concert, not the reception or after-party.)

GF and TMWTGG were especially tributed as this year's anniversary Bond films. GF was evoked visually on stage by a gold-painted mannequin of Jill Masterson draped on a bed [no: she was a real person!*], next to a stack of faux gold ingots, while TMWTGG was celebrated in style with live appearances by Maud Adams and Britt Ekland, each briefly interviewed by affable compere David Zaritsky. Not to mention a pair of giant golden gun props at the back of the stage, barrels angled towards each other as if in a salute. It was lovely to see Maud and Britt in person, of course; Zaritsky's experience at keeping things pacy and upbeat when chatting with Bond luminaries who are advancing in years came into its own right here. Ringham and vocalist Matt Walker were both impressively attired in sponsor Anthony Sinclair's line of tuxedo as originally designed for Sean Connery in DN; Ringham admitted to spoiling his high-end trousers by getting a splodge of gold paint on them when making earlier backstage adjustments to the position of the mannequin [correction: Emma!*], to ensure its [her!*] pose was exactly the same as the 'golden girl' model's in GF!

The evening's music opened appropriately enough with a GF suite, strident and suspenseful by turns: 'Bond Back In Action Again', 'Into Miami', 'Golden Girl', 'The Laser Beam', 'Oddjob's Pressing Engagement', 'Dawn Raid On Fort Knox' and, of course, the GF title song, belted out by Kerry Schultz. Shivers ran down my spine during the 'Raid' cue. There's something gloriously nervy, for example, about those chords which accompany the moment in the film when we see Felix Leiter among the apparent victims of the Flying Circus's aerial mission; the music ratchets up the tension in a uniquely Bondian way.

It was also exciting to hear 'The Laser Beam' in live performance. 'Q The Music''s glossy brochure for the concert, a thoroughly engrossing read, contains a couple of excellent articles by Ringham on the music of GF and TMWTGG, including some discussion of 'The Laser Beam'. Ringham offers fascinating insight on the pragmatism of John Barry's artistry: "One of the things which I've always felt Barry did for Bond music, and really established [in GF] ... is what I call a 'modular' way of ... film score writing. ... I can only imagine the frustration of a film composer who spends months crafting a beautifully constructed piece of music for a scene, records it, then finds the editor has changed the length of the scene and so your music has to be carved up to fit the new length. [To avoid this problem, Barry would] write a 4-bar idea, then just repeat it again [and again] and layer something else on top." Expedient - but done superbly!

If TMWTGG's leading ladies were able to grace the evening in person, a memory of that film's male leads was conjured by performances of the jaunty 'Let's Go Get 'Em' - complete with penny whistle - and the quirkily sinister 'Scaramanga's Fun House'. I was particularly delighted by the inclusion of the latter, which I've previously enjoyed when browsing 'Q The Music''s online uploads. The stage and the band were bathed in blood-red light for 'Fun House', as if channeling the post-Dracula Christopher Lee's stalking presence as a deadly villain. I have to say, though, that, for me, the Barry highlight of the evening was a wonderful addendum to last year's FRWL anniversary celebrations: 'James Bond with Bongos', a piece which conveys all the atmosphere, subterfuge and cat-and-mouse menace of FRWL's Flemingesque Istanbul.

David Arnold's action music was well represented during the evening by exhilarating performances of 'Ice Bandits', 'Backseat Driver' (ooh, shut that door!) and, in the encore, 'Come In OO7, Your Time Is Up'. The latter was, as much as anything, a celebration of the O2 venue's Bond location, the site of the Millennium Dome where TWINE's PTS climaxes. For me, 'Q The Music''s renditions of Arnold's heady set pieces of the Pierce Brosnan films resolve the counterpoint between orchestral music and burbling electronica in favour of the orchestra, which is really how I prefer it.

The core of the evening was comprised, as ever, of performances of a wide selection of Bond songs, including all the big iconic numbers. Vocalist Kerry Schultz deserves special credit, managing convincingly to cover everyone from Shirley Bassey to Billie Eilish to Simon Le Bon to Carly Simon to Jack White to Alicia Keys to Tina Turner to Nancy Sinatra to Lulu to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (duetting with Matt Walker's Morton Harket) to Adele to k. d. lang to Paul McCartney to Shirley Manson to (especially) Gladys Knight... (but not to Madonna: the techno 'Die Another Day' number isn't on the 'Q The Music' roster, for understandable reasons.) As for Walker, he matched Sam Smith's falsetto admirably for 'The Writing's On The Wall' and held the long, final note of 'Thunderball' with consummate cool. The highlight of Walker's evening was surely the chance to rock it up with 'You Know My Name' but Schultz managed to top even that with a truly bombastic performance of 'Another Way To Die'.

I've been to three of these concerts now and always enjoy 'Q The Music''s take on the Bond songs. The set list is circumscribed by the Bond canon, of course, but there isn't enough time to include all of the songs in any one evening alongside the other items; there's always a question of which songs might not make the cut for a particular show. I love them all and am happy to listen to them repeatedly but I wonder whether it isn't perhaps time for 'Q The Music' to open the door a little further, for the sake of even greater variety, and admit some of the great 'unused'. How about a Ringham innings for the Julie Rogers demo of 'You Only Live Twice', for example; or Alice Cooper's 'The Man With The Golden Gun' (freaky bits included), or Blondie's 'For Your Eyes Only' (a pretty little post-punk song) or Arnold's 'No Good About Goodbye' (the Bassey-meets-Craig ballad that 'never was' - except covertly - but which always should have been canon)?

It was a large audience for Sunday's show. 'Q The Music' loyalists were out in force; Bond enthusiasts of varying degrees of fannishness (Zaritsky certainly played to the fan gallery with a smattering of esoteric gags); doubtless a few 'plus ones' and probably a substantial number of casual concert-goers attracted by a spectacular O2 outing for headline Bond songs. For me, as I suspect for many fans, the main interest of these concerts remains in the more obscure choices of instrumental cues from the body of the films, Barry's cues in particular.

I very much look forward to the next one.

*Note:

Warren Ringham has been kind enough to reply to this review and point out the following:

"It wasn't a mannequin! You are not the only one - everyone thought she was, cause Emma was bloody still for half an hour. Incredible. 

We had been planning and discussing this for months, down to how the arm is draped, the fact the pillow is next to the head not under it, how we would get her on and off with the curtain closed....and she bloomin nailed it.

I got paint as last minute i went to just speak to her and adjust, and she brushed my knee...!"

😀