Vic Flick Bond Guitarist RIP

RIP The Riff Master, what a sound.

Vic Flick, guitarist on the James Bond theme, dies aged 87

Famed session musician, who also performed with the Beatles, Tom Jones, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, died after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Born in Surrey in 1937, Flick had previously performed withthe composer John Barry in the John Barry Seven, when Barry was brought in to rearrange Monty Norman’s theme for Dr No, the first James Bond film.

The theme song was recorded in 1962; Flick played the famous riff on a 1939 English Clifford Essex Paragon Deluxe guitar plugged into a Fender Vibrolux amplifier, which added a “heavy sound”. He was paid a one-off fee of £6.

“It had an edge to it, sort of a dynamic sound,” Flick told Jon Burlingame for his 2012 book The Music of James Bond. “I overplayed it – leaned into those thick low strings with the very hard plectrum, played it slightly ahead of the beat, and it came out exciting, almost ‘attacking’, which fit the James Bond image.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/20/vic-flick-james-bond-theme-guitarist-dies-aged-87