The erotic advice that led to Shirley Bassey’s defining performance of ‘Diamonds Are Forever’
When you think about all of the iconic hits that have been released as theme songs for the James Bond film franchise, there are plenty of songs that might immediately spring to mind. You’ve got classics from the 1970s such as Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘Live and Let Die’ and Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ from The Spy Who Loved Me, and in more recent years, we’ve had the likes of Adele’s ‘Skyfall’ accompanying the film of the same name. However, if there’s one person who will forever be associated with being the queen of the Bond theme, then look no further than Shirley Bassey.
The Welsh vocalist was invited to perform the theme tune to Goldfinger and, due to its resounding success, was invited back on two other occasions in the 1970s to lend her extravagant vocals to a Bond theme for Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker. While the latter is rarely spoken about as being one of her most timeless performances, her rendition of ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ is undoubtedly a remarkable moment in her career, despite the film having been a flop in comparison to Connery’s previous portrayals of the spy.
Written by longtime Bond soundtrack composer John Barry, with lyrics by Don Black, the song and film share their name with the Ian Fleming novel that was written in 1956, and while the film may not have taken many cues from the plot of the book, Fleming was initially inspired by an advertising slogan used by the De Beers mining company, who used the line “a diamond is forever” in order to sell diamonds as a symbol of love. Some of the lyrics that Black penned for Bassey to sing reflect this idea, but when it came to Barry attempting to squeeze another dramatic performance from Bassey in the studio, he had other thoughts on how to make her sing the lines more seductively.
In a decidedly crass decision by Barry, he suggested that Bassey should dismiss the fact that the song is about a precious gemstone, and instead told her to imagine that she was singing about male genitalia. Whether or not Bassey took heed of this advice and switched one valuable object of desire for a more carnal one, the advice clearly worked, and he managed to get the best out of the Tiger Bay-born vocalist.
When you begin to focus on the lyrics of the song and imagine them in the way that Barry suggested, they do happen to become a lot more innuendo-laden than you might think, with “hold one up and then caress it/touch it, stroke it and undress it” becoming far smuttier than it ever ought to be. Whether Barry had a momentary lapse in judgement and somehow thought he was contributing to a Carry On film instead, we’ll never know, but it becomes hard to see “they are all I need to please me/they can stimulate and tease me” in any other way.
However, this vulgar advice seemed to do the trick, and presumably, while attempting to stifle a few childish giggles, Bassey managed to deliver one of her trademark vocal performances and ended up providing Barry with another of the Bond franchise’s most enduring theme songs. Bassey is of course celebrated for many other songs of hers, but ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ is perhaps one of her finest hits in an illustrious career.
What’s more, Black was completely unaware of this bizarre suggestion made by the composer until several years after penning the lyrics to the theme tune. In a 2008 interview with the Sunday Times, he was quoted as saying: “He never said that to me when I was writing it. I was writing about a diamond!” Sure, Don, sure.
