Vic Flick, the famed British session guitarist who picked out the twangy riff for the James Bond theme track launched to moviegoers on Dr. No, has died. He was 87.
His dying on Thursday after a battle with Alzheimer’s illness was introduced by his household on Fb.
Flick additionally performed on No. 1 hits for Peter and Gordon (“A World With out Love”) and Petula Clark (“Downtown”); carried out on Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Uncommon” and “Ringo’s Theme” (This Boy) for A Exhausting Day’s Night time (1964); and collaborated with the likes of Jimmy Web page, George Martin, Herman’s Hermits, Cliff Richard, Eric Clapton, Dusty Springfield and Engelbert Humperdinck.
“He was a musician’s musician,” Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues wrote within the foreword to Flick’s 2008 memoir, Vic Flick Guitarman: From James Bond to The Beatles and Past.
“He all the time stood as much as play! Sure, I do know it sounds apparent — however you couldn’t play ‘our’ music sitting down. The true guitar heroes all the time stood.”
Flick had carried out with John Barry in The John Barry Seven, and when the composer was introduced on to re-arrange Monty Norman’s authentic theme for Dr. No (1962), Flick added a “heavy sound” utilizing a Clifford Essex Paragon De Luxe guitar.
“It had an edge to it, type of a dynamic sound,” Flick recalled in Jon Burlingame’s 2012 ebook, The Music of James Bond. “I overplayed it — leaned into these thick low strings with the very onerous plectrum, performed it barely forward of the beat, and it got here out thrilling, nearly ‘attacking,’ which match the James Bond picture.”
Flick would carry out on a half-dozen different 007 movies, together with on Shirley Bassey’s theme for Goldfinger (1964).
Victor Harold Flick was born on Might, 14, 1937, in Surrey, England. His father taught music, and he began out on the piano. He switched to the guitar to play in a band fashioned by his dad, finally joined Bob Cort and his skiffle group and met Barry for the primary time when The John Barry Seven accompanied Paul Anka on a European tour.
In a 2021 interview for Guitar Participant journal, Flick credited the sound of his guitar on the Bond theme to the “plectrum I used and the guitar’s strings. I positioned the DeArmond pickup close to the bridge. I put a crushed cigarette packet beneath it to get it nearer the strings. That helped to get that spherical sound. Most vital, sound clever, was the Vox AC15 amplifier. I used it on tour. It wouldn’t let me down — till it fell eight toes right into a music pit and disintegrated.
“Additionally vital was the way in which the guitar was recorded. It was picked up by the mics for the orchestra, and it gave the guitar a mysterious, highly effective sound. It was a sound we created, to a sure extent, and it had a chew that they beloved.”
In 2013, he obtained a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Nationwide Guitar Museum.
Survivors embody his spouse, Judith; his son, Kevin; and his grandchild, Tyler.
