On July 13, 1985, Duran Duran started a two-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “A View to a Kill,” the theme from the James Bond film of the same name. It was the first and, to date, only Bond theme to reach the top of the chart. Moreover, this was the final song the band recorded before they split.
Not long after they released “A View to a Kill,” the members of Duran Duran went their separate ways. John and Andy Taylor joined Robert Palmer’s project The Power Station. Simon LeBon, Roger Taylor, and Nick Rhodes formed Arcadia. They performed as a trio for a year before adding Warren Cuccurullo and Sterling Campbell to the lineup and retaking the band’s original name.
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How Duran Duran Got to Record a Bond Theme
According to Songfacts, John Taylor is the reason Duran Duran was selected to record the Bond theme. He was a huge fan of the franchise. One of his first “rock star” purchases was an Aston Martin. He also mentioned his James Bond film collection in multiple interviews. So, when he saw longtime Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli at a party, he approached him. Taylor, who had had a few drinks, reportedly told the producer that the music had been lacking in recent installments. He then offered to give Broccoli “a fiver” to write the next Bond theme.
Soon, the band was paired with John Barry, a longtime composer of Bond themes. Together, they wrote the theme and recorded it in Maison Rouge in London in early 1985. It was released as a single from the film’s soundtrack in May of the same year.
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“Bond songs have to be big songs, don’t they? They have to have the grandiosity. It’s like designing a Rolls-Royce,” Taylor said in a 2012 interview. “You want it to be completely state of the art, but it’s always going to have the honking great radiator grill on the front. There’s certain criteria that have to be fulfilled. But I think we nailed it with that song. We really did nail it.”
One of the criteria that a Bond theme must meet is the inclusion of the film’s title in the lyrics. “To this day, we are forever grateful that we didn’t get Quantum of Solace,” Taylor said.
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