Long before he was the iconic guitarist of Led Zepellin, Jimmy Page was a session player for EMI in London.
He was in the studio when the team behind “Goldfinger” was cutting the iconic soundtrack. Composer John Barry and lyricists Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley chose Shirley Bassey to perform the now-beloved song. Bassey said yes simply based on the instrumental, signing up before the lyrics were completed.
Page was in the studio when Bassey came to track her vocals for the classic Bond theme, playing guitar as part of John Barry’s orchestra.
It took multiple goes to land the perfect performance, with Bassey holding a long note every time. The singer eventually took her bra off to help her take bigger breaths.
“Then came the end with that note,” Bassey said, per Jon Burlingame’s book, The Music of James Bond. “I was holding it and holding it. I was looking at John, and I was going blue in the face. And he’s going, ‘Hold it just one more second.’ When it finished, I nearly passed out.”
Page remembers the “phenomenal” session fondly. Speaking to Classic Rock in 2007, the guitarist recalled, “John Barry had been rehearsing this massive orchestra, and they were waiting for Shirley Bassey. When he arrived, she just took off her coat and went straight into the studio. John Barry counted it in, she sang, and then at the end, she just collapsed on the floor.”
The moment stuck with the young muscian. “I’ll tell you what—for a 17-year-old kid playing with an orchestra and watching all that happen was quite astonishing.”
The release of the song “Goldfinger” gave Bassey her only Billboard Hot 100 top-forty hit, peaking at No. 8 and No. 2 for four weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart. It also finished at No. 53 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
