James Bond theme by Monty Norman was the reel deal

The James Bond theme had an unconventional birth and a troubled existence marred by court cases and rancour.

Detail for a film poster for Dr No, for which Monty Norman wrote the theme.

I can tell you who wrote the James Bond theme: It was Norman. Monty Norman.

And courts have ruled on that at least twice.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bond theme tune — only the Star Wars theme is so universally recognisable — should have more than one person claiming authorship.

Not only is it enduring, it has proved valuable to Norman. And so have the court cases.

None of which was foreseeable in 1961 when Norman was asked to write music for what was a planned stage show interpretation of VS Naipaul’s breakthrough novel A House for Mr Biswas.

In the end it never happened.

The Mr Biswas of the book is a hapless trier and Norman captured that in a daft song that survives today only in a crude recording Norman made while faking an Indo-Caribbean accent while playing piano.

It is hard to describe just how bad Good Sign, Bad Sign is. It starts with a corny sitar line and cliched tabla — they’re the good bits — then Norman starts singing: “I was born with this unlucky sneeze / And what is worse I came in to the world the wrong way ’round / Pundits all agreed that I’m the reason why my father / Fell in to the village pond and drowned.”

It drones on — quite painfully — for almost six minutes.

We are all fortunate that the stage show proved too expensive and that London back then had too few actors from Trinidad’s Indian community for the roles.

Norman had other projects and he could afford to let Biswas slip. But, like all composers, he kept that sheet of music just in case it could be recycled another day.

And it quickly was. Towards the end of 1961, film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli called Norman. Cubby was an American making films in England. His nickname was given to him by his New York mobster cousin Pat DiCicco.

Broccoli planned to turn Ian Fleming’s popular James Bond books into films and was under way with the first — Dr No — for which he needed theme music and a soundtrack.

Norman thought he was too busy to help, but when Broccoli said Norman and his wife should join the crew in Jamaica where the famous Ursula Andress scenes were to be filmed, it appealed more than a London winter.

Norman wrote some of the music on the island, meeting legendary bandleader Count Basie, who would go on to record some of Norman’s compositions.

But it was back in London while trying to capture the essence of 007 that he played around with the Biswas notes — changing the intervals — and what we know today as the James Bond theme emerged.

He submitted it to Broccoli, but it was deemed to be missing something, perhaps needing a more contemporary feel, so trumpeter and bandleader John Barry, a budding composer himself, was brought in for a flat £250 fee to polish Norman’s theme.

Barry’s punchy arrangement with its aggressive Duane Eddy-like guitar rose to No 13 on the charts in November 1962.

Barry went on to score 11 Bond films, including writing music for the Bond hits Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds are Forever.

He also won five Academy Awards. His name is indivisible from the first decades of the Bond franchise.

But he didn’t write the James Bond theme.

Nonetheless, in the end, even Barry appeared to believe he had.

It was weekly music newspaper Melody Maker that first dismissed Norman’s efforts, suggesting he had bought the tune from an old Jamaican for $100. At first Norman was prepared to ignore the insult, facetiously offering to find the Jamaican fellow and “get him to write a few more”.

Others encouraged him to pursue the matter in court.

Years later The Sunday Times newspaper published a piece dismissing Norman as “a little-known London musician” and suggesting he had been collecting royalties from a piece he did not write.

Norman sued again. This time Barry took the witness stand to claim it was “absolute nonsense” to say Norman had written the theme.

Norman’s then wife, actress Diana Coupland — she starred with Sid James in Bless This House — also gave evidence. She recalled her husband playing the Bond theme on a piano at their home as Barry listened on.

The defence lawyer asked if she had been in the room. She had not. It was put to her then that perhaps Barry had been playing the piano.

“Ah no,” she said, “Monty is the worst pianist in the whole world — I couldn’t mistake that for anything!”

Norman won the case and was awarded £30,000. The Sunday Times’s costs were estimated at £500,000.