Congrats to La-La Land Records on the news that all my soundtrack friends are waking up to: at long last, expanded 2CD sets of Moonraker and The Man With the Golden Gun are available for order!
With so many of our favorite soundtracks already available in super-deluxe form, it’s harder to find unreleased grails that really move the needle—but two John Barry/James Bond scores qualify.
I guess I’m sort of responsible for the assumption that the Moonraker music master tapes were lost...sorry! When we did the expanded Bond releases for EMI in 2003, Moonraker was not among the scores we saw listed at an Abbey Road tape vault. (The Man With the Golden Gun was there, but we ran out of time to tackle it.) Turns out it was just in another vault. Yay!
Bravo to the La-La Land team and here’s hoping for more.
Puts a smile on my face...!
My memory from the early 2000s was that you added the caveat that they were presumed or even known to be vaulted where the score was recorded (Paris, I think?). You are too self-effacing on this, I don't think you're responsible at all, I've never thought they were lost, since I read what you wrote and didn't jump to any conclusions.
To be fair to you Lukas, you only said what was true—that they weren't listed in the Abbey Road vault and there was no budget to do a search. It's the process of simplification and distortion that goes on as messages spread through the crowd that's to blame. It got bent in the retelling.