Vic Flick, Guitarist on the James Bond Theme Song, Dies at 87

Vic Flick, the famed British session guitarist who picked out the twangy riff for the James Bond theme song introduced to moviegoers on Dr. No, has died. He was 87.

His death on Thursday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease was announced by his family on Facebook.

Flick also played on No. 1 hits for Peter and Gordon (“A World Without Love”) and Petula Clark (“Downtown”); performed on Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and “Ringo’s Theme” (This Boy) for A Hard Day’s Night (1964); and collaborated with the likes of Jimmy 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 in the foreword to Flick’s 2008 memoir, Vic Flick Guitarman: From James Bond to The Beatles and Beyond.

“He always stood up to play! Yes, I know it sounds obvious — but you couldn’t play ‘our’ music sitting down. The real guitar heroes always stood.”

Flick had performed with John Barry in The John Barry Seven, and when the composer was brought on to re-arrange Monty Norman’s original theme for Dr. No (1962), Flick added a “heavy sound” using a Clifford Essex Paragon De Luxe guitar.

“It had an edge to it, sort of a dynamic sound,” Flick recalled in Jon Burlingame’s 2012 book, The Music of James Bond. “I overplayed it — leaned into those thick low strings with the very hard plectrum, played it slightly ahead of the beat, and it came out exciting, almost ‘attacking,’ which fit the James Bond image.”

Flick would perform on a half-dozen other 007 films, including on Shirley Bassey’s theme for Goldfinger (1964).

Victor Harold Flick was born on May, 14, 1937, in Surrey, England. His father taught music, and he started out on the piano. He switched to the guitar to play in a band formed by his dad, eventually joined Bob Cort and his skiffle group and met Barry for the first time when The John Barry Seven accompanied Paul Anka on a European tour.

In a 2021 interview for Guitar Player magazine, Flick credited the sound of his guitar on the Bond theme to the “plectrum I used and the guitar’s strings. I placed the DeArmond pickup near the bridge. I put a crushed cigarette packet underneath it to get it nearer the strings. That helped to get that round sound. Most important, sound wise, was the Vox AC15 amplifier. I used it on tour. It wouldn’t let me down — until it fell eight feet into a music pit and disintegrated.

“Also important was the way the guitar was recorded. It was picked up by the mics for the orchestra, and it gave the guitar a mysterious, powerful sound. It was a sound we created, to a certain extent, and it had a bite that they loved.”

In 2013, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The National Guitar Museum.

Survivors include his wife, Judith; his son, Kevin; and his grandchild, Tyler.