This was the first record I ever bought.

Before I was into movie posters, and before I got into rock and pop music, I was into soundtracks. In retrospect, I’m not sure why. This was back in the days before DVDs, and even before VHS, so this was I think the only way I could think of to “own” a part of the movie experience at home. Many people avidly collect them, but it is not really my thing – most I bought tended to have one or two memorable theme songs on them, plus lots of instrumental mood music, which I was never really into. I have still got all the soundtracks I bought back then in a chest at my mother’s house, but I never play them.  

This album was one of the very few I bothered bringing back with me. Not only is it a cracking compilation of the best musical bits from all the early James Bond films, but also the sleeve contains a lot of good photos from the movies, including black and white copies of the original movie posters. This would have been the very first time I would have seen these Bond posters, and I think at that point the desire to find and own the originals began.  

At one point, I owned posters of one kind or another for all of the Bond films featured on this record, including 3 UK quads for You Only Live Twice, which sadly I managed to damage badly, courtesy of blue tack and double sided tape.  Most of these I sold at auction, but those I kept back are all framed around my house. So I can probably thank this soundtrack album for what became an expensive hobby!

(Shortly after buying this, I got the Beatles ‘red’ compilation album on vinyl as my first ever pop album,  and my interest in soundtracks stopped abruptly from that point, but that’s a whole other story….)