John Barry's DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) - NEW! 55th Anniversary Remastered & Expanded Edition (LLL)

[crumbs 15,934]

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: 55th ANNIVERSARY

REMASTERED & EXPANDED LIMITED EDITION (2-CD SET)

Music composed, arranged and conducted by John Barry

Title song sung by Shirley Bassey – Lyrics by Don Black

Limited Edition of 5000 Units

RETAIL PRICE: $32.98

 

 

La-La Land Records, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Universal Music Enterprises proudly present the 55th anniversary remastered and expanded 2-CD re-issue of renowned composer John Barry’s original motion picture score to the seventh James Bond film, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. Produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, the 1971 film stars Sean Connery, after a one picture absence, as James Bond 007 and is directed by Guy Hamilton, returning for his second film in the series.

 

Composer John Barry continues on his mission of creating classic Bond music, unleashing another epic orchestral wonder, pulsating with thematic motifs, and swirling all the film’s thundering action, spycraft and sensuous romance into an intoxicating, exhilarating knockout of a score. Included within this 2-CD set is the iconic title song “Diamonds Are Forever” by Barry and lyricist Don Black performed by Shirley Bassey in English and Italian! Expanded beyond previous soundtrack editions, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER sparkles like never before within this deluxe presentation.

 

Produced by Neil S. Bulk, mixed by Chris Malone and mastered by Doug Schwartz, the release has been sourced from the original 1" 8-track analog scoring masters. The "Score Presentation" reflects the takes and sequencing used for the film, while the "Original Soundtrack Album" has been newly edited and replicates the takes, edits and sequencing of the 1971 soundtrack. Alternate versions and additional source cues round out the package.

 

Featuring sharp art direction by Dan Goldwasser, with a new front cover designed by Jim Titus, the release also includes exclusive, in-depth liner notes by journalist and author Jon Burlingame. Limited to 5000 units this release is not expected to be around... forever.

 

DISC 1

SCORE PRESENTATION 1:08:39

1. Gun Barrel And Manhunt 3:11

2. Diamonds Are Forever (Film Version) (Performed by Shirley Bassey) 2:52

3. Mr. Wint And Mr. Kidd 2:33

4. Mrs. Whistler And Hovercraft To Holland 2:02

5. Diamonds Are Forever 3:45

6. Tiffany Case 3:47

7. Peter Franks 3:02

8. Los Angeles To Las Vegas 3:02

9. Slumber Inc. 2:22

10. The Whyte House 2:22

11. Plenty, Then Tiffany 2:28

12. Circus Circus (Film Version) 2:49

13. We Lost Her And WW Tectronics 4:06

14. Stealing The Moon Buggy 1:00

15. Moon Buggy Ride (Film Version) 3:19

16. Scaling The Whyte House 1:11

17. Death At The Whyte House 3:45

18. Bond Smells A Rat 1:54

19. Bond Meets Bambi And Thumper (Extended Version) 2:11

20. Breaststroke Lessons 1:06

21. Q's Trick 2:27

22. 007 And Counting 3:32

23. Baja? 2:16

24. Oil Rig Attack 1:37

25. To Hell With Blofeld 1:35

26. Diamonds Are Forever (Extended Version) 2:47

27. The End Of Mr. Wint And Mr. Kidd :55

 

ALTERNATE VERSIONS 7:31

28. Diamonds Are Forever (Alternate) (Performed by Shirley Bassey) 3:18

29. Moon Buggy Ride (Alternate Segment) 1:59

30. Bond Meets Bambi And Thumper (Alternate) 2:07

TOTAL DISC 1 TIME: 1:16:11

 

DISC 2

ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM 34:39

1. Diamonds Are Forever (Performed by Shirley Bassey) 2:42

2. Bond Meets Bambi And Thumper 2:06

3. Moon Buggy Ride 3:14

4. Circus Circus 2:56

5. Death At The Whyte House 3:45

6. Diamonds Are Forever 3:45

7. Diamonds Are Forever 2:33

8. Bond Smells A Rat 1:54

9. Tiffany Case 3:46

10. 007 And Counting 3:32

11. Q's Trick 2:26

12. To Hell With Blofeld 1:35

 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC 14:26

13. Slumber Inc. (Wild Organ) 1:48

14. Hotel Tropicana :40

15. The Whyte House (Extended Version) 4:27

16. Circus Circus (With Overlays) 2:57

17. Water Balloons 3:42

18. Zambora :44

 

BONUS TRACK

19. Vivo di diamanti (Performed by Shirley Bassey) 2:42

TOTAL DISC 2 TIME: 51:57

TOTAL ALBUM TIME: 2:08:08

[Trope 1,429]

Awesome! My personal favourite Barry Bond score!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 12,209]

Excellent 

[Quppa 541]

Excellent! I opened https://lalalandrecords.com/ for an unrelated reason just now and got a big (pleasant) shock. Also one of my favourite Bond scores.

 

I gather there wasn't much missing from the 2003 expansion, but I'm looking forward to hearing Chris Malone's new mix.

 

Mostly I'm just happy that things are moving again - it's been 7 months since Thunderball and I hope that's an anomaly.

 

 

[crocodile 9,638]

12 down, 13 to go.

 

Karol

[Tom Guernsey 3,836]

Oh well that's tipped me into using my 20% FSM Kickstarter voucher to buy a metric shit tonne of stuff from LLL, including a lot of $5 things... Whoop!

 

I couldn't initially work out why the existing DAF in my iTunes is longer than this newly expanded version but I realised I have the 9 minute track of assorted alternates in the middle (presumably some C&C website suggested that was a good place to put it as the rest is in film order as far as I can tell) and the instrumental of the song is in the middle of the original album rather than score presentation. Might just leave it there - Bond source cues based on the song are the kind of source music that perfectly fits with the actual underscore.

[Quppa 541]

As much as I'd like to support La-La Land Records by ordering directly (and avoid waiting for the 90 day exclusivity period to end), USPS international shipping (the only option) is brutal as always: $30.50 just for this release, or $52.50 if I add the Bad Boys & Bad Boys II bundle. The equivalent shipping prices at Screen Archives are $13 and $25, respectively. Silly.

 

The Italian version of Diamonds Are Forever included here as a bonus track was also released last year on an album of Shirley Bassey rarities:

 

[Smaug The Iron 783]

Yes! Ordered!

[Luke Skywalker 2,364]

Nice. I hope yolt comes next

[Tom Guernsey 3,836]

1 hour ago, Quppa said:

As much as I'd like to support La-La Land Records by ordering directly (and avoid waiting for the 90 day exclusivity period to end), USPS international shipping (the only option) is brutal as always: $30.50 just for this release, or $52.50 if I add the Bad Boys & Bad Boys II bundle. The equivalent shipping prices at Screen Archives are $13 and $25, respectively. Silly.

 

The Italian version of Diamonds Are Forever included here as a bonus track was also released last year on an album of Shirley Bassey rarities:

 

My shipping for 18 things was over $100... so yeah, I feel your pain. Having said that, I'm pretty sure the Bond online store which sells directly from the UK wanted to charge me international shipping because I'm in Guernsey (even though postage here is the same cost as domestic post) and it worked out marginally cheaper to order from LLL directly and I'd rather support LLL. I was very glad of my 20% voucher as it covered most of the postage.

[Jfallon 151]

Glad for any Bond expansion! Looking forward to having the expanded suite broken up and put back into the main body of the score. Also thought the previous release sounded great but wow these samples make it night and day.

[OneBuckFilms 510]

Cool. Ordered of course. Samples sound great!

 

[Jill Sandwich 11,047]

I want that song to sound as ridiculously dynamic as the LLL Moonraker song.

[OneBuckFilms 510]

That Moonraker release was phenomenal.

[Yavar Moradi 4,367]

3 hours ago, Jfallon said:

Also thought the previous release sounded great but wow these samples make it night and day.

1 hour ago, OneBuckFilms said:

Samples sound great!

7 hours ago, Quppa said:

I gather there wasn't much missing from the 2003 expansion, but I'm looking forward to hearing Chris Malone's new mix.

 

@Chris Malone what did you do (you mad genius, you)?!

 

 

4 hours ago, Luke Skywalker said:

Nice. I hope yolt comes next

 

It should be next year, anniversary-wise (60th, in this case). Next after DAF 55th should be FYEO 45th and Casino Royale 20th, unless whatever delayed 2025 Black Friday Bond expansions (maybe some kind of actor likeness approvals?) gets cleared up, and we get AVTAK 40th and/or GoldenEye 30th... probably no longer marketed that way (see last year's OHMSS), since we're so far into 2026 now.

Yavar

[Chewy 2,796]

 

[Quppa 541]

https://warmbutter.com/albums/diamonds-are-forever/

 

Artwork preview.

[Andy 7,565]

It’s nice artwork. I love how there’s no crappy looking border. 

[A. A. Ron 2,476]

Great score, cool art, very exciting!

[Holko 12,021]

How the hell do all these UK Bonds from the 60s and early 70s sound so incredible when in comparison half the remaining archived Hollywood scores of the era sound like the engineers over there couldn't tell their hands from their feet?

[Rachael Foley 10,032]

Just now, Holko said:

How the hell do all these UK Bonds from the 60s and early 70s sound so incredible when in comparison half the remaining archived Hollywood scores sound like the engineers over there couldn't tell their hands from their feet?

They learned from messing up Rozsa's Knights of the Round Table?  

[Quppa 541]

14 hours ago, Chewy said:

 

 

Fun episode - the hosts are clearly big film score fans, but also naïve to the soundtrack business in an endearing way (based on the questions they asked Bulk and Malone). A different vibe to, say, A Score to Settle.

 

No hints at all about what might be next. I got the impression that DAF was finished a little while ago (purely going by Bulk not remembering something off the top of his head).

 

Had to laugh at hearing that the Moonraker tapes were transferred back in 2015 when the rumour about them being missing kept circulating for another decade. Also interesting to know (this has probably been mentioned before) that most of these LLL releases are made from exactly the same transfers used in the 2003 reissues.

 

The comments at the end about vinyl being a tough market to crack for La-La Land were interesting. I'll take it as a positive that we're not going to see any ridiculous vinyl-only releases like Mondo sometimes puts out.

[Jill Sandwich 11,047]

I just had a quick listen to some of the 2003 EMI. It always sounded fine, if not polite, but I'm eager to hear the Moonraker treatment for DAF, especially for the title song. Bassey needs all the dynamic headroom available.

[crumbs 15,934]

3 hours ago, Quppa said:

No hints at all about what might be next. I got the impression that DAF was finished a little while ago (purely going by Bulk not remembering something off the top of his head).

 

Would be surprised if You Only Live Twice isn't in the works for next year, 60th anniversary.

[Quppa 541]

23 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Would be surprised if You Only Live Twice isn't in the works for next year, 60th anniversary.

 

Neil Bulk and Chris Malone were both singing that score's praises in the above interview so I'm sure they'd be keen to get the chance to work on it. Before then it would be great to get back to the release cadence that was planned last year, but I guess it's up to Amazon.

[Andy 7,565]

[Smaug The Iron 783]

Quote

Thanks all for your excitement. I can’t tell you how much eye rolling we have been doing here at the triple L seeing various people playing Chicken Little thinking the sky is falling when it comes to James Bond scores. Some titles take more time to approve than others. As you can see, Diamonds is ready for the masses. And yes…knowing that ridiculous day, April 1st, was approaching, we intentionally released DAF today as to not mess with people’s heads any further. Plus, we also wanted to tie in with opening day/week of Baseball with our new and improved Bad News Bears 50th Anniversary!

So, enjoy Diamonds for now and stop all the negative vibes, man. Moore Bond is on the way. I’m not Connering you. 

https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/community/postid/2537032/

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 12,209]

That MB is unreadable on my phone.

 

[Jay 45,837]

Yes, I appreciate very much when relevant content is mirrored here.

[Yavar Moradi 4,367]

15 hours ago, Holko said:

How the hell do all these UK Bonds from the 60s and early 70s sound so incredible when in comparison half the remaining archived Hollywood scores of the era sound like the engineers over there couldn't tell their hands from their feet?

 

CTS Studios and good engineers. Of course plenty of other British scores from this era were recorded elsewhere, and either sound poor or are lost. And heck, Goldfinger wasn't saved. Recorded in the same studios, and Chris Malone did everything he could to tweak that album master... and the sound's still fairly disappointing, to me. Bring on the complete re-recordings of Goldfinger and FRWL, IMO. The audio leap in between LLL's Goldfinger and LLL's Thunderball recorded a year later is ASTOUNDING.

 

 

7 hours ago, Quppa said:

Neil Bulk and Chris Malone were both singing that score's praises in the above interview so I'm sure they'd be keen to get the chance to work on it. Before then it would be great to get back to the release cadence that was planned last year, but I guess it's up to Amazon.

 

It's not; they're not the hold up in any way. They already signed off on everything over half a year ago, as MV wrote on Facebook. And UMG (for album rights, on most but not all of these scores) doesn't seem to have been the hold-up on AVTAK either, since they were involved on DAF. We know sometimes actors have clauses in their contract that give them approvals on their likenesses being used on packaging, and that's often been a hold up. Or sometimes there are unexpected rights/elements issues with songs/their artists (see: LLL leaving off "My Heart Will Go On" from their 3CD Titanic expansion, or for a Bond example them leaving Madonna's song off their Die Another Day expansion). LLL hasn't said, so we don't know what the hold up is on scores that celebrated anniversaries last year. But I'm confident that they are doing their best to work out whatever issue(s) arose.

Yavar

[Rachael Foley 10,032]

We're all of them recorded in CTS? The first few don't have that thing high heavy sound of the Moore/Dalton ones.

[Yavar Moradi 4,367]

Don't know about all, but I think most of Barry's Bond scores until Moonraker (recorded in France) were.

 

Yavar

[Quppa 541]

It comes up in the interview with Chris Malone - DAF was the final Bond score to be recorded at the original CTS in Bayswater before they lost the lease. The earlier scores were also recorded there. Several of the later scores were recorded at CTS Wembley.

 

https://musicbehindthescreen.blogspot.com/2015/01/scoring-stages-cts-studios.html

 

 

 

[Chris Malone 54]

Yes, Diamonds was the last James Bond score recorded at CTS Bayswater. Theatre of Blood, by Michael J Lewis, was one of the very last done there before their lease expired in 1972.

 

Golden Gun was the first Bond at CTS Wembley, which was branded as The Music Centre before later reverting to the original CTS name. John Barry continued there with his remaining Bond scores, except Moonraker (recorded in Paris). Bill Conti and Michael Kamen also scored their Bonds at CTS Wembley.

 

You can also read a brief history on this page, if you’re willing to scroll down!

 

https://www.malonedigital.com/articles.html

 

Chris

[Edmilson 12,243]

On 31/03/2026 at 8:59 PM, Andy said:

It’s nice artwork. I love how there’s no crappy looking border. 

 

[Jay 45,837]

 

[TolkienSS 521]

I never warmed up to this score at all. There are a handful of great tracks, like Manhunt, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, Bond To Holland, and probably Bambi and Thumper, but the rest to me sounds pretty generic and I feel there is an overload of diegetic music.

The title songs usually lend themselves well to being used in the scores as orchestrated versions, but for some reason, I find the orchestral iterations in this one straight up boring.

[1977 2,106]

On 01/04/2026 at 9:16 PM, Yavar Moradi said:

Bring on the complete re-recordings of Goldfinger and FRWL, IMO.

 

I hope they will consider doing this, at the very least for FRWL.

 

Looking forward to as many further expansions as possible (thanks for the confirmation LLL) before any possible embargo due to the next film(s), in light of the recent announcement of the new actor portraying 007.

 

Edit: Ok my bad, didn't check the date of that "article" announcing the new Bond.

 

 

[Yavar Moradi 4,367]

What announcement?

 

Yavar

[Jay 45,837]

There was an April Fool's prank that Jessie Buckley was the new Bond

[Yavar Moradi 4,367]

Ooh, I’m not sure about gender-swapping Bond of all things, but if they were going to do it, she’s got the right smirk, swagger, and magnetism for it! Hell she could even sing the damn song herself! 

 

 

Yavar

[1977 2,106]

13 hours ago, Jay said:

There was an April Fool's prank that Jessie Buckley was the new Bond

Ok they got me good 😊 

[Richard P 5,252]

On 01/04/2026 at 8:16 PM, Yavar Moradi said:

It's not; they're not the hold up in any way. They already signed off on everything over half a year ago, as MV wrote on Facebook. And UMG (for album rights, on most but not all of these scores) doesn't seem to have been the hold-up on AVTAK either, since they were involved on DAF. We know sometimes actors have clauses in their contract that give them approvals on their likenesses being used on packaging, and that's often been a hold up

 

I had a bit of a chat with Mr GPT about expansion rights a while back, and it's safe to say that It had a ton to say about Bond. You've got a perfect storm of star artists, song quotations in the score, lots of actors' likenesses, permissions for any additional composers' work, etc. That's before you even consider the tight grip that the studio has over anything related to Bond. Just one person at the studio could object to the wording of something in the liners and the whole thing derails for another few months because they're out of office. Just one single broken link in the chain of people needing to say 'yes', or one piece of paperwork is slightly wrong, and it can't all be signed off.

 

It feels easy to try to apportion blame to someone (like the studio), but I fear that it's probably more likely to be holdups in the larger web of due legal process.

[MedigoScan 409]

That Mr Winter and Mr Kidd theme hits my nostalgiabrain like a truck.. or a buggy if you will.

[Trope 1,429]

I hate this waiting part, especially for such an exciting CD!

 

Logistically, do we know why they announce/allow products to be purchased at the beginning of the month when they can’t ship them for another 2-3 weeks? 

[Trope 1,429]

Now shipping! This one’s gonna be hard to beat for 2026 releases IMO (although For Your Eyes Only might rival it). I love this score!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 12,209]

On 06/04/2026 at 11:33 PM, Trope said:

I hate this waiting part, especially for such an exciting CD!

 

Logistically, do we know why they announce/allow products to be purchased at the beginning of the month when they can’t ship them for another 2-3 weeks? 

 

To create anticipation?

[CatastrophicJones 155]

On 06/04/2026 at 5:33 PM, Trope said:

I hate this waiting part, especially for such an exciting CD!

 

Logistically, do we know why they announce/allow products to be purchased at the beginning of the month when they can’t ship them for another 2-3 weeks? 

 

I actually don't mind this. It probably gives them time to prepare for when the cds arrive so they can just ship them out quicker and have the mailing labels ready to go. It also means they can keep to their announcement dates at the start of the month even if the cds won't arrive until later. It's also nice to have something to look forward to

 

1 hour ago, #SnowyVernalSpringsEternal said:

 

To create anticipation?

 

This 😅

[Jay 45,837]

MV even posted a nice picture with the announcement

 

 

DAF has arrived.  These preorders will be sent out as quickly as possible...please refrain from emailing us this week and asking when your order will ship...otherwise it WILL take forever to ship these all out
#jamesbondmusic 
#007jamesbond 
#jamesbond 
#diamondsareforever💎

 

https://www.facebook.com/lalalandrecords/posts/pfbid08mUgs9hECjHKwTazsgRZSHrEFQjYEEC7Tf5jMTbenLuTx33SZsmSjkHEYBELHNscl

[OneBuckFilms 510]

Mine is awaiting shipment. I have a tracking number. So they're working through them as usual.

 

We'll get it when we get it, and they are working as fast as they can.