Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a composer. If you like films, you'll know his music.

From James Bond to Dances with Wolves, his scores have accompanied hundreds of box office hits.

He taught himself composition while he was in the army and as a central figure of his collaborated with Adam Faith and wrote the signature tune for Duke Box jury.

Success, including five Oscars, has not clouded his sense of excitement.

Quoting Sebelius, he says, what is romantic is imperishable and adds, that's the key.

He is John Barry.

Is that for you then, John, the essence of music, it's romanticism?

It's what attracts me, it's very fundamental and it's timeless and it's almost

almost like your musical DNA just comes out that way you know so when you're given a story like out of Africa or

dances with wolves you're looking you're looking into it for its essential

romance in in the most profound sense. Yes I think when you're given an opportunity to write music for a movie like that,

I think there's a great danger and a lot of the composers of the 30s and 40s did it.

They played the scenery and it becomes just big music for the sake of big music.

So what I like to do is try to get into the heart and soul of the main characters and try to react to the

scenery to the environment or whatever, hopefully they would react. I think

that's the first job as a dramatous is to get it inside the characters and then the music

grows out of that reaction.

Because otherwise you're just writing lush wall paint.

That's right, exactly.

Because there was a school of thought that said if you didn't notice the music on a film then it was

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