Back in 1995, James Bond returned after a record six-year gap following Timothy Dalton’s last outing in 1989’s Licence To Kill.
Pierce Brosnan had bagged the role in GoldenEye, which needed a song worthy of rebooting 007 for the post-Cold War era.
Initially, Depeche Mode were offered the gig but the Essex synth-pop stars couldn’t get their schedule to line up.
Swedish band Ace of Base recorded a GoldenEye theme which was rejected and in the end, Tina Turner would step up to the mark.
But did you know that U2’s Bono and the Edge wrote the song with her in mind?
READ MORE: Tina Turner spoke of feeling ‘proud’ in final post just weeks before death
Bono and The Edge recorded a best-forgotten demo that they then sent to Tina, but she was far from impressed with their version of GoldenEye.
The Queen of Rock previously told Graham Norton on BBC Radio 2: “Bono sent me the worst demo. He kind of threw it together as if he thought I wasn’t going to do it. This song, I didn’t even know what key to practice it in!”
Nevertheless, Bono was determined to be the one to write the Bond theme after having his honeymoon at Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye estate in Jamaica.
Tina added: “It was unbelievable, what I was sent here. But, you know, you have to step into the shoes and learn it. And then I sung it how I would sing it, and even Bono was impressed.
“I actually had to come out of myself to make it a song. I’d never sung a song like that before, so it really gave me creativity in terms of making something out of something that was really rough, very rough.”
The result was a huge Top 10 hit across Europe, topping the charts in Hungary and Poland and is now considered one of the very best Bond theme songs.
