A View to a Kill (song) of ours this year – English composer John Barry. This is for him." The song was written by Duran Duran and John Barry, and recorded at Maison Rouge Studio and CTS Studio in London with a 60-piece orchestra. Duran Duran were chosen to do the song after bassist John Taylor (a lifelong Bond fan) approached producer Cubby Broccoli at a party, and somewhat drunkenly asked "When are you going to get someone "decent" to do one of your theme songs?" This inauspicious beginning led to some serious talks, and the band was introduced to Bond composer John Barry, and also
James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me since "Colonel Sun" nearly a decade earlier. Christopher Wood, himself a novelist, and who co-authored the screenplay with Richard Maibaum, was commissioned to write the book, which was given the title "James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me". Wood would also novelize the screenplay for the next Bond film, "Moonraker" in 1979. The novelization and the screenplay, although both written by Wood, are somewhat different. In the novelization SMERSH has been reactivated some time before the start of the novel, and is still after James Bond. Their part in the novelization begins during the "pre-title credits" sequence, in which Bond