Live and Let Die (film) and orchestrated the "James Bond Theme", was unavailable during production. Broccoli and Saltzman instead asked Paul McCartney to write the theme song. Since McCartney's salary was high and another composer could not be hired with the remainder of the music budget, George Martin, who had been McCartney's producer while with The Beatles, was chosen to write the score for the film. "Live and Let Die", written by McCartney along with his wife Linda and performed by their group Wings, was the first true rock and roll song used to open a Bond film, and became a major success in the
Live and Let Die (novel) as "throughout an avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man"—thought that the "high-spots are all effectively described ... but the narrative is loose and jerky". Boucher concluded that "Live and Let Die" was "a lurid meller contrived by mixing equal parts of Oppenheim and Spillane". In June 1955 Raymond Chandler was visiting the poet Stephen Spender in London when he was introduced to Fleming, who subsequently sent Chandler a copy of "Live and Let Die". In response, Chandler wrote that Fleming was "probably the most forceful and driving writer of what I suppose still must be called thrillers in England". "Live