,I had the pleasure of speaking to Graham Rye for the There Will Be Bond podcast. Graham is the Editor/Art Director/Publisher of 007 MAGAZINE & ARCHIVE Limited. Below is a loose transcription of some of the things we discussed, but I recommend you check out the interview on Spotify or iTunes and listen to the conversation in its entirety.
What was it like watching Dr No in the cinema?
The violence in Dr No was unheard of. The idea that somebody would shoot a woman. Not only would you see her being shot, but she had blood on her blouse and blood on the floor. When Bond shot Professor Dent. I mean, people couldn’t believe that he just shot in cold blood.
There was nobody like Sean Connery in cinema before. I always break down cinema to BC and AC, before Connery and after Connery, because the whole world changed.
Everything changed.
And when you think of the amount of films that Connery made in the 60s, he just didn’t stop working it was just one after another. Straight off from Russia With Love onto Woman of Straw straight onto Goldfinger. Hence, that’s why you see Connery wear costumes from Woman of Straw in Goldfinger.
You managed to get on the set for You Only Live Twice, how did that happen?
I used to cycle to Pinewood whenever I could. Yeah I used to skive off school. Sometimes it was a 12 mile cycle ride one way from Southall to Pinewood. And I got quite friendly with one of the guys on the double gate there.
He used to give me a rich tea biscuit and this sort of thing. And he said to me one day, “next Sunday, they’re opening up the set for people in the immediate vicinity to come and visit”. Because they had so many people complaining about the noise at night. Explosions, guns, you know when Barry Norman wanted to record his sound at that time as well.
He said, make sure I wasn’t late that day, and leave your bike in the gatehouse, and then I just trundled in with the rest of the people. I had this lovely rapport with him, and I always have a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Graham. I want to move on to the the magazine itself. You took over the James Bond British fan club, as it was known then, in 1983 is that right?
That’s right, yeah. Basically, it was started in 1979 by a chap called Ross Hendry. I saw that what they were producing at the time was a photocopied thing. It didn’t look very professional. But what they lacked in professionalism, they made up for with enthusiasm. You can’t criticize enthusiasm.
But the quality was really not very good. And plus, the editorial was very anti Roger Moore, to the point where they almost suggested he should roll over and die rather than play James Bond. So anyway, I got involved in trying to bump up the quality of of the publication, but still at a very, very limited budget.
And unfortunately, he’d been unwise in letting everybody that was in the fan club let them have his home telephone number. He just got pestered. Anyway we all met up at the National Film theater, and Andrew Pilkington, who was part of that group to begin with, I hit it off with him. He’s somebody that was very, very linear, very organized.
Andrew’s been like a right hand man for all those years. I mean, he’s, he’s never been on the payroll, but I always covered his expenses. He’s always been there, and he’s still there now after all these years.
I said to Andrew I’m going to take it over, but I’m only going to do it if you’re going to be my right hand man. And as quick as that he said yes. So that was it. So we went into the meeting, did the takeover. I had to say to them, I’m sorry, but I don’t run things by committee, so thank you. Goodbye.
I can’t do things by committee. I have to have the final decision, which is why jumping forward now, when I got 007 magazine into WHSmith, John Menzies and the Odeon Cinema chain and Canon at that time without having the license, was because they wanted EON wanted a license up front. But in doing so, they had to have editorial control. I couldn’t do that, because I knew it would end up like an advertisement for how great and good everything is. And everything isn’t great and good.
There was somebody that was working at EON who was head of publicity. We had a mutual kind of respect. He respected my ability and what I was trying to do. So he did really give me far more leeway than anybody else would have done, and certainly the people that followed him afterwards.
At which juncture during the magazine, did you sense that they were starting to encroach on things?
I had no intention of going away. The day I go away is when they put me in my box. I have my agenda. I mean, they’re control freaks. And they’ve got to be in control of everything. I created my own logo. I had to make sure, because we couldn’t use any copyright logos. It’s a great shame, because I think it could have been a very, very worldwide, successful publication that could have got to a lot more people who would have thoroughly enjoyed it. Because the people that have supported 007 magazine and me for all these years, (40 years) there’s still people buying it.
Nobody else had those photographs to illustrate and things. Because EON’s archive at the time I was doing my Bond girls book in 1989, was very sparse indeed.
It’s only over the last 20/30 years or so, that they’ve managed to claw stuff back and buy stuff at auction here and there. When I went through the archive, as it was at Pinewood at that time, it was all photographs and transparencies stored in old biscuit boxes. I couldn’t believe it, because I went through them all and re-filed them in the correct order.
Wasn’t I good to them? Anyway, after going through all that stuff, I discovered that there was very little material on all of the films from Dr No up to For Your Eyes Only.
From Octopussy onwards, it looked like somebody got their act together, because there were a whole bank of filing cabinets in one room. In the other part of the building that was just stuffed full of 35 mil transparencies.
The mistake they made from day one, was rather than have transparencies duplicated, which in those early days wasn’t a fast technique, and it was also quite expensive, they just cut one off and send it and ask for them back. Well, nine times out of 10, nobody bothered. So that’s how they all got lost.
None of these people were terribly clever.
Some of the great photos that I saw on your website were your old offices it looked like a museum in itself that people could actually visit, right?
Well, that was the idea. And we did do that a little bit, because we had a sales counter there. It was open on a Saturday morning so people could come in and purchase {…}.
And they used to come in on a Saturday, and then depending who they were, and if you thought you could trust us them you just give them a quick look around. And there are all kinds of bits and pieces on the walls or various props and such like, all of which, unfortunately I had to sell at one time or another. 007 Magazine has always been self financing. I’ve never had anybody invested in it. I put money into it here and there. When the Odd Job hat sold for 62,000 pounds, the majority of that money went into the business because it’s always been a commercial business since day one. It’s never been a hobby.
I had some fantastic people come down and be interviewed down there. I mean, Peter Hunt came down on the train, for christ sake. Came down to me, amazing. I done some other stuff with him before, yeah, he was a lovely man.
You can contact Graham and make purchases of the 007 Magazine through his website here.
