History
The song evokes secret agents both musically (making use of a memorable guitar riff written by Chuck Day and inspired by Monty Norman's James Bond theme) and through its lyrics (which describe the dangerous life of a secret agent). In an unusual situation, due to the format of the series, the show's original British theme song, an instrumental entitled "High Wire", was actually retained as it was played over the episode credits following the "Secret Agent" titles. The lyric "They've given you a number and taken away your name," referring to the numerical code names given to secret agents, as in 007 for James Bond. When it was originally recorded by Rivers, it merely had one verse and one chorus. Later, after the song began to gain in popularity, Rivers recorded it live, with two more verses, and the chorus repeated twice more. The "live" version was recorded in 1966 at the Whisky A Go Go, but not released until after a few studio production touchups were done shortly after.
Read more about this topic: Secret Agent Man (song)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
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“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
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