Man With The Midas Touch has been on my shopping list for a while....I've read that there's lots of detail and photos. But does it go into Barry's own words about his creative process and lengthy behind the scene stories about certain scores, or is more like a chronology type approach i.e. "And then he wrote" ? In other words general facts or lots of fascinating tidbits?
The book is like a coffee table reference book with lots of photos and with details like what happened each year. For those reasons it's worth owning.
Eddi Fiegel's John Barry: A Sixties Theme is more like a traditional biography, though with the emphasis on the sixties. Fiegel interviewed several people for the book, including Barry, and she successfully gives a portrait of Barry as a driven, creative, and unique talent that emerged from the post-war British doldrums to be one of the exciting musical talents during the swinging sixties. Very enjoyable.
However, the two books that have several priceless Barry anecdotes are: Wrestling With Elephants (Don Black's biography) and Joseph Tandet's The Lawyer and the Little Prince.
