I read somewhere that one of the guitarists was the great session player Vic Flick. This theme is one of the best of all time IMO - along with The Avengers and I Claudius.
So Patrick McGoohan came up with some notes that they tried out for the opening theme....almost everyone that worked on the show said he could be difficult and demanding...yet it was an honor to work on the show. Sure sounds like SIX of ONE...Half a Dozen of the other! Must have been difficult for McGoohan to get others to understand exactly what he wanted...but the results were AWESOME!! Thanks for finding these interviews and sharing. It's amazing to know how complicated The Prisoner production actually was. No wonder Patrick McGoohan said that he worked his way through 3 nervous breakdowns !!!
The show was ahead of its time (and still is) and McGoohan had a concept that he might have found difficult to articulate due to it not being as contemporary as other tv shows in that era. Or, at least, the people he was trying to explain it to might've had difficulty grasping the concept because it wasn't contemporary. Even Doctor Who was pretty mainstream (especially by then) and didn't present anything conceptually difficult. I'm sure articulating concepts was difficult in other shows. The only other one that I know of was the making of the radio series of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - many actors had no idea what they were recording. Even pitching the show went through several iterations just to get the green light (it was something like a drama at one point so the executives would understand the concept). The Prisoner was almost dreamlike/nightmarish in its storytelling. That is, it's like something you would experience in a dream and couldn't really explain when you woke up. The Prisoner is not one of those shows to watch when you have a headache (for me, I also can't watch the movie Brazil when I have a headache/migraine - it just makes me feel so much worse). So, I can understand people working on the show thinking it was an extremely difficult process - they were individually working on separate elements that they might not be able to visualise as a coherent whole. But, when they saw the end product with all elements finally integrated (that was originally solely in McGoohan's imagination), it was something they were immensely proud.
It is funny how the earth is seen in films. During this time and before, it is shown like a globe school children would have. Note the original Star Trek and other sci-fi shows. Almost immediately after the Moon shots and photos of Earth, people became accustomed to the reality of the blue and white marble look with The recognizable land masses/oceans obliterated by swirls of clouds. By 1970, no outer space/sci-fi show features the "kid's" globe version. Thanks for finding this.
I really wish we could get the track alone playing in the background around 2:50 - definitely sounds like it needs the stops pulled out, but would have made some interesting incidental music or just easier listening!
While this is certainly plausible - too bad Grainer was never asked point blank (Grainer died so young of course, unfortunately) "did McGoohan in fact come up with the main theme notes?"
