Opening Help! Theme Music as James Bond with hint of Hindu Sitar

In reference to the opening music in Help!, in a BBC interview a few years ago John Barry announced or the Brit being interviewed disclosed that those original base notes in that catwalk-like on the base guitar fret-board were inspired [I believe the speaker admitted] actually copied from an old Hindu song on a sitar. What is ironic is to later watch the Beatles Help! movie and note that they and their creators of that movie used not the exact Bond theme [although a short sample with similar orchestral sound] but a mock of it and that they added a sitar to the Bond Theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfEbtRjWUd8
and what’s more, note that the story in the movie revolves around Hindu villains chasing them. Then realize that George Harrison only shortly later introduces the sitar to the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. Then later note that Paul McCartney writes the soundtrack for the Bond film Live and Let Die. See many references to why this Hindu music on a sitar becomes so popular into western culture. I am not sure that I am the only one to notice this reference.

Perhaps we’ll see Bollywood Jazz Bars in America and India soon? I know we already have them in Portland Oregon where everything musical is happening lately. I inspired some later very successful local blues musician here when I was 10 in 1964 with the playing and lip-syching with my mocked guitars to our Beatles albums.

An interview by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last Friday Feb 4 conducted earlier with the composer John Barry in 1993 was nice, but did not disclose the Indian sitar song as the early inspiration for the Bond Theme as he did in an earlier interview on the BBC some years ago. I added this history to the Fresh Air comments after the showed aired. >
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133372739/remembering-james-bond-film-composer-john-barry

Mark Seibold, Retired IT Tech, Artist-Astronomy Educator, Portland Oregon