Former Bond girl Susie Vanner is releasing her first-ever album.
The actress is famous for sharing a sexy and iconic moment with Sir Roger Moore’s 007 when she played a beautiful Russian agent in the 1977 movie ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ with their romp on top of a sheep skin rug regarded as one of the franchise’s most memorable love scenes.
But Susie’s first passion has always been music and now, five decades after she released three singles in the late 60s, she has recorded an LP entitled ‘In These Shoes’ with Grammy Award-winning producer Kipper Eldridge – who has previously worked with Sting and Gary Numan.
‘In These Shoes’ charts the stories of Susie’s life through the songs that have affected her most, with re-worked covers of songs such as ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, ‘Cry Me A River’, ‘Tainted Love, Sway and ‘Every Breath You Take’.
The LP also includes a cover of Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’, which was the theme song for ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’.
The record came about because a chance meeting between Susie and Kipper at a charity dinner and after her now ex-husband Warren Todd placed a bid in the auction for a producing session with Kipper that he won the musical pair clicked in the studio and began to work on the LP.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz about the album, Susie said: "My first love has always been music, I loved working Kipper, who I met by chance and was only meant to do one track with and ended up doing an album."
Susie may only be releasing her first album but her three singles from the ’60s, recorded under the name Sue Lynne, have become Northern Soul classics and vinyl copies of the tracks, ‘Don’t Pity Me’, ‘Reach For The Moon’ and ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’, can sell for up to £1000 each.
The former ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ star thinks it’s amusing that many fans of the songs don’t realise they were recorded by a Bond girl because of the name she used.
She said: "I was 19 when I went to meet the songwriter Chris Andrews who, at the time, had written a lot of hits for Sandy Shaw. I went to see him because he’d put an ad in the local paper saying he was looking to see a girl singer to record with. I went in and I sang ‘My Guy’ and he then took me to RCA records and gave me a contract and that was it. I recorded three singles over a year and they were put out, ‘Don’t Pity Me’, ‘Reach For The Moon’ and ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’.
"I have now found out that I am a Northern Soul icon. They are played at these Northern Soul evenings and are collected. Some people are paying a thousand pounds to get a record. I can’t quite believe it. It’s intriguing because most people don’t even know it’s even me because my name on the record was Sue Lynne, and I don’t think a lot of people know that it’s actually Sue Vanner, the Bond girl.
"With my album I don’t want people to just think I’m singing out of the blue, I was actually a singer before I was an actress."
‘In These Shoes’ is released on May 1.
Susie Vanner ‘In These Shoes’ tracklist:
1 ‘Bond Intro’
2 ‘Cry Me a River’
3 ‘Tainted Love’
4 ‘In These Shoes’
5 ‘Make You Feel My Love’
6 ‘Sway’
7 ‘Just Like a Star’
8 ‘Every Breath You Take’
9 ‘Walk On The Wild Side’
10 ‘Nature Boy’
11 ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This’
12 ‘Don’t Know Why’
13 ‘Windmills of Your Mind’
14 ‘Summertime’
15 ‘Nobody Does It Better’