“Man With the Golden Gun” was written with the intention of having it appear on the soundtrack of the then-upcoming James Bond film of the same name. Alice Cooper recalled in a 2011 interview:
It was supposed to be the Bond theme, but it actually came in a day too late, and by the time they heard it, they’d already signed for Lulu’s song. I went, “You’re gonna take Lulu over this?” [Laughs.] ‘Cause it was perfect for The Man With The Golden Gun. It had helicopters, it had machine guns—it had the Pointer Sisters, Ronnie Spector, and Liza Minnelli doing background vocals! We went to every single one of those John Barry albums to try and invent the perfect James Bond song, and even Christopher Lee, who played Scaramanga in the movie, said, “Oh, man, why did we take the Lulu song? This song is the one!” [Laughs.] So, yeah, we lost out on that one, but I still put it on the album. I said, “I don’t care, I’m going to do a James Bond track no matter what.”
New Music United 