Interview by Tim Greiving
Recorded at AIR Studios in London
David Arnold describes a childhood in industrial Luton, where his Dublin-born father, a former boxer who had fought for Ireland, sang with the big band at a cabaret club called Caesar’s Palace. Seeing You Only Live Twice at a children’s Christmas party “changed my life.” He taught himself guitar chords from his father’s sheet music and at about 19 met aspiring director Danny Cannon, scoring his homemade films on a church organist’s eight-track recorder.
He recounts writing Cannon’s first feature, The Young Americans, and recruiting Björk to sing its end-title song, “Play Dead,” by pushing a cassette through her front door. That score led to Stargate, which he pitched as Star Wars meets Lawrence of Arabia, and to Independence Day, whose main theme he conceived as a national anthem. His album of Bond covers, Shaken and Stirred, helped bring him Tomorrow Never Dies.
He discusses writing Bond songs with Don Black and with Chris Cornell, whose “You Know My Name” introduced a Casino Royale score that holds back the full James Bond theme until the very end; Michael Apted’s The World Is Not Enough; Shaft with John Singleton and Isaac Hayes; Zoolander; a last-minute rescore of The Stepford Wives; losing Cutthroat Island and The Patriot; the Paralympics closing ceremony; Sherlock; and his long partnership with orchestrator Nicholas Dodd.
Reflecting on the craft, he says he is still learning when enough is enough, likens sample demos to photocopies hanging in the Louvre, and urges orchestral composers to write freely to picture, “getting away from the dictatorship of the click.”