David Arnold Talks Composing for the Iconic James Bond Film Franchise

Image via Bowers & Wilkins

Image via Bowers & Wilkins

Can you speak to what it’s been like to compose music for one of the most iconic film franchises of all time? 

As a person who has been on the other side of that equation, and has watched the James Bond films since childhood—loving everything about them, especially what John Barry was doing with the scores—it is sort of oddly satisfying to find yourself on the other side of that rope because you know, it’s somewhere you always wanted to be. The music really did speak to me for a very long time. I always felt excited by it and inspired by it, and it sort of suggested to me that it is what I should be doing and by doing it I felt like I was responding to the music and the films. Being a part of the franchise isn’t something you are really that conscious of, because you don’t stop and think, “Wow, I am a part of this!”

Ultimately, once you get over the fact that you have been asked to do one of the films, you then have to do it, and the process of doing it is very different from the concept of doing it. You are aware of how important it is for people, and when you finish you hope it lands in the same way those early films landed for me. 

What was your favorite Bond movie to work on? 

I like all the Bond films for different reasons. It was very satisfying to do Casino Royale for a number of reasons: one was working with Chris Cornell, and another was working with Martin Campbell and the energy he brought to it. Casino Royale felt like it was the first film where I could kind of establish myself a little more as a composer because at the time we started, Daniel Craig hadn’t been cast yet, so we were sort of writing conceptually from the script and from the character on the page which was different from the cinematic character. Probably, Tomorrow Never Dies was my favorite because it was my first film—everything was new and there were zero expectations. No one had heard my rendition of a Bond score, and they didn’t know what it would be like. We were establishing a different cinematic musical language for Bond which touched on the legacy sound of John Barry, as well as moving forward with electronic elements and more contemporary music production elements as well. 

You’ve worked on multiple films with multiple different Bonds, is there a different strategy for each actor that you’ve worked with? Is scoring for Daniel Craig different from scoring for Pierce Brosnan?

What was interesting about the first one I worked on with Pierce was that you know how Pierce is and how he moves and what his strengths are and that becomes familiar. What was interesting about Casino Royale, I read the script and started working on the song, they hadn’t cast anyone. So for the first time in a long time, I had no idea who this was going to be. It was just what was on the page. When they came to do the screen test, Daniel Craig’s movement was what made me feel like he was the right fit for that particular Bond. He was as M calls him, “A blunt instrument.” He hadn’t become all these things yet, so that was the strategy for Casino Royale. The song needed to be the progenitor of the James Bond Theme. 

We start the movie with “You Know My Name,” and end the movie with the James Bond Theme. So that journey is taken not only by the actor but by the music as well. Daniel’s performance very much informed the way I would write for and looking at the subsequent films that I didn’t do, as he became more exposed and eternal, subsequent composers like Tom Newman were very much looking inwards into who he was. All these things will have an impact on what you do and why you do it. 

What advice would you give to someone scoring the upcoming Bond films? 

It’s difficult to say that you should give advice to anyone because I think the best results come from when people decide to do things their way and have their own take on it. I think that should be left up to them to find their place, and I suppose I will echo Pierce Brosnan’s words to Daniel Craig which were just, “Enjoy the hell out of it!” 

You’ve been a part of the Goldeneye video game franchise as well, some of the most iconic video game music of all time. How rewarding was working on that? 

Video games are slightly different because you don’t write into a story. You are kind of illustrating moments of the gameplay. You don’t have a beginning, middle, and end when you are writing a game score, because it might never end. You have to write, in a way, for the energy of a player rather than the energy of a film which is a very different thing. It’s trying to transplant that sense of style that Bond has musically into a game. One thing I learned from working on the video games is that there is a lot of music needed—much more than in a film—and you have to guess what people are going to be doing, and write music for what could happen, rather than a movie where you are writing what is happening. 

You’ve worked on a number of other popular movies as well, Independence Day, the Fast and Furious franchise, etc, what is different about working on James Bond movies? 

The difference is it’s a James Bond movie, and that means the whole world is looking at you. There are only a few franchises that command that kind of worldwide interest—Star Wars is the most obvious example. People have strong opinions about the music in Star Wars and about and people have strong opinions about the music in James Bond and the sense of James Bond. You realize you are treading on hallowed ground and you have to be respectful of it. 

Can you speak to how special of an event The Sound of 007 at Abbey Road Studios with Bowers & Wilkins was? 

I felt especially excited for people to be able to sit A, in front of an orchestra and B, in an orchestra, just to experience the artistic integrity, skill, and talent of our musicians. A lot of work is done with samples and electronics nowadays, and even though that can sound fine, there really is nothing like the experience of hearing 75 or 80 highly skilled, trained artists with the most fabulous instruments giving the performance of a lifetime. It’s such a unique experience.

Then, of course, you go into the control room at Abbey Road and listen to the recorded sound, and it sounds like the performance you just heard, and a beautiful reproduction of it, but when you are in the room you are in it and you are a part of it and it feels very different, I think. The most exciting part, for me, was that everyone who came out of that experience had a newfound respect for the art of an orchestral performance not necessarily just for film music, but just the artistry and the commitment involved to be that good.