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Arnold performing Bond in concert, 1999
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Information about Arnold's background:
At the age of seven, British composer David Arnold (born in Luton in 1962) knew that he wanted to compose music for film. It was at the Luton British legionnaire club where Arnold saw his first James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, and the young man claimed the film's score "tainted him for life" and was the "substantial event for him that just got him hooked." Arnold was brought up listening to Frank Sinatra, Debussy, The Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. His first instrument was the recorder, followed by the clarinet, the electric guitar, and the piano. As a teenager, Arnold played in nursing homes and along side his father, who sang in a number of clubs. He played with a number of punk rock bands that never really took off, so he went to college and studied theater design, but later left to pursue his career in music.
After a number of job auditions failed, Arnold returned to his hometown of Luton. While at a local art center where Arnold rehearsed and played with bands, he met with a young film student who asked him to score a number of short films he had been producing. One of these films was entered into the BBC's young filmmaker's competition, and it took top honors. Arnold's first big break came when the same student, Danny Canon, asked him to write the score for his first feature film, The Young Americans, starring Harvey Keitel in 1993. This gave Arnold the opportunity to work with a budget and Icelandic sensation Bjork and produce a score that would merit international attention. The film went unseen by most, except for Alan Parker, a top commercial and feature director who enjoyed the film so much that he invited Canon and Arnold to visit him in his Hollywood mansion in Bel Air.
Alan Parker wasn't the only person to notice David Arnold's talents; Mark Friedman, one of the producers for the 1994 big budget Sci-fi venture, Stargate, also noticed the score for The Young Americans, and the music was filtered to the director and producer of Stargate, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, who were looking for a composer at the time. A number of cues from the score were placed against scenes in Stargate, and they worked so perfectly together that the success of the film would lead to a five year partnership between Arnold, Devlin, and Emmerich. After scoring the relatively unknown The Last of the Dogmen from a little hotel room in Los Angeles, Devlin presented Arnold with the mega-budget film Independence Day. The huge hit utilized a 90-piece orchestra and won Arnold mainstream attention and a Grammy award.
In 1996, Arnold worked on a tribute cover-album of his favorite James Bond themes "Shaken and Stirred," a project that would become a labor of love and take eighteen months to complete. Collaborating with a diverse range of acts like Matin Fry, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Propellerheads, and Iggy Pop, Arnold managed to mix the contemporary and orchestral approached onto one album. Two of the tracks from the album were released as chart singles, and one track, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, became a successful dance hit. While producing the album, Arnold had been sending his recordings to MGM and Barbara Broccoli, who were impressed with the effort and style of his interpretations. Arnold's dreams then came true when he was offered the score to Tomorrow Never Dies, Pierce Brosnan's second outing as James Bond. Long-time Bond composer John Barry, who had turned down an offer to score the picture, was also impressed with Arnold's style, claiming the young composer as "the rightful heir" to the series.
By this time, Arnold's career had blossomed into a very in-demand one. Film studios and television companies were asking him to score main theme titles for programs and a number of artists in the pop industry wanted him to produce tracks on their albums. His collaboration with Devlin and Emmerich would come first, however, with the large-scale remake of Godzilla in 1998. Arnold was frustrated with the film, however, and the score was never commercially released. After offering a rousing title theme for Wing Commander in 1999, Arnold took a break for a short time so he could concentrate on a few small television projects (such as Tested to Destruction, a ITV program hosted by Carol Vorderman) before embarking on the next major James Bond film. While Arnold was scoring The World is Not Enough, he held a tribute concert at the 'Music Industry Trust's Man of the Year' awards ceremony for John Barry, and presented Barry with an official James Bond guitar. Arnold would write the score song and score for his second Bond film and firmly established himself as the new composer of the Bond franchise.
The year 2000 marked the first critical change in Arnold's professional career. Arnold moved on to a number of smaller projects, including the title theme for the remake of the TV series Randall & Hopkirk and he wrote the score for the BBC Hall of Fame episode for Barbara Windsor. When Arnold was set to return to the big screen, his partnership with Devlin and Emmerich came to an uncertain and sudden end when his demo for their newest film, The Patriot was rejected (the assignment was then given to John Williams). At this point, Arnold's career led him to the remake of the legendary 1971 hero Shaft, a score that would announce Arnold into a new stage of his career. After proving that his hip, techno sensibilities translated well into his film scores, he began taking more assignments that allowed him to utilize this talent. With the fortunes of his action scores fading after his lackluster work for The Musketeer in 2001, Arnold took the synthesized route for several projects. Smaller-scale urban grooves were his style for Baby Boy, Changing Lanes, Enough, and 2 Fast 2 Furious between 2001 and 2003.
Having established this rhythmic style has his new professional identity, Arnold returned for his third James Bond film, Die Another Day, in 2002. Arnold's score was the most experimental electronic score in the series to date, and alienated many of his listeners who were more in tune with the "Barryesque" approach to the franchise. Arnold was displeased with the Madonna title song for the project, which had not been under his control, and the soundtrack as a whole was met with critical and popular displeasure, especially in the U.K., where Arnold continues to work. Even during this time of turmoil in Arnold's film music career, however, he continued to make waves in other music genres. Away from the film world, Arnold maintains a career as a successful record producer, continuing to work with contemporary artists such as Pulp, Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, David McAlmont, and The Cardigans.
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British composer David Arnold is an artist whose talents stretch to nearly every realm of the music industry. His music, as well as the albums he has produced, have been heard by more people than most film music collectors realize. Arnold's sudden influence in the film music industry came early in his career (1994-1996), when he scored such large-scale orchestral efforts as Stargate, Last of the Dogmen, and Independence Day. Across the United States, Arnold's finale for Independence Day is still used in countless fireworks displays each year. He also was identified by long-time James Bond composer John Barry as the rightful heir to the throne of the Bond soundtracks franchise, and Arnold burst into the series with his popular score for Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997. He has continued with more entries in the Bond series since then, but his scores of grand magnificence have declined in favor of smaller-scale projects closer to his musical roots.
