`I'm knackered, to be honest with you," says David Arnold, when asked how he is. He's taking some precious time out from the nightmarish schedule of completing the score for Tomorrow Never Dies, the 18th James Bond film, which is due for release in Ireland in early December. "It's going very well. We've just got the last few days of mixing and putting it all together, so it's taking shape. Everyone seems to be happy."
Arnold appears to have arrived from nowhere to land with a bang right in the middle of pop heaven. Whilst movie buffs might have recognised his name and his soundtrack work from several films over the past few years, the public at large would not have been familiar with his name until 1993, when his song Play Dead - sung by Bjork over the close of Young Americans - gave the charts a much-needed slap in the face. The same public at large, however, does not include his wide range of Irish relatives.
"My dad was one of 22," says David in all seriousness, "so I've obviously still got a lot of family in Dublin. Some of my uncles and aunts live in England, but most of them live in Walkinstown and Tallaght. I don't go over as much as I used to, because everything's gone a bit berserk over the past few years. But I know loads of places in Dublin"
David came to writing soundtracks after meeting fledgling film-maker Danny Cannon. Writing the scores for over 20 of Cannon's low-budget shorts gave Arnold more than a taste for the art. Cannon subsequently contacted Arnold to write the music for his designer crime'n'violence feature debut, Young Americans.
"When you're in a cinema - far from being at home where it's easy to get distracted - you prepare yourself for two hours of concentration," says David. "It's a dark room, and unless someone is eating loudly or has a big hat on, most of the time you're being attentive to what's in front of you. It's a captive audience. The music is literally bigger than what you would get at home, and that created a special magic atmosphere for me that began when I was a kid."
Arnold's initial exposure to the power of music in film started in Dublin at six years of age when his father, over a three-week period, took him to see The Wizard Of Oz, Oliver!, and You Only Live Twice. "They were staggering, now that I look back on them. Amazing songs and visuals. Plus, You Only Live Twice was the first movie I saw that had stuff set in space in it. Incredible!"
It has taken quite a while, but finally real soundtrack music (and not just a disparate collection of pop songs) is being afforded the same popular critical analysis as that of rock. The release of a soundtrack is fast becoming what it used to be - an event, and something to look forward to. There are reasons for this, and club culture, through its embracing of soundtrack music as occasional ambient pacing amidst the pneumatic beat of techno, jungle and Eurodance, is one of them. Film scores and songs also reflect a hip yearning for traditional tunes with equally traditional emotions. It isn't embarrassing anymore to admit to humming a Lionel Blair tune - is it, David?
"Soundtrack music might now be looked upon as an artistic cut above pop or rock," affirms David, "but by the same argument, it's also looked down on by the classical establishment, who seem to think that it's rock and pop music with orchestras. Yet if you look at the history of classical music, the likes of Mozart, Haydn, Handel - they were commissioned to write music for events. Film music could easily be considered to be the new popular classical music. It is also written for a specific event.
"The only problem with it is that it has to exist for reasons other than merely musical. It has to co-exist and co-habitate with a film soundtrack where people talk and action takes place. It's restrictive as far as that's concerned. Film music isn't the arena to be stamping your personality, because most of the time the film tells you what it needs, and not the other way around. You could argue that it's functional, but at the same time, it's extraordinarily powerful. And well-written, evocative film music certainly lives beyond the screen."
Despite his love of film music (he rates Bernard Herrmann as his all-time favourite), David listens to and is more excited by pop music than film soundtracks. Which brings us neatly to Shaken & Stirred.
"There are aspects of rock and pop that I try to bring into my film scores - admittedly not that you'd know from Independence Day. But pop and rock are as important a part of what I do as writing film scores. Doing the Shaken & Stirred album is my way of saying that these songs are great. I wanted to do them before anyone else got their hands on them, just in case they screwed 'em up."
To his eternal credit, Arnold has done a great job. David McAlmont's seriously camp take on Diamonds Are Forever is up there with Shirley Bassey's original version, ABC's Martin Fry dramatises through Thunderball, Iggy Pop's weary version of We Have All The Time In The World (previously covered by My Bloody Valentine and Fun Lovin' Criminals) underlines the sadness of the song, and Aimee Mann's superb rendition of Nobody Does It Better is a knockout exercise in inverted cynicism.
"The main consideration for the record," claims David, "was I had a sound in my head for these songs that I wanted to achieve. Song-wise, it wasn't a free-for-all - I knew exactly who I wanted for each specific song. I also didn't want it to get in the way of record company politics, in that the label would ask a certain act to sing whatever Bond song they wanted, and then it would be just delivered to me. I told the people involved to think of it as less of a tribute album and more along the lines of Phil Spector's Christmas album. The songs gel as a whole, which is the obvious outcome of one person controlling it."
Finally, taking over the soundtrack mantle from John Barry, an obvious influence, does David see his own Bond soundtrack as a challenge he has to rise to, and to make it better than the original? "It is. You could never ignore the fact that there is 35 years of film music history in relation to Tomorrow Never Dies. Whatever it sounds like is going to be held up against music from Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and all the other classic Bond films. You're up there being judged by the best of them.
"But you can't be thinking about things like that, otherwise you'd never write a note. Thankfully, everyone important involved in the film - who could, if they wanted to, have scrapped the music and got someone else in my place - liked what they heard. I thought, good God, how did I get away with that?"
