“The brilliant thing about it was that the film was so silly you could almost do anything you wanted. And it was the success of Independence Day that really led to my getting the Bond gig.”
- David Arnold

“This is my third Bond film and the director Marc Forster wanted me to write music not necessarily to the pictures but to the characters and the vibe. The one I really like is about Quantum itself; this all-pervading, invasive organisation that seems to have agents in every system. Everything seems corrupt and untrustworthy. I wanted to write something snakey and odd; an umbrella signature sound.

There’s a sequence where certain key members of Quantum come together at the Opera to discuss their plans. And Bond sneaks in too, and they sort of envelope him; as does the music. He gets out of it, though – of course.

For Casino Royale, I wanted the song to be about Bond, not a casino, to have Bond addressing you directly for the first time. “The coldest blood runs through my veins/You know my name”: that’s the last two lines. It challenges you not to like him. I wanted to write something that would also blow away the old memories of Bond, to kick the door down and say: right, we’re doing it this way now.

Tomorrow Never Dies was my first Bond. I’d made a record called Shaken and Stirred where I recorded old James Bond songs with contemporary artists, one of whom was The Propellerheads, with whom I did a version of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And when I visited Barbara and Bob Broccoli before I got the job they were cutting the car chase scene to that track. So when I actually got the job I called Alex and asked him if he wanted to do the same thing for the actual film.”

Keeping reading: guardian.co.uk