getty images THE GREAT J OURNE Y How an all-star musical lineup changed videogame soundtracks forever BY MAT OMBLER 80 EDG340.f_halo.indd 80 20/11/2019 15:26 ost people associate Halo 2 with the birth of ‘Hey, Marty! I need to meet you!’ and I was like ‘Hey! I need Xbox Live, but Halo 2 did more than simply to you meet you too!’ change the world of online multiplayer; it “And I swear, everyone in the room just started to changed the world of videogame music too. disappear. At this point we just started talking about music,” MThe Halo 2 soundtrack is one of the most ambitious and O’Donnell says. “Nile told me about his experience hearing successful videogame soundtracks that has ever been released, the music in Halo for the first time and how he’d been spanning two volumes of music that have shipped over looking for me. Apparently, there was this wall between me 100,000 copies worldwide. and Nile in terms of Microsoft. But once Nile and me got The music in Halo 2 was written by some of its biggest in a room together, we were like, ‘Okay, we can do this’. He fans – and we don’t just mean the series’ co-composers was just so passionate about it.” Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. An A-list line-up of Rodgers was interested in Halo because he had just some of the world’s biggest bands, artists and producers, with founded Sumthing Else Music Works, a record label a combined total of six Grammys and a billion albums sold specialising in the licensing and distribution of videogame between them, all wrote music for the game. The work of soundtracks. In June 2002, Sumthing Else enjoyed its first Nile Rodgers, Steve Vai, John Mayer, Incubus, Breaking release: the Halo Original Soundtrack. As most of the music in Benjamin and Hoobastank was a giant love letter to the Halo the game was interactive, O’Donnell and Salvatori series and their way of showing the world the impact Halo: reassembled many of the pieces so they could be in a suite or Combat Evolved had on their own lives. enjoyed as a standalone experience. Fans loved it. With over Martin O’Donnell’s latest project is Highwire Games’ The first Halo had an incredible impact on a lot of people, 40,000 copies sold, its success helped to establish Sumthing PSVR adventure Golem of course, as well as on Microsoft itself. As a launch title for Else as the flagship record label for videogame soundtracks, Xbox, Halo was the catalyst for and the label went on to release over Microsoft shipping millions of consoles 200 other scores from series such as and establishing itself, despite much Gears Of War, Uncharted, Resident A BIG HIT IN scepticism, as a genuine competitor Evil and Assassin’s Creed. to console giants Sony and Nintendo. THE VIDEO- Not since the 1995 release of Realising how important the game was GAME WORLD GoldenEye 007 had a firstperson and how much it had connected with IS WAY DIFFER- shooter captured the attention of so fans all over the world, Martin many players. Yet, despite the success ENT THAN THIS O’Donnell, then Bungie’s audio of Combat Evolved, the Bungie team director, wanted nothing more than to RIDICULOUS were still coming to terms with the release the soundtrack. Microsoft, CULTURAL sheer number of people the game had somehow, said no. BLOCKBUSTER connected with. Actors from Star Wars “We worked like crazy to finish and stars such as Justin Timberlake that score,” O’Donnell tells us. “I said, IT BECAME visited Bungie for studio tours, during ‘We need to release this music as a which they would share their memories soundtrack. It’s a big deal.’ And then of the game and tell the team how the brakes just went on. They [Microsoft] were like, ‘Oh, much they loved Halo. “We all thought Halo was gonna be a we don’t do things like that… we have to look at the market big hit, but a big hit in the videogame world is way different for it’. After we had shipped the game and we were riding than this ridiculous cultural blockbuster it became,” O’Donnell the success of it, I just kept coming back to it, saying we says. “None of us anticipated that.” should ship the soundtrack!” While O’Donnell and the Bungie team were passionately A sequel to Halo was never initially planned, but it was fighting for the release of the Combat Evolved score, they inevitable that fans would soon be expecting one. The Bungie weren’t aware of what was happening behind closed doors. team set to work on developing concepts and bouncing ideas Somebody else was interested in releasing a Halo soundtrack: backwards and forwards, but without a concept to work from three-time Grammy award winner, record producer and as source material, O’Donnell hadn’t settled on a musical musician Nile Rodgers. Rodgers is responsible for some of the direction for the game and was pretty open to ideas. That biggest music releases in the world, his career progressing from blank slate was manna from heaven for Rodgers, who was his time with disco legends Chic to collaborations with artists keen to utilise his network of contacts and get some of these such as David Bowie, Madonna and Daft Punk. He’d been big-name Halo fans to write music for the new game. trying to contact O’Donnell for months. O’Donnell laughs when he recalls the calibre of the names “I got called into the boardroom with the Microsoft guys that Rodgers was reeling off. Some of the initial names that and they were like, ‘We want to talk about the Halo were suggested included the legendary rock guitarists Jeff soundtrack, and we want to introduce you to Nile Rodgers’,” Beck and Steve Vai, but he even suggested the pop star Pink. O’Donnell recalls. He knew better than to turn it down, and “Nile came and said, ‘Look: there’s all these guys who are a meeting was duly set up. “Nile stood up and was like just really loving Halo, and for Halo 2 I can get you 81 EDG340.f_halo.indd 81 20/11/2019 15:26 THE GREAT JOURNEY anybody you want. I can get you all sorts of people.’ It was so on picking out the best bits from the session and sending it HIGH mind-blowing to me,” O’Donnell says. over to Salvatori in Chicago. CHARITY O’Donnell considered some of the ways he could use the “I remember playing it to the guys at Bungie after it was all Many people aren’t aware artists that Rodgers was suggesting, and decided that someone done. They loved it but I was like: ‘Is this gonna work for that American singer- like Jeff Beck or Steve Vai “would be spectacular.” And with Halo?’ It was a new approach. But it was such a cool track, so songwriter and guitarist John Mayer features on the that, Rodgers set off on an epic quest to get one of the biggest we were like, ‘Well, we’ve gotta figure out a place to use it!’ Halo 2 soundtrack. His guitar legends in the world to write music for a videogame And you know, the fans really loved it.” inclusion in the game was initially kept secret due to soundtrack. It just so happened that three-time Grammy Award potential issues with his winner Vai, who has recorded and performed with acts such as When you listen to the original Halo theme, it’s difficult label and management. Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne, was on tour with G3, the to find much to improve on. It’s rare that a piece of game After visiting the studio and hitting it off with long-running series of virtuoso guitar shows established in 1995 music manages to resonate with so many people on O’Donnell, Mayer ended by Vai’s former mentor, Joe Satriani. As luck would have it, one the same level as Koji Kondo’s music from The Legend Of up contributing some incredibly tasty guitar of those dates was close to the Bungie studio. Zelda or Nobuo Uematsu’s work in the Final Fantasy series. licks that featured on “Nile called me and said Steve Vai was coming to town,” Adding guitar to a piece that’s predominantly built around the Epilogue track in Halo 2, which plays over O’Donnell says. “He said, ‘Book a studio, I’m gonna fly out vocals, violins and cellos could have been a risky endeavour the end credits. “It turned there and Steve Vai’s going to lay down some tracks.’ I couldn’t but it worked so well that it ended up shifting the sound of the out John was a huge Halo believe it!” Halo 2 soundtrack. fan and wanted to contribute music to the O’Donnell didn’t realise it at the time, but the studio session “When it comes to any of the guitar-based, hard-driving game,” O’Donnell says. “I that he had just booked would make videogame history. stuff, the Mjolnir Mix was the first of that. And once we saw even sent him a bunch of different tracks and I just Steve Vai shredding over the top of the Halo 2 soundtrack, that that could work, it shifted the direction of some of the other said whatever you wanna Nile Rodgers directing him by pieces,” O’Donnell says.