he music of Good Omens starts, about 30 years ago with a joke. Actually, it’s a joke that predated
the book: Terry Pratchett and I decided that the reason we had cassettes of Queen’s Greatest Hits in our cars that we didn’t remember buying was because all music transforms into the best of Queen. We also knew this wasn’t true: in 1987, in a motorway service station, in the small hours of the morning, you’d buy a cassette to keep you awake when you drove, and stare sadly at things you didn’t want to listen to, and you’d buy Queen’s Greatest Hits and forget that you’d bought it. We had American friends who had the same relationship with the Best of Bruce Springsteen. Which meant that Queen was going to be important to Good Omens.
avid Arnold has a 14 inch model of Freddie Mercury on his desk. There
may have been other composers equally as qualified to make Good Omens music, but I do not know who they are or could possibly be. Director Douglas Mackinnon and I had a conversation with each of the people involved with Good Omens. It went, “Look, what we want to see and hear are the ideas that you’d feel the need to apologetically explain that ‘This may be a bit too mad but...’
before you say them.” David grinned evilly when we told him this. The first composition we heard was the theme music. “This may be a bit mad...” he explained, as he played it to us. We’d never heard it before, but as soon as we heard it we’d always known it. It was the Good Omens music. Of course it was. We told David how much we loved it.
“Thank God for that!” he said. “I don’t have anything else.”
t was that way with all the music. Douglas and I would go to David Arnold’s lair.
We would play him the episode, talking about what was happening emotionally to the characters, trying to find the emotional heart of each scene. We didn’t tell him what to do or what to make, but the three of us watched and talked about what was honest. And then, some weeks later, we would go back to David’s haunted belfry room, with the 14 inch Freddie Mercury on the desk, and David would play us the episode, with music, and we would exult and delight and be joyful. Good Omens isn’t only one kind of thing. It contains many styles and many approaches, all sorts of sensibilities and scenes. It’s not just one thing. There’s
comedy in there, but there’s action and history and horror and satire and a number of other kinds of storytelling. David Arnold creates music that works, giving us a Crucifixion as beautifully sad as anything Hollywood has created, taking us blithely through six thousand years of human history to a blazing motorway and Armageddon.
he Queen music is powerful. And it’s funny. And David helped it to live in the
story. He even did something impossible with it at one point, taking us undetectably from the music of Thomas Tallis to We Will Rock You. David Arnold’s music is powerful, and it’s funny, and sometimes it’s moving and exciting, and sometimes it takes us somewhere new and sometimes it conjures up places and things we weren’t expecting, and sometimes it hurries us through scenes or slows things down so we can appreciate them. It’s another character. It never distracts us.
knew I wanted to finish with “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”
and I spent several days listening to cover versions, on Spotify and YouTube and on random websites, trying to find the version that felt in my heart like the one I heard in my
imagination, and failing miserably. It needed to go from cocktail lounge dinner piano into territory that was transcendent, and needed a pure voice to take us there. If the version I wanted didn’t exist, we would have to create it. I asked Tori Amos to come and watch a little of Good Omens, and when she did, asked if she would sing “A Nightingale Sang...” She did. She made something amazing, and then David Arnold took what Tori had done and added strings. It was a joke, and a way of illustrating a joke, and the first time I saw it, at the end of Episode Six, I found myself crying, because like the best jokes, it was perfectly serious and utterly heartfelt. David’s team made this real. Toby Pitman and Ben Foster, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the glorious strings.
hank you to Tori Amos and Mark Hawley, to David Arnold, and especially
to the model of Freddie Mercury on David’s desk, whom Douglas and I sometimes suspected was secretly masterminding the whole thing.
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Good Omens © Neil Gaiman : April 2019 all rights reserved
1:1 GOOD OMENS OPENING TITLE 1:2 CHATTERING NUNS 1:3 THREE CARD SWITCH 1:4 WARLOCK 1:5 ADAM1:6 LULLABY 1:7 HELL HOUND 1:8 WRONG BOY 1:9 WE’RE DOOMED 1:10 END TITLES - THE THEME THAT GOT LEFT IN THE CAR1:11 WITCH 1:12 NEWT 1:13 ANATHEMA 1:14 THE THEM 1:15 ANATHEMA MEETS THEM 1:16 PAINTBALL 1:17 ANATHEMA INVESTIGATES 1:18 SLEEPING ADAM 1:19 I SHOULD COCOA 1:20 CRUCIFIED 1:21 THE BLACK KNIGHT1:22 THE GLOBE 1:23 ST.JAMES PARK 1:24 HOLY WATER 1:25 ADAM AND DOG 1:26 WE’RE NOT KILLING ANYBODY1:27 ATLANTIS 1:28 GABRIEL 1:29 BAD ANGEL MICHAEL 1:30 DELIVERY FOR POLLUTION 1:31 MESSAGE FOR MR DEATH 1:32 ALIENS!
Volume : 1
AMBASSADOR ARRIVES
ANSAPHONE
ADAM ASCENDING
SHADWELL BREAKS IN
BOOKSHOPS ON FIRE
IS THAT YOU?
FOUR HORSEMEN
THUNDERGUN
ADAMS CHANGED
HORSEMEN TO THE AIRFIELD
ON YOUR BIKES
REQUIEM FOR A BENTLEY
THE GATHERING
DESPATCH THE HORSEMEN
COMPUTERS DOWN
END OF THIS STORY
INEFFABLE PLAN
THEY’VE TOLD HIS FATHER
ANOTHER PLACE
LIFE AFTER DEATH
ADAMS BEDROOM
RESTORATION
NEWT AND ANATHEMA WAKE UP
HELL AND HOLY WATER
LAWYER WITH A BOX
SHADWELL AND TRACY
TOGETHER
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS
ALL CHANGE
A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE
Performed by TORI AMOS
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2:6
2:7
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2:9
2:10
2:11
2:12
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2:14
2:15
2:16
2:17
2:18
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Volume : 2
Credits
Based on the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Written by Showrunner: Neil Gaiman
Directed by: Douglas Mackinnon
Executive Producers: Chris Sussman, Rob Wilkins, Neil Gaiman, Simon Winstone, Douglas Mackinnon
Produced by Amazon Studios, BBC Studios, The Blank Corporation and Narrativia
Music by David Arnold
Orchestrated and conducted by Ben Foster additional orchestrations by Nicholas Dodd additional music by Ben Foster
Recorded and mixed by Nick Wollage and Adam Miller at Air Studios, London
String Contractor: Susie Gillis for Isobel Griffiths Ltd.
Choir: Crouch End Festival Chorus, under the musical direction of David Temple
Music Prep. by Sam Thompson assisted by Jon Sims
Mastered by John Webber at Air Mastering , London
Programming, Guitars, Bass and Shredding Toby Pitman
Featured Musicians :
Electric Violin, Boy Soprano, Whistling Eos Counsell
Electric Cello Peter Gregson
Sax Ben Castle
Chromatic Harmonica Mark Kermode
Guitars, keys, bass, recorders, singing and lots of weird things that needed hitting or blowing into David Arnold
String Players :
Violins : Tom Pigott-Smith (Orchestra Leader) Emlyn Singleton, Jackie Shave, Steve Morris, Richard George, Warren Zielinski, Eos Counsell, Patrick Kiernan, Laura Melhuish, Nina Foster, Jackie Hartley, Kate Robinson, Dai Emanuel, Tom Kemp and Sonia Slany
Violas : Bruce White, Rachel Robson, Peter Lale and Laurie Anderson
Celli : Caroline Dale, Vicky Matthews, Nick Cooper, Frank Schaefer and Peter Gregson
Double Bass : Mary Scully and Richard Pryce
A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square :
Performed and produced by Tori Amos
Recorded and mixed by Mark Hawley and Marcel van Limbeek at Martian Engineering , Cornwall, UK
Strings arranged by David Arnold and Nicholas Dodd, recorded at Air Studios London
Mastered by Jon Astley at Close To The Edge
Album produced by David Arnold
Album mastered by John Webber at AIR Mastering
Executive producers for Silva Screen Records Ltd. Reynold D’Silva and David Stoner
Design layout Stuart Ford
All titles published by Bucks Music Publishing / BBC Studios Distribution
except “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square”
Music by Manning Sherwin / Lyrics by Eric Maschwitz
Published by Peter Maurice Music
Ⓟ & © 2019 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd . Under exclusive l icence to Silva Screen Records Ltd . All Rights Reser ved . SILCD1593 MCPS