Over 500,000 people have watched that studio session (courtesy of a video that O'Donnell uploaded to his YouTube channel) to witness the creation of what became the Halo Mjolnir Mix, an epic guitar reworking of Halo's choral main theme and arguably the most iconic track from the series. Steve Vai shredding over the top of the Halo 2 soundtrack, Nile Rodgers directing him by energetically mouthing a cappella guitar renditions of the Halo theme, and Marty O'Donnell supervising the session in awe, is a sight to behold. "Rodgers is responsible for some of the biggest music releases in the world, his career progressing from his time with disco legends Chic to collaborations with artists such as David Bowie, Madonna and Daft Punk." "He said, 'Book a studio, I'm gonna fly out there and Steve Vai's going to lay down some tracks.' I couldn't believe it!" O'Donnell didn't realise it at the time, but the studio session that he had just booked would make video game history. "Nile called me and said Steve Vai was coming to town," O'Donnell says. As luck would have it, one of those dates was close to the Bungie studio.
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It just so happened that three-time Grammy Award winner Vai, who has recorded and performed with acts such as Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne, was on tour with G3, the long-running series of virtuoso guitar shows established in 1995 by Vai's former mentor, Joe Satriani. O'Donnell considered some of the ways he could use the artists that Rodgers was suggesting, and decided that someone like Jeff Beck or Steve Vai "would be spectacular." And with that, Rodgers set off on an epic quest to get one of the biggest guitar legends in the world to write music for a video game soundtrack. I can get you all sorts of people.' It was so mind-blowing to me," O'Donnell says. "Nile came and said, 'Look: there's all these guys who are just really loving Halo, and for Halo 2 I can get you anybody you want. Some of the initial names that were suggested included the legendary rock guitarists Jeff Beck and Steve Vai, but he even suggested the pop star Pink. O'Donnell laughs when he recalls the calibre of the names that Rodgers was reeling off.
That blank slate was manna from heaven for Rodgers, who was keen to utilise his network of contacts and get some of these big-name Halo fans to write music for the new game.
The Bungie team set to work on developing concepts and bouncing ideas backwards and forwards, but without a concept to work from as source material, O'Donnell hadn't settled on a musical direction for the game and was pretty open to ideas. "None of us anticipated that."Ī sequel to Halo was never initially planned, but it was inevitable that fans would soon be expecting one. "We all thought Halo was gonna be a big hit, but a big hit in the video game world is way different than this ridiculous cultural blockbuster it became," O'Donnell says. Actors from Star Wars and stars such as Justin Timberlake visited Bungie for studio tours, during which they would share their memories of the game and tell the team how much they loved Halo. Yet, despite the success of Combat Evolved, the Bungie team were still coming to terms with the sheer number of people the game had connected with.
Not since the 1995 release of GoldenEye 007 had a first-person shooter captured the attention of so many players. With over 40,000 copies sold, its success helped to establish Sumthing Else as the flagship record label for video game soundtracks, and the label went on to release over 200 other scores from series such as Gears Of War, Uncharted, Resident Evil and Assassin's Creed. As most of the music in the game was interactive, O'Donnell and Salvatori reassembled many of the pieces so they could be in a suite or enjoyed as a standalone experience. In June 2002, Sumthing Else enjoyed its first release: the Halo Original Soundtrack. Rodgers was interested in Halo because he had just founded Sumthing Else Music Works, a record label specialising in the licensing and distribution of video game soundtracks. "Green Day had just come out with American Idiot, which was a brilliant, brilliant album, and they had written a whole piece for Halo 2."
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