January 30, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Danny Elfman came to prominence as the lead vocalist and songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s —as seen in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy, Back to School. Since scoring his first studio film in 1985, Elfman has composed over 100 feature film scores like Batman, Beetlejuice, Men in Black, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Good Will Hunting—to name just a few, as well as compositions for television like The Simpsons, stage productions, and concert halls. Here to share his story is the man himself, Danny Elfman.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Danny Elfman came
to prominence as the lead vocalist and songwriter for the
new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early nineteen eighties
a scene in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School.
Since scoring his first studio album in nineteen eighty five,
Elfman has composed over one hundred feature film scores like Batman, Beetlejuice,
(00:34):
Men in Black, and Goodwill Hunting, to name a few,
as well as compositions for TV shows like The Simpsons
and other work as well. You had to share his
story is the man himself, Danny Elfman, Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Music came to me very late in life. I didn't
grow up with music around me. By the time I
was in middle school, I was pretty certain I want
to do pursue a career in nuclear biology, although I'm
sure I wouldn't have lasted long in that, but it
just seemed like a cool thing back then. And really
the luck part was that my parents moved from one
(01:13):
neighborhood to another in Los Angeles between middle school and
high school, and so I started high school with no friends.
I had to make new friends from scratch, and I
happened to fall in with a kind of an rdy group,
and I realized that I'm like the only one in
this group that doesn't play an instrument. I was like
(01:34):
the non musical member. But in that group of friends
was a trumpet player named Michael Byron, and he turned
me on to Stravinsky, and suddenly it was like a
(02:12):
whole new world for me. And Stravinsky led to prokofy Off.
(02:45):
Prokofyoff led to Shostakovich led the bar talk led to
you know, and then before I knew it, I was
really I know when I when I first time I heard.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Prokofy Off, I felt like, this.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Is just music from my blood, and you know, I
have Russian roots, but I knew nothing of Russian music,
and somehow it just felt like it was just connecting
on this deep kind of cellular level. And so two
and a half years of high school I didn't quite finish,
(03:17):
but I had planned to travel around the world with
a friend, and I decided I will secretly pick up
it in instrument and try to learn it, and so
we both bought on this world travel.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
He bought an Alto Saxon. I bought a violin.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Also during that period of time, I became infatuated with
a thirties jazz artist named Jango Ryan Hart. But I
(04:04):
ended up, by another coincidence, starting off this world travel.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In Paris because my brother lived there quite.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Randomly, and I was practicing in his apartment one day
and I'd only been playing for about five months, and
the director had come in while I was practicing.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
When it came out, he goes, why don't you come
with us on the road.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And I got me It's like I can't play. He goes, yeah,
you're good enough for us, and I did, and I
did my first performing and wrote my actually first couple
of pieces. One year before that moment, I had never
even picked up an instrument. And by the time I
came back, my brother had started a musical theatrical troupe
modeled after the group that I toured with in France,
(04:46):
which was called Laground Magic Circus, and he started a
group called the Mystic Knights of the Ouengle Buenco. And
even though I arrived very ill with hepatitis and malaria
and a number of other things, he does it's okay.
You could take a couple of days off. Then I'll
bring you to rehearsals and you can start. You'll be
our musical director. That's how I started in music is
(05:08):
in the six seven years I spent with the theater group,
we actually started getting better and better musically, went from
eight to twelve pieces, and everybody had to play three instruments,
so we could be a string ensemble, a brass ensemble,
or a percussion ensemble. And it was a very weird group.
But in the string and brass stuff I did a
lot of. I was still infatuated with thirties jazz and
(05:31):
I wanted to do arrangements of early Duke Ellington work
from about nineteen thirty two to thirty three, and I
figured the only way I'm going to get it right
is to learn how to write it down. So transcribing
Duke Ellington was my first time writing on paper. And
(05:52):
at the end of those seven years, I wrote my
first very ambitious piece. It was about a six to
seven minute twelve written for you know all everybody in
the group, and I called it the Piano Concerto Number
one and a half. But it was kind of inspired
(06:12):
by bits of prokofi Off and bits of Stravinsky and uh,
and it was my first time writing in fact, you know,
like a small chamber work. And after that I disbanded
completely and started a rock fand.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That thing I walked down the street. I did class
up the studying your body.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So that.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And then year five years after that, Tim Burton brings
me into Phebe's Big Adventure. So I almost said no,
(07:30):
but I remembered writing that one piece, the last piece
I wrote for the Mystic Nights, and I said, well,
if I can write for twelve pieces, I can write
for an orchestra. It's not that different, because you know,
I finally thought about it, and I said, you know,
it's a sixty five piece orchestra now, but I'm not
writing sixty five individual parts. You got your first violin,
(07:52):
second violins, and I said it and I just decided
I'm just gonna take a chance and do it. But
I knew nothing about that. I never dreamed of becoming
a film composer.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I was just a.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Lot of random accidents in my life. And I just
had so much fun writing Peop's Big Adventure that I
said I'm going to keep.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And it's also the first time I ever.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Stood in front of an orchestra, and the sound was
so amazing, it was pretty addictive.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I think right at that moment, I was like, I
want to do this.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So for ten years I was both in a rock band,
writing and producing.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And performing and touring.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
But I tried to get in two films every year
around my band schedule so I could learn. So in
those first ten years, I did a number of albums
and tours, but I also.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Tried to get twenty film scores in there more or less.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And you've been listening to Danny Elfman tell one heck
of a story about his life, and if one word
comes to mind for me, it's serendipity. He just wanted
to learn an instrument to tour the world, and he
picked up the violin, and while practicing in Paris and
his brother's apartment, some guy, random guy, walks in and says, hey,
come join the band.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
He goes, I've been playing long.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
You're good enough, the man said, and he was good enough,
and he kept on going, one band, another band, all
of it, by the way, sparked by one composer Stravinsky,
and then the call from Tim Burton himself the legend
and as he put it, I never dreamed of being
a film composer. When we come back more of this
(09:50):
remarkable story, the story of Danny Elfman here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(10:11):
with Danny Elfman's story, beginning with his theme from the
nineteen eighty nine Batman movie starring Michael Keaton.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
So for ten years I was both in a rock band,
writing and producing and performing and touring. But I tried
to get in two films every year around my band
schedule so I could learn. So in those first ten years,
I did a number of albums and tours, but I
also tried to get twenty film scores in there more
or less. You know, this was nineteen eighty five. There
(10:53):
wasn't midy notation or anything like that yet. So I
would kind of the best I could to play parts
into a tape recorder to play for the director because
I wasn't a pianist, and also Tim you know, and
other directors. They want to hear. They were getting to
the point. In the old days Bernard Herman would.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Just play on piano for Albret Hitchcock.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Here's your themes, here's ou cos. But they wanted to
hear more of what's going to sound like. So I
started getting cheap sample synthesizers to kind of mock up
strings and brass, and I found myself recording all the
parts and getting the queue approved. Eventually, after a couple
of scores, I realized that I'm mocking up the entire
queue before the director signs off on it, and then
(11:38):
when he finally does, I'm going back to square one
and writing all of it down.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
And it's true.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I was working sixteen hours a day, like seven days
a week. It was crazy. So that was my first
ten years was very intensive training. And also it was
still in the band during those ten years, so it
was it was just insane. But slowly I built up
my confidence. I mean I just just you You'd look
(12:05):
at me and.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I was covered with eraser dust, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It was just my hands were cramping, and I had
tons of pencils and I had my custom music paper
made and my knees. I'd look at a certain point,
I was just going through erasers after erasers, and so
I was very happy when the MIDI notation happened, and
then I would just put a lot of work into
creating the full fleshed out version. And then being able
(12:30):
to get the MIDI to print out that I could
then take it the next step there, and my sixteen
hour days then went down the nice, easy eleven twelve
hour days. Stumbling into the Simpsons theme was much just
(13:27):
like winning a lottery or something in the sense that.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
In engle Boinco. We did a show one night and
got this terrible review in the LA Reader by a
critic named Matt Groening, and it was such a nasty
review that I took exception because normally I loved our
bad reviews and like the worse the better.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
That was energy.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Bad reviews and criticism and negative energy always provided a
huge fuel source. That's what that was my atomic fuel
that's kept me going, that's what motivated me. But in
this one case, I really took exception because he admitted
in the review that he only saw the on cars,
he missed the show. And I wrote this letter back saying,
(14:13):
if you're gonna say what you're gonna say, that's fine,
but you gotta sit through the show if you're going
to write the review. So they printed the rebuttal. As
the years go by, I started seeing this comic in
the LA Weekly called life in Hell, and I said,
Matt Groaning, He said, who did that review? But I
(14:35):
like this comic and I hated the fact that I
really liked what he was doing, which means he had talent,
because when you really don't like somebody, you don't like
them to be talented. You like them to be talentless hacks.
And clearly he had talent. So now it's many years
later and I get a call.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
There's this show.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It's called The Simpsons. It's an animated show, and Matt
Groaning is the it's his, he created it.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
He wants to meet you. Ah, this will be interesting.
I go in and you.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Know, we talk and they play a pencil sketch and
a version of the thing. I really liked them and
I liked what they did, and I said, no one's
ever going to see this, so never make it past
you know, a couple episodes. But it looks like fun.
And I said, if you want something really retro, I'm
the guy for it. If you want something contemporary and modern,
I'm really the wrong one. Because I saw it and
(15:23):
it just really brought me back to Hannah Barbera The Flintstones.
In fact, the opening kind of has a flintstone energy
to it, you know, going to work and the car
driving and the whole thing. And I grew up on
the flintstones, so I said, I think it should be
like in that mode that, you know, should feel like
that kind of weird sixties TV thing.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And Matt was like, yeah, cool.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And as I'm leaving and we shake hands, he goes,
by the way, you probably don't remember, but I say
I remember, and he goes, we're cool.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Now, Yeah, we're cool.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I wrote it in the car on the way home. Literally,
I wrote the whole thing in the car on the
way home, and I got it called back the next
day saying we love it. And then a few weeks
later I was in with the orchestra recording it. You know,
I just have to keep challenging myself. After ten years
(16:23):
now I'm just a film composer, and it was starting
to get frustrating because the thing is, I love writing
for film, but it's also very you can't write what
you want to write. You have to write what serves
the film. And so many times I'd be writing a
queue for film and it ends go, oh my god,
(16:44):
that was just like a minute and a half or
two and a half minutes, and I could have taken
that to eight minutes long and really enjoyed it. And
so there was a point where we started touring live concerts.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Of my film music.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It was called Me from the Films of Tim Burton,
and I would look at the audience listening to it,
and I remember we were at Lincoln Center in New York,
and somebody came from the other side, you know, from
the oppera sit He says, God killed to get that
audience in our concerts, because it was a very enthusiastic audience.
(17:21):
And that's where I started thinking, why not try to
write music that bridges between what I do for film
and what I love about classical and just give myself
this huge challenge. And so the first piece was for
American Composer's Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and that was great,
(17:42):
and I did a few more, and then it wasn't
until eight years ago that I decided, I'm writing a
violin concerto my first, and I'm going to do a
piece every year, which means I'm going to start saying
no to paid work. But it felt right because I
who was going to take my income down significantly but
(18:04):
yet I did so well as a film composer, it
felt like I should be giving it back. Also on
the other side and keeping myself sharp. Writing the classical
concert music is so much harder, infinitely harder.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
For me than writing a film score.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And you've been listening to Danny Elfman tell the story
of his life, and my goodness, the story of how
he got to compose the score for The Simpsons. We
all can learn a lot from it. It turns out
he gets the call from the very man who gave
his band a terrible review in an LA newspaper, and worse,
he hadn't even really seen the full show. And of
(18:45):
course we learned from Danny that he got motivated by
that kind of thing. He actually liked the negative review
got him going. And then he gets the call from
the same person who had a lot of talent and
he was developing little show called The Simpsons. And when
he meets him, rather than hold a grudge, he basically
(19:05):
lays down the law. If you want retro, i'm your man.
If you want modern, I'm not. And we are all
blessed with that remarkable score and Danny burying the hatchet
on this guy who ripped him in public. When we
come back, more of the story of Danny Elfman here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(19:40):
stories and with Danny Elfman's story as told by Danny
Elfman himself, beginning in this segment with his score from
Tim Burton's nineteen ninety three classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I used to argue with this conductor who worked with
me and Elton Bridge, film music is the classical music
of today, and I go, no, it's not. People come
to a film music concert to hear music from films
they love. You can't take the films away from it
and still have an audience really show up to hear
that music. Not only that, but frequently we really have
(20:46):
to simplify and I'm not allowed to get in. Occasionally
there are scores that can get very dense and elaborate,
but it's not often. You know, I'll write a certain
thing and I'm really excited about it in.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
The director goes, oh God, what's that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I go, sorry, let me just take the counter take
all the dissonance out, take the counterpoint out.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
How about now? Oh it's much better, thank you.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So it was just the ability to get away from
that and really push myself further. It keeps me going because,
like and when I finished that violin concerto, I felt
like it almost killed me literally, and I said I'll
never do it again. Until the next year when I
was offered another piece, I said sure, and I realized, Okay,
(21:34):
you know, it's just like childbirth. You know, my mother,
I think after my brother was born, saying no more children,
But then you know, you have a cute baby a
year later, said well, maybe more kind of similar. What
you do is you forget the painful part and you
remember the fact that I really like how this thing
turned out.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
This you know, this baby is actually really.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Cute, and then the pain that getting there doesn't seem
so intense. Then before you know it, it's like we're
doing it again. I don't actually plan out anything that
I write. I just listen to a lot of music
that I really like, and then I start improvising, and
I might start with between eight and twelve short compositions,
(22:20):
and then I'll go, okay, so here's a bunch of stuff.
Now let me pause and go back and look at
what I was number one, two, three, and start to
write a little more and I'll find that number one,
number three, number six, number eight are starting to expand.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
And now rather.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Than just being like a thirty forty second idea, now
it's oh, but this is like is developing into something.
And I find that certain of the pieces tend to
just evolve, and some of them, I'm just hitting a
dead end, going no, it was an interesting idea, but
it doesn't want to be more than thirty seconds, you know,
it's just a short idea, and others just take on
(22:57):
a life. And then I start focusing on those, and
I see, can I put these three, four five pieces
together and make a cohesive element?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And I think I have.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
All my concerto my concertos follow the same thing. And
I realized I can't get away from it. And it's
all because of Shastakovich's first You know, the first and
the fourth movement kind of relate to each other. There's
a stylistic sense of what they are and how they
develop and move, and the second and the third go
this way and this way. You know, the second movement
(23:33):
is like insane, and the third movement is like so
soulful that it's one of the most soulful things I've
ever heard in my life. And yet the second movement
almost feels like it could be like Carl stalling, like
crazy cartoon music.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And so.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I'm kind of OCD and I, you know, get pulled
into symmetry. And so the symmetry of one and four
speaking to each other, two and three going different directions
makes perfect sense to me. So as often as I
try to get away from that, it keeps coming back
because there's a symmetry. That's how I put it together.
It's really just dive in and feel my way through it,
(24:11):
don't like think my way through it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
At least for me. That's just how I function.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
That's how I work with every film score, you know,
one hundred and ten films.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I don't block it all out.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I find my major themes and I'll pick maybe three
or four scenes in the film, and of those scenes,
I know I'm going to have my major thematic material.
It starts with a heavy push and a desperation of
like I don't know if I'm going to get it,
and I feel like I'm pushing a boulder uphill or
train really and then at a certain point I've got
(24:46):
some momentum going, and now it's kind of coasting along.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I'm still pushing that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's a lot easier pushing because now it's starting to
and then if I'm lucky, it's.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Going to start downhill. And now I'm holding on.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
That's the parts that I long for because I don't
know what's gonna Suddenly something happens, so I go, I
don't know what that is, but I'm not going to
question it. It's happening for a reason. I'm just gonna
let it go. And that's the fun part. It's like,
now I'm following the piece of music rather than making
it fit in an exact framework that I had pre intended.
(25:22):
But I do try to think of how will the
musician play this? Or is it even playable? And sometimes
I have to go to the musicians and go, it
is this thing i'm thinking of even playable? And they'll
say either yes or no. But if you make a
slight alteration here, you know, certainly when I'm doing concertos,
you know I'm working with the soloists in that regard.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
You know, it's like this, They'll.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Be like, well, this particular fingering is not quite possible.
But if I finger it like this and this, And
at first I thought oh, that's horrible.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I'm not doing my job.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And then my violinist said, let me show you Brahm's
Violin Concerto with what his notes all over the place,
and that you know, I love the fact of what
I am. Would go back and go X X, you know,
like that X stuff out and some of those problems
just ignore. I know you don't like it, but it's in.
And she said, trust me, they work with their musicians,
(26:15):
even Shostakovich.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yes, so I said, okay, If.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Proms and Shustakovich are working with their players to give them,
you know, corrections and ideas, then I don't have to
feel bad about it. But you know, sometimes I just
have to get input, you know, especially if I'm writing
piano parts. You know they're occasionally I'll right because you
look for these two bars, I need three hands.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Oh yeah, right, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And again, I'm just trying to challenge myself.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It's just, you know, it's like.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
You keep yourself moving or you become you die artistically,
become a relic. And I know that I'm at that
point where I could rest on my laurels and you know,
the films that people like and I don't.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Have to do anything more, but I'm not ready to
do that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And so you know, I'm loving the fact that I'm
at this weird place in my life where I can
go from playing the cello concerto with Gautier Capi soong,
fly back to the US, and within two weeks beyond
stage at Coachella with electric guitar on me.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
And I go this is insane.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
I don't know if anybody's got the pleasure of, like
literally going from Vienna concert stage of the world premiere
of a cello concerto to the rock and roll stage
well barely ten days later.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That kind of extreme juxtaposition is what I love.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And so I'm not the most famous composer, I'm far
from the most famous rock and roll artist. I'm far
from the most famous film composer. But I get to
do all these things simultaneously in a way that I
don't know if anybody else has quite had the same experience.
And so I'm just considering myself blessed to be having
this opportunity for this moment in my life.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
the Library of Congress for doing what it does, all
the people who work there. If you've ever been to Washington,
DC and you visited the Library of Congress, you know
what a remarkable building it is. But what's inside, well,
you'll see researchers there, students there, people of all kinds
(28:31):
trying to find or source some aspect of American history
or American life. Visit the nation's capital. So much of
our history is locked there. A special thanks to Danny
Elfman too for sharing this story, because it's such a
remarkable story.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
This last chapter that.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
He wants to create this new kind of music that
bridges great scores. And he toured with a musical tour
with Tim Burton's music and loved it. But he thought, well,
this isn't really class music. Please don't say it is.
But how can I bridge the gap between classical compositions
and these scores. And of course he does it, and
(29:09):
manages to do it in a very unique style. He
plays and then he writes, and that reminds us of
Duke Ellington. We told a beautiful story about Duke on
this show with the great Terry Teachout, and that's what
Duke Ellington did. He'd let his band play and then
he'd write, and then he'd tell him to try something else,
and he'd piece it together. And it was a unique
way to be a composer. And it was the Ellington
(29:32):
way before it was the Elfman way. And at the end,
look at his work, and his body of work Beetlejuice, Batman,
Men in Black, Goodwill, Hunting, the Simpsons, so many more,
plus being a rock guitarist for a big band, plus
playing in string quartets. A unique life, a brilliant life. Yes,
(29:52):
he said, I'm not the most famous composer. I'm not
a rock and roll guitar legend. I am not the
most famous classical composer. But he may just be Danny Elfman,
the only guy who can lay claim to being great
at all three and doing all three simultaneously. The story
of Danny Elfman here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Danny Elfman came
to prominence as the lead vocalist and songwriter for the
new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early nineteen eighties
a scene in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School.
Since scoring his first studio album in nineteen eighty five,
Elfman has composed over one hundred feature film scores like Batman, Beetlejuice,
(00:34):
Men in Black, and Goodwill Hunting, to name a few,
as well as compositions for TV shows like The Simpsons
and other work as well. You had to share his
story is the man himself, Danny Elfman, Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Music came to me very late in life. I didn't
grow up with music around me. By the time I
was in middle school, I was pretty certain I want
to do pursue a career in nuclear biology, although I'm
sure I wouldn't have lasted long in that, but it
just seemed like a cool thing back then. And really
the luck part was that my parents moved from one
(01:13):
neighborhood to another in Los Angeles between middle school and
high school, and so I started high school with no friends.
I had to make new friends from scratch, and I
happened to fall in with a kind of an rdy group,
and I realized that I'm like the only one in
this group that doesn't play an instrument. I was like
(01:34):
the non musical member. But in that group of friends
was a trumpet player named Michael Byron, and he turned
me on to Stravinsky, and suddenly it was like a
(02:12):
whole new world for me. And Stravinsky led to prokofy Off.
(02:45):
Prokofyoff led to Shostakovich led the bar talk led to
you know, and then before I knew it, I was
really I know when I when I first time I heard.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Prokofy Off, I felt like, this.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Is just music from my blood, and you know, I
have Russian roots, but I knew nothing of Russian music,
and somehow it just felt like it was just connecting
on this deep kind of cellular level. And so two
and a half years of high school I didn't quite finish,
(03:17):
but I had planned to travel around the world with
a friend, and I decided I will secretly pick up
it in instrument and try to learn it, and so
we both bought on this world travel.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
He bought an Alto Saxon. I bought a violin.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Also during that period of time, I became infatuated with
a thirties jazz artist named Jango Ryan Hart. But I
(04:04):
ended up, by another coincidence, starting off this world travel.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In Paris because my brother lived there quite.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Randomly, and I was practicing in his apartment one day
and I'd only been playing for about five months, and
the director had come in while I was practicing.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
When it came out, he goes, why don't you come
with us on the road.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And I got me It's like I can't play. He goes, yeah,
you're good enough for us, and I did, and I
did my first performing and wrote my actually first couple
of pieces. One year before that moment, I had never
even picked up an instrument. And by the time I
came back, my brother had started a musical theatrical troupe
modeled after the group that I toured with in France,
(04:46):
which was called Laground Magic Circus, and he started a
group called the Mystic Knights of the Ouengle Buenco. And
even though I arrived very ill with hepatitis and malaria
and a number of other things, he does it's okay.
You could take a couple of days off. Then I'll
bring you to rehearsals and you can start. You'll be
our musical director. That's how I started in music is
(05:08):
in the six seven years I spent with the theater group,
we actually started getting better and better musically, went from
eight to twelve pieces, and everybody had to play three instruments,
so we could be a string ensemble, a brass ensemble,
or a percussion ensemble. And it was a very weird group.
But in the string and brass stuff I did a
lot of. I was still infatuated with thirties jazz and
(05:31):
I wanted to do arrangements of early Duke Ellington work
from about nineteen thirty two to thirty three, and I
figured the only way I'm going to get it right
is to learn how to write it down. So transcribing
Duke Ellington was my first time writing on paper. And
(05:52):
at the end of those seven years, I wrote my
first very ambitious piece. It was about a six to
seven minute twelve written for you know all everybody in
the group, and I called it the Piano Concerto Number
one and a half. But it was kind of inspired
(06:12):
by bits of prokofi Off and bits of Stravinsky and uh,
and it was my first time writing in fact, you know,
like a small chamber work. And after that I disbanded
completely and started a rock fand.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That thing I walked down the street. I did class
up the studying your body.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So that.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And then year five years after that, Tim Burton brings
me into Phebe's Big Adventure. So I almost said no,
(07:30):
but I remembered writing that one piece, the last piece
I wrote for the Mystic Nights, and I said, well,
if I can write for twelve pieces, I can write
for an orchestra. It's not that different, because you know,
I finally thought about it, and I said, you know,
it's a sixty five piece orchestra now, but I'm not
writing sixty five individual parts. You got your first violin,
(07:52):
second violins, and I said it and I just decided
I'm just gonna take a chance and do it. But
I knew nothing about that. I never dreamed of becoming
a film composer.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I was just a.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Lot of random accidents in my life. And I just
had so much fun writing Peop's Big Adventure that I
said I'm going to keep.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
And it's also the first time I ever.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Stood in front of an orchestra, and the sound was
so amazing, it was pretty addictive.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I think right at that moment, I was like, I
want to do this.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So for ten years I was both in a rock band,
writing and producing.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And performing and touring.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
But I tried to get in two films every year
around my band schedule so I could learn. So in
those first ten years, I did a number of albums
and tours, but I also.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Tried to get twenty film scores in there more or less.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And you've been listening to Danny Elfman tell one heck
of a story about his life, and if one word
comes to mind for me, it's serendipity. He just wanted
to learn an instrument to tour the world, and he
picked up the violin, and while practicing in Paris and
his brother's apartment, some guy, random guy, walks in and says, hey,
come join the band.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
He goes, I've been playing long.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
You're good enough, the man said, and he was good enough,
and he kept on going, one band, another band, all
of it, by the way, sparked by one composer Stravinsky,
and then the call from Tim Burton himself the legend
and as he put it, I never dreamed of being
a film composer. When we come back more of this
(09:50):
remarkable story, the story of Danny Elfman here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(10:11):
with Danny Elfman's story, beginning with his theme from the
nineteen eighty nine Batman movie starring Michael Keaton.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
So for ten years I was both in a rock band,
writing and producing and performing and touring. But I tried
to get in two films every year around my band
schedule so I could learn. So in those first ten years,
I did a number of albums and tours, but I
also tried to get twenty film scores in there more
or less. You know, this was nineteen eighty five. There
(10:53):
wasn't midy notation or anything like that yet. So I
would kind of the best I could to play parts
into a tape recorder to play for the director because
I wasn't a pianist, and also Tim you know, and
other directors. They want to hear. They were getting to
the point. In the old days Bernard Herman would.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Just play on piano for Albret Hitchcock.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Here's your themes, here's ou cos. But they wanted to
hear more of what's going to sound like. So I
started getting cheap sample synthesizers to kind of mock up
strings and brass, and I found myself recording all the
parts and getting the queue approved. Eventually, after a couple
of scores, I realized that I'm mocking up the entire
queue before the director signs off on it, and then
(11:38):
when he finally does, I'm going back to square one
and writing all of it down.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
And it's true.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I was working sixteen hours a day, like seven days
a week. It was crazy. So that was my first
ten years was very intensive training. And also it was
still in the band during those ten years, so it
was it was just insane. But slowly I built up
my confidence. I mean I just just you You'd look
(12:05):
at me and.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I was covered with eraser dust, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It was just my hands were cramping, and I had
tons of pencils and I had my custom music paper
made and my knees. I'd look at a certain point,
I was just going through erasers after erasers, and so
I was very happy when the MIDI notation happened, and
then I would just put a lot of work into
creating the full fleshed out version. And then being able
(12:30):
to get the MIDI to print out that I could
then take it the next step there, and my sixteen
hour days then went down the nice, easy eleven twelve
hour days. Stumbling into the Simpsons theme was much just
(13:27):
like winning a lottery or something in the sense that.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
In engle Boinco. We did a show one night and
got this terrible review in the LA Reader by a
critic named Matt Groening, and it was such a nasty
review that I took exception because normally I loved our
bad reviews and like the worse the better.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
That was energy.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Bad reviews and criticism and negative energy always provided a
huge fuel source. That's what that was my atomic fuel
that's kept me going, that's what motivated me. But in
this one case, I really took exception because he admitted
in the review that he only saw the on cars,
he missed the show. And I wrote this letter back saying,
(14:13):
if you're gonna say what you're gonna say, that's fine,
but you gotta sit through the show if you're going
to write the review. So they printed the rebuttal. As
the years go by, I started seeing this comic in
the LA Weekly called life in Hell, and I said,
Matt Groaning, He said, who did that review? But I
(14:35):
like this comic and I hated the fact that I
really liked what he was doing, which means he had talent,
because when you really don't like somebody, you don't like
them to be talented. You like them to be talentless hacks.
And clearly he had talent. So now it's many years
later and I get a call.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
There's this show.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It's called The Simpsons. It's an animated show, and Matt
Groaning is the it's his, he created it.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
He wants to meet you. Ah, this will be interesting.
I go in and you.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Know, we talk and they play a pencil sketch and
a version of the thing. I really liked them and
I liked what they did, and I said, no one's
ever going to see this, so never make it past
you know, a couple episodes. But it looks like fun.
And I said, if you want something really retro, I'm
the guy for it. If you want something contemporary and modern,
I'm really the wrong one. Because I saw it and
(15:23):
it just really brought me back to Hannah Barbera The Flintstones.
In fact, the opening kind of has a flintstone energy
to it, you know, going to work and the car
driving and the whole thing. And I grew up on
the flintstones, so I said, I think it should be
like in that mode that, you know, should feel like
that kind of weird sixties TV thing.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And Matt was like, yeah, cool.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And as I'm leaving and we shake hands, he goes,
by the way, you probably don't remember, but I say
I remember, and he goes, we're cool.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Now, Yeah, we're cool.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I wrote it in the car on the way home. Literally,
I wrote the whole thing in the car on the
way home, and I got it called back the next
day saying we love it. And then a few weeks
later I was in with the orchestra recording it. You know,
I just have to keep challenging myself. After ten years
(16:23):
now I'm just a film composer, and it was starting
to get frustrating because the thing is, I love writing
for film, but it's also very you can't write what
you want to write. You have to write what serves
the film. And so many times I'd be writing a
queue for film and it ends go, oh my god,
(16:44):
that was just like a minute and a half or
two and a half minutes, and I could have taken
that to eight minutes long and really enjoyed it. And
so there was a point where we started touring live concerts.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Of my film music.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It was called Me from the Films of Tim Burton,
and I would look at the audience listening to it,
and I remember we were at Lincoln Center in New York,
and somebody came from the other side, you know, from
the oppera sit He says, God killed to get that
audience in our concerts, because it was a very enthusiastic audience.
(17:21):
And that's where I started thinking, why not try to
write music that bridges between what I do for film
and what I love about classical and just give myself
this huge challenge. And so the first piece was for
American Composer's Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and that was great,
(17:42):
and I did a few more, and then it wasn't
until eight years ago that I decided, I'm writing a
violin concerto my first, and I'm going to do a
piece every year, which means I'm going to start saying
no to paid work. But it felt right because I
who was going to take my income down significantly but
(18:04):
yet I did so well as a film composer, it
felt like I should be giving it back. Also on
the other side and keeping myself sharp. Writing the classical
concert music is so much harder, infinitely harder.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
For me than writing a film score.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And you've been listening to Danny Elfman tell the story
of his life, and my goodness, the story of how
he got to compose the score for The Simpsons. We
all can learn a lot from it. It turns out
he gets the call from the very man who gave
his band a terrible review in an LA newspaper, and worse,
he hadn't even really seen the full show. And of
(18:45):
course we learned from Danny that he got motivated by
that kind of thing. He actually liked the negative review
got him going. And then he gets the call from
the same person who had a lot of talent and
he was developing little show called The Simpsons. And when
he meets him, rather than hold a grudge, he basically
(19:05):
lays down the law. If you want retro, i'm your man.
If you want modern, I'm not. And we are all
blessed with that remarkable score and Danny burying the hatchet
on this guy who ripped him in public. When we
come back, more of the story of Danny Elfman here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(19:40):
stories and with Danny Elfman's story as told by Danny
Elfman himself, beginning in this segment with his score from
Tim Burton's nineteen ninety three classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I used to argue with this conductor who worked with
me and Elton Bridge, film music is the classical music
of today, and I go, no, it's not. People come
to a film music concert to hear music from films
they love. You can't take the films away from it
and still have an audience really show up to hear
that music. Not only that, but frequently we really have
(20:46):
to simplify and I'm not allowed to get in. Occasionally
there are scores that can get very dense and elaborate,
but it's not often. You know, I'll write a certain
thing and I'm really excited about it in.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
The director goes, oh God, what's that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I go, sorry, let me just take the counter take
all the dissonance out, take the counterpoint out.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
How about now? Oh it's much better, thank you.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So it was just the ability to get away from
that and really push myself further. It keeps me going because,
like and when I finished that violin concerto, I felt
like it almost killed me literally, and I said I'll
never do it again. Until the next year when I
was offered another piece, I said sure, and I realized, Okay,
(21:34):
you know, it's just like childbirth. You know, my mother,
I think after my brother was born, saying no more children,
But then you know, you have a cute baby a
year later, said well, maybe more kind of similar. What
you do is you forget the painful part and you
remember the fact that I really like how this thing
turned out.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
This you know, this baby is actually really.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Cute, and then the pain that getting there doesn't seem
so intense. Then before you know it, it's like we're
doing it again. I don't actually plan out anything that
I write. I just listen to a lot of music
that I really like, and then I start improvising, and
I might start with between eight and twelve short compositions,
(22:20):
and then I'll go, okay, so here's a bunch of stuff.
Now let me pause and go back and look at
what I was number one, two, three, and start to
write a little more and I'll find that number one,
number three, number six, number eight are starting to expand.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
And now rather.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Than just being like a thirty forty second idea, now
it's oh, but this is like is developing into something.
And I find that certain of the pieces tend to
just evolve, and some of them, I'm just hitting a
dead end, going no, it was an interesting idea, but
it doesn't want to be more than thirty seconds, you know,
it's just a short idea, and others just take on
(22:57):
a life. And then I start focusing on those, and
I see, can I put these three, four five pieces
together and make a cohesive element?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And I think I have.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
All my concerto my concertos follow the same thing. And
I realized I can't get away from it. And it's
all because of Shastakovich's first You know, the first and
the fourth movement kind of relate to each other. There's
a stylistic sense of what they are and how they
develop and move, and the second and the third go
this way and this way. You know, the second movement
(23:33):
is like insane, and the third movement is like so
soulful that it's one of the most soulful things I've
ever heard in my life. And yet the second movement
almost feels like it could be like Carl stalling, like
crazy cartoon music.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And so.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I'm kind of OCD and I, you know, get pulled
into symmetry. And so the symmetry of one and four
speaking to each other, two and three going different directions
makes perfect sense to me. So as often as I
try to get away from that, it keeps coming back
because there's a symmetry. That's how I put it together.
It's really just dive in and feel my way through it,
(24:11):
don't like think my way through it.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
At least for me. That's just how I function.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
That's how I work with every film score, you know,
one hundred and ten films.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I don't block it all out.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I find my major themes and I'll pick maybe three
or four scenes in the film, and of those scenes,
I know I'm going to have my major thematic material.
It starts with a heavy push and a desperation of
like I don't know if I'm going to get it,
and I feel like I'm pushing a boulder uphill or
train really and then at a certain point I've got
(24:46):
some momentum going, and now it's kind of coasting along.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I'm still pushing that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's a lot easier pushing because now it's starting to
and then if I'm lucky, it's.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Going to start downhill. And now I'm holding on.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
That's the parts that I long for because I don't
know what's gonna Suddenly something happens, so I go, I
don't know what that is, but I'm not going to
question it. It's happening for a reason. I'm just gonna
let it go. And that's the fun part. It's like,
now I'm following the piece of music rather than making
it fit in an exact framework that I had pre intended.
(25:22):
But I do try to think of how will the
musician play this? Or is it even playable? And sometimes
I have to go to the musicians and go, it
is this thing i'm thinking of even playable? And they'll
say either yes or no. But if you make a
slight alteration here, you know, certainly when I'm doing concertos,
you know I'm working with the soloists in that regard.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
You know, it's like this, They'll.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Be like, well, this particular fingering is not quite possible.
But if I finger it like this and this, And
at first I thought oh, that's horrible.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I'm not doing my job.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And then my violinist said, let me show you Brahm's
Violin Concerto with what his notes all over the place,
and that you know, I love the fact of what
I am. Would go back and go X X, you know,
like that X stuff out and some of those problems
just ignore. I know you don't like it, but it's in.
And she said, trust me, they work with their musicians,
(26:15):
even Shostakovich.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yes, so I said, okay, If.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Proms and Shustakovich are working with their players to give them,
you know, corrections and ideas, then I don't have to
feel bad about it. But you know, sometimes I just
have to get input, you know, especially if I'm writing
piano parts. You know they're occasionally I'll right because you
look for these two bars, I need three hands.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Oh yeah, right, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And again, I'm just trying to challenge myself.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It's just, you know, it's like.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
You keep yourself moving or you become you die artistically,
become a relic. And I know that I'm at that
point where I could rest on my laurels and you know,
the films that people like and I don't.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Have to do anything more, but I'm not ready to
do that.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
And so you know, I'm loving the fact that I'm
at this weird place in my life where I can
go from playing the cello concerto with Gautier Capi soong,
fly back to the US, and within two weeks beyond
stage at Coachella with electric guitar on me.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
And I go this is insane.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
I don't know if anybody's got the pleasure of, like
literally going from Vienna concert stage of the world premiere
of a cello concerto to the rock and roll stage
well barely ten days later.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That kind of extreme juxtaposition is what I love.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And so I'm not the most famous composer, I'm far
from the most famous rock and roll artist. I'm far
from the most famous film composer. But I get to
do all these things simultaneously in a way that I
don't know if anybody else has quite had the same experience.
And so I'm just considering myself blessed to be having
this opportunity for this moment in my life.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
the Library of Congress for doing what it does, all
the people who work there. If you've ever been to Washington,
DC and you visited the Library of Congress, you know
what a remarkable building it is. But what's inside, well,
you'll see researchers there, students there, people of all kinds
(28:31):
trying to find or source some aspect of American history
or American life. Visit the nation's capital. So much of
our history is locked there. A special thanks to Danny
Elfman too for sharing this story, because it's such a
remarkable story.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
This last chapter that.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
He wants to create this new kind of music that
bridges great scores. And he toured with a musical tour
with Tim Burton's music and loved it. But he thought, well,
this isn't really class music. Please don't say it is.
But how can I bridge the gap between classical compositions
and these scores. And of course he does it, and
(29:09):
manages to do it in a very unique style. He
plays and then he writes, and that reminds us of
Duke Ellington. We told a beautiful story about Duke on
this show with the great Terry Teachout, and that's what
Duke Ellington did. He'd let his band play and then
he'd write, and then he'd tell him to try something else,
and he'd piece it together. And it was a unique
way to be a composer. And it was the Ellington
(29:32):
way before it was the Elfman way. And at the end,
look at his work, and his body of work Beetlejuice, Batman,
Men in Black, Goodwill, Hunting, the Simpsons, so many more,
plus being a rock guitarist for a big band, plus
playing in string quartets. A unique life, a brilliant life. Yes,
(29:52):
he said, I'm not the most famous composer. I'm not
a rock and roll guitar legend. I am not the
most famous classical composer. But he may just be Danny Elfman,
the only guy who can lay claim to being great
at all three and doing all three simultaneously. The story
of Danny Elfman here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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