Danny Elfman Had "No Propensity for Music" Yet Became One of Film's Greatest Composers

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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 1980s, as seen in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy, Back to School. Since scoring his first studio album in 1985, Elfman has composed over 100 feature film scores like Batman, Beetlejuice, Men in Black, and Good Will Hunting, to name a few, as well as compositions for TV shows like The Simpsons and other work as well.

Here to share his story is the man himself, Danny Elfman. Let's take a listen. 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 wanted to 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 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 RD group, and I realized that I'm like the only one in this group that doesn't play an instrument. I was like the non-musical member, but in that group of friends was a trumpet player named Michael Byron, and he turned me on to Stravinsky.

Music. And suddenly, it was like a whole new world for me, and Stravinsky led to Prokofiev. Prokofiev led to Shostakovich led to Bartok led to, you know, and then before I knew it, I was really, I know when I first time I heard Prokofiev, I felt like this 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, but I had planned to travel around the world with a friend, and I decided I will secretly pick up an instrument and try to learn it, and so we both brought on this world travel. He bought an alto sax, and I bought a violin. Also during that period of time, I became infatuated with a 30s jazz artist named Django Reinhardt, but I ended up by another coincidence starting off this world travel in Paris because my brother lived there quite 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. When I came out, he goes, why don't you come with us on the road?

And I got me. I was 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, which was called Le Grand Magic Circus, and he started a group called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and even though I arrived very ill with hepatitis and malaria and a number of other things, he goes, it's okay.

You can take a couple 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. In the six, seven years I spent with the theater group, we actually started getting better and better musically. Went from eight to 12 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 30s jazz, and I wanted to do arrangements of early Duke Ellington work from about 1932, 33, 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 at the end of those seven years, I wrote my first very ambitious piece.

It was about a six, seven minute, 12 written for, you know, everybody in the group, and I called it the Oingo Boingo Piano Concerto number one and a half, but it was kind of inspired by bits of Prokofiev and bits of Stravinsky, 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 band. I was hooked by lightning, walking down the street, I was hit by something last night, my sleeve. It's a dead man's party, who could ask for more? Everybody's coming, leave your body at the door, leave your body and soul at the door. Don't run away, it's part of me.

And then years, five years after that, Tim Burton brings me into Pee Wee's Big Adventure. MUSIC So I almost said no, but I remembered writing that one piece, the last piece I wrote for the Mystic Knights, and I said, well, if I can write for 12 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 65 piece orchestra now, but I'm not writing 65 individual parts. You've got your first violins, second violins, and I said, and I just decided I'm just going to take a chance and do it.

But I knew nothing about that either. I never dreamed of becoming a film composer. I was just, a lot of random accidents in my life. And I just had so much fun writing Pee Wee's Big Adventure that I said, oh, I'm going to, and it's also the first time I ever stood in front of an orchestra. And the sound was so amazing, it was pretty addictive.

I think right at that moment I was like, I want to do this. So for 10 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 10 years, I did a number of albums and tours, but I also tried to get 20 film scores in there, more or less. 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 in his brother's apartment, some guy, a random guy, walks in and says, hey, come join the band. He goes, I haven't been playing long. 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 remarkable story, the story of Danny Elfman here on Our American Stories. CBS Thursday, new episodes premiere tonight at 8-7 Central and streaming on Paramount+. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and In Your Ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines.

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How do you find a date inside the Bermuda Triangle? We can't help you, but we will find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast on iHeartRadio. And we continue with our American stories and with Danny Elfman's story, beginning with his theme starring Michael Keaton. So for 10 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 10 years, I did a number of albums and tours, but I also tried to get 20 film scores in there, more or less.

You know, this was 1985. There wasn't MIDI notation or anything like that yet. So I would kind of attempt 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 Herrmann would just play on piano for Alfred Hitchcock.

Here's your themes, here's how it goes, but they wanted to hear more of what it's gonna 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 a cue approved. And eventually after a couple of scores, I realized that I'm mocking up the entire cue before the director signs off on it.

And then when he finally does, I'm going back to square one and writing all of it down. And it's true, I was working 16 hours a day, it's like seven days a week, it was crazy. So that was my first 10 years was very intensive training. And also I was still in the band during those 10 years. So it was just insane, but slowly I built up my confidence.

I mean, I just used to, you'd look at me and I was covered with eraser dust. You know, 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 to get the MIDI to print out that I could then take it the next step there. And my 16 hour days then went down to nice, easy 11, 12 hour days.

project.com. Stumbling into the Simpsons theme was much just like winning a lottery or something in the sense that, all right, in Oingo Boingo, 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. That was energy. Bad reviews and criticism and negative energy always provided a huge fuel source. That was my atomic fuel. That's what 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 encores. He missed the show. And I wrote this letter back saying, if you're going to say what you're going to say, that's fine. But you've got to sit through the show if you're going to write the review. So they printed the rebuttal.

As the years go by, I start seeing this comic in the LA Weekly called Life in Hell. And I say, Matt Groening, he's that who did that review. But I 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. There's this show. It's called The Simpsons. It's an animated show. And Matt Groening is the, it's his, he created it.

He wants to meet you. Ah, this will be interesting. So I go in and, you know, we talk and they play a pencil sketch kind of 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. It just really brought me back to Hanna-Barbera, The Flintstones. In fact, the opening kind of has a Flintstone energy to it, you know, going to work and 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 60s TV thing. And Matt was like, yeah, cool. And as I'm leaving, and we shake hands, he goes, by the way, you probably don't remember. I said, yeah, I remember. And he goes, we're cool now?

He goes, yeah, we're cool. And I rode it in the car on the way home, literally. I rode the whole thing in the car on the way home.

And I got a call back the next day saying, we love it. And then a few weeks later, I was in the orchestra recording it. I just have to keep challenging myself. For 10 years 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 cue for film. And it ends. I go, Oh, my God, 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 of my film music. It was called Music from the Films of Tim Burton.

And I would look at the audience listening to it. And I remember we were at the Lincoln Center in New York. And somebody came from the other side, the upper side, he says, God killed to get that audience in our concerts, because it was very enthusiastic audience. 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 Composers Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. And that was great.

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 knew it was going to take my income down significantly, but 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 for me than writing a film score. 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 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 this same person who had a lot of talent, and he was developing a little show called The Simpsons. And when he meets him, rather than hold a grudge, he basically 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. And we come back, more of the story of Danny Elfman, here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories, and with Danny Elfman's story, as told by Danny Elfman himself. Starting in this segment with his score from Tim Burton's 1993 classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I used to argue with this conductor who worked with me and Elfman Brie, he says, 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 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.

And the director goes, Oh, God, what's that? I go, sorry, let me just take the counter. Take all the dissonance out, take the counterpoint out.

How about now? Oh, it's much better. Thank you. 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, you know, so 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. Oh, maybe more kind of similar, you what you do is you forget the painful part. And you remember the fact that I really liked how this thing turned out this, you know, this baby is actually really 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 12 short compositions. And then I'll go, Okay, so here's a bunch of stuff. Now let me pause and go back and look at what are they, what was number 123, and start to write a little more.

And I'll find that number one, number three, number six, number eight are starting to expand. And now, rather than just being like a 30, 40 second idea, now it's Oh, well, 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 30 seconds, you know, it's just a short idea. And others just take on a life. And then I start focusing on those and then I see, can I put these 345 pieces together and make a cohesive element. And I think I have 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 Shostakovich'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 in the second and the third go this way, and this way, you know, the second movement 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. And so 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.

Don't like think my way through it. At least for me, that's just how I function. That's how I work with every film score, you know, 110 films.

I don't block it all out. 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 some momentum going. And now it's kind of coasting along.

I'm still pushing, but it's a lot easier pushing because now it's starting. And then if I'm lucky, it's going to start downhill. And now I'm holding on.

That's the parts that I long for. Because I don't know what's suddenly something happens like, I don't know what that is. But I'm not going to question it. It's happening for a reason.

I'm just going to 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 pre intended. But I do try to think of how will the musician play this?

And or is it even playable? And sometimes I have to go to the musicians and go, 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, certainly when I'm doing concertos, I'm working with the soloists in that regard.

It's like this. They'll 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.

I'm not doing my job. And then my violinist said, let me show you Brahms Violin Concerto with Wakayem, his notes all over the place. And that, you know, I love the fact that Wakayem would go back and go, x, x, you know, like that x stuff out. And some of those Brahms just ignore, I know you don't like it, but it's in. And she said, trust me, they work with their musicians, even Shostakovich. Yes. So I said, okay, if Brahms and Shostakovich 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 write, you know, look for these two bars, I need three hands. Oh, yeah. All right.

Yeah, I can see that. And again, I'm just trying to challenge myself. It's just, you know, it's like 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, films that people like, and I don't have to do anything more.

But I'm not ready to do that. So you know, I, 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 Capisson, fly back to the US and within two weeks be on stage at Coachella with electric guitar on me. And I go, this is insane. I don't know 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, while barely 10 days later.

That kind of extreme juxtaposition is what I love. And so I'm not the most famous composer, I'm far from the most famous rock and roll artists them 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. 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 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, this last chapter, that 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 classical 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 manages to do it in a very unique style. He plays and then he writes. And that reminds us of Duke Ellington, who 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 them 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 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, Good Will 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, 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.