The “Batman” composer’s new album testifies to something he has been itching to accomplish since he made his triumphant switch to film scores
include the commercial releases of his film scores, Danny Elfman has issued more than 100 albums. When you narrow it down to solo studio LPs in a pop format, the number is three. The third of which, released this month, is a remix version of the second.
Mr Elfman first found recording success as the leader of a ska/new-wave group, Oingo Bongo, best remembered for their gold-certified album of 1985, “Dead Man’s Party”. By that point Mr Elfman had been approached by two fans of the band, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens, to provide a score for “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”, in which Mr Burton was to direct Mr Reubens. Mr Elfman was initially hesitant because of his lack of formal orchestral training, but eventually agreed.
True, such musicians had been scoring films outside Hollywood since at least the late 1960s, almost entirely within European genre or arthouse films, and usually in a pop-music style. “I decided from the start that I wanted to embrace film scoring from a classical approach, not a pop or rock approach,” Mr Elfman says. “I was a big fan of films and film scores in my youth. My ‘gods’ were Bernhard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone and many others.
Perhaps the single best-known and loved piece Mr Elfman has ever produced is the theme for “The Simpsons”. It combined all the playfulness of his pre-film career with the orchestral chops he then pushed himself to acquire. The tune alludes to music from earlier classic cartoons with a spirit of mischief and anarchy; it is music in which the usual rules are suspended, and which makes sense only in the visual world in which it appears.
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