An Evening with Danny Elfman

The only interaction I had previously with this anomaly of a musician was when I was volunteering at Sundance 2014. We bumped into each other, said hey, and that was it. Flash forward seven years, and I find myself going to a ticketed event at the Grammys Museum celebrating Danny Elfman’s work, with the primary focus being his latest album, Big Mess. I was so close to the conversation I could take three steps and touch him, as well as be in a position to ask him a question which I’ll get into later on…

With Rolling Stone contributor David Wild moderating this extended Q&A, almost none of this 75-minute sit-down served as dead air, and I’ll now transcribe some of my favorite bits…

So we start things off with Henry-fucking-Rollins sending in a question. “On your new album Big Mess, which blows my mind, how much of it was conceptualized at the beginning and how much of it was derived from just getting to work? Also, was the album recorded in the order of the tracks on the record? Excellent piece of work.”

“Getting a comment from Henry, I already won the game.” was how Danny began to share (as a two-part answer to another question) that the album wouldn’t have been what it is if his 2019 Coachella performance hadn’t been canceled. As he initially was going to premiere ‘Sorry’ at the festival as a standalone song, with none of the others being a thought until the lockdowns began. The string-infused song, which he could best describe as “Chamber-punk” would go on to serve “as a template for the rest of the album,” which wasn’t quite recorded in order but rather in polar opposite style pairs.

For anyone reading who’s been sold on this album, there’s a $175 box vinyl set which is more of a theme park than an album as far as a mutually strong presentation of music and visuals goes. Danny reveals through his obsession of hands (predating to seeing his favorite film, The Beast with Five Fingers) that the centerpiece of the box set will be a 3D printed/scanned hand of Danny Elfman designed by Sarah Sitkin. Reading the description of what the box set will include, it’s safe to assume that the “unique usb” will indeed be the hand in question.

The question I got to ask was one I sorta already knew the answer to but wanted that extra nugget of an update. Will there be a Big Mess tour? To that, he mostly reiterated this statement he made on social media back in June. The extra nugget of information I wanted was that Danny bounced my question off of audience member and Big Mess bass player Stu Brooks. After Stu gave a thumbs up to Danny, he looked at me and said “Stu says yes.”

My favorite of David’s questions was segwaying into what it was like to work with Prince on Batman. Danny mentioned that when he was first brought on that Michael Jackson, George Michaels, AND Prince were already attached to the film musically. When Danny asked a producer what his place on the film was, the answer he got back was to be “the captain of the ship,” which really meant that he was going to make orchestral arrangements of works that these three put together. When you combine that with knowing in his heart what this movie would sound like down to the iconic theme song he voice recorded on an airplane, Danny walked away from the project for a while, which sounded painful for him to do.

One by one the three pop icons would drop off the Tim Burton directed film, ending in a phone call from a line producer saying Danny’s back on the project after screening a Prince composed cut of the film. Take that chunk of knowledge and combine that with chipping in on The Simpsons opening acapella that he says paid for his health insurance for a quarter century, Danny Elfman definitively is one of Hollywood’s great composers. Not to mention the same guy who released an aggressive mixed media album like Big Mess. Now that shit right there is goals!

He mentioned along the way film projects that he’s currently working on include being halfway through Dr. Strange 2 and beginning work on an Adam Driver starring dinosaur film (which vaguely came off like Primal to me). Again, that’s all just some of the stuff he goes into in this extended Q&A session. If you haven’t listened to Big Mess, fix that…