Q and A with Danny Elfman
by Michael Snyder
The San Francisco Chronicle, 1994.06.12
At any given moment, there is probably someone, somewhere in
the world, who is listening to the music of Danny Elfman. It could be his theme
to the animated Batman television show, the score for Beetlejuice, Edward
Scissorhands, one of the blockbuster Batman movies, the theme to The
Simpsons or the songs from last year's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Elfman the composer is inescapable. Now the Southern California native is presiding
over a rebirth of his clever, bubbling and somewhat demented art-rock band Oingo
Boingo, although its new name has been shortened to Boingo and its personnal
has been scaled down. A new album was just released, and a summer tour has been
scheduled with a stop at Berkeley's Greek Theater July 23.
Last week, Elfman was tracked down at a studio in Los Angeles,
where he was adding guitar parts to a remix of "Insanity," the first
single off of the Boingo album.
Q: Weren't you satisfied with the version of "Insanity"
that's on the album?
A: After I record something, it's always like, "If only I
had one more crack at it..." And for this single release, I'm getting
it.
Q: But you seem so precise in your arrangements. Isn't
everything ready to go when you enter the studio?
A: Usually, but not this time. We started to record in
February of '93. There was a half an album done by March, but I got pulled into
The Nightmare Before Christmas. That kept me going until October when
it opened. The band went back in and listened to what we had done and said,
"Fine. We'll keep 'Insanity' and dump the rest." "Can't See," "Hey!" and "Pedestrian
Wolves" all came together when we went back into the studio. For example, "Pedestrian
Wolves" was a total improvisation in the studio. Then I put lyrics to it. This
was an enormous change for me. I've always been such a control freak, meticulously
preparing and rehearsing for the studio.
Q: There are some lengthy tracks on this album. "Insanity"
is more than seven minutes, "Pedestrian Wolves" is nine minutes plus
and "Change is 16 minutes long. Why did you stray so far from
traditional pop forms?
A: Don't worry. We'll edit 'em down for singles. In the
case of "Change," I had a short tune and I knew I was going to turn
it into an experiment in elasticity. The original version was 20
minutes long. It's the musical equivalent of a collage. I always
wanted to do a piece which would alter as it went along, with one
melody leading into the next.
Q: After a decade and a half as Oingo Boingo, why did you
change the name of the band?
A: So many people have been asking us why we changed the
name, but it doesn't mean shit. They can call us Oingo Boingo. They
can put it on the marquee. I'm even sorry I did it. It was kind of an
afterthought. We've been calling ourselves Boingo for the past nine
years. The band was an outgrowth of the theatrical group the Mystic
Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Then, when we became a rock band, we cut
it down to Oingo Boingo. Now, we're down to Boingo. We used to joke
that we had a plan, that we were working down to "Ngo." Eventually,
we'd get down to just "O," the indivisible number, the expression of
negation. Since we're touring without the horn section, some people
are saying that the horn section was Oingo, and they took the name
with them when they left. That's not true.
Q: Those horn players have been with you for years. Why are
they gone?
A: They'll probably be back at some time. There are just no
horn parts on the new album. From the "Dead Man's Party" album on,
I've had a philosophy. If there's a place for horns or keyboards,
they'll be there. If not, they won't. Before then, I tried to force
everybody into the arrangements. I would have had to force horn parts
on this one.
Q: How will you handle their absence when you perform in
concert?
A: When we tour, we're concentrating on the new stuff.
We'll take keyboards and a percussionist for some dates, but we're
not going to be a 12-piece. We're not going to play very much old
material, so I made sure that we were going to play smaller venues
and that's fine with me.
Q: With all of your success in the movie field, why did you
come back to the band?
A: I was motivated by the same thing that drives me in
everything I do: boredom. It was the great motivating factor in '89,
when I let the band drift away and I concentrated on sound tracks.
Lately, I found myself drifting away from film composing. I wanted to
get it down to two movies a year....I'm having much more fun with the
band, writing and recording. It's like a pendulum.
Q: You have at least two screenplays of your own in developmentthe
live-action Little Demons musical at Disney and Julian, a ghost
story that you're slated to direct. How do you fit everything in?
A: I get to my own projects during little windows of time.
I had a total of three weeks in '93 for my own projects. I had a week and a
half between the Boingo album and Black Beauty. This summer, I'm taking
time between tours to do one more film score before the end of the year. I have
three careers. It's like I have three hungry children. Whoever screams the loudest
gets the attention.