Danny Elfman is giving us a video tour of his studio – avast loft filled with marimbas, vibraphones and assorted drums, watched over by 18th and 19th-century wax medical models and old dolls/movie figurines housed inside glass domes.
“These toys are very dangerous, so they have their special protective domes that keep them from getting out and creating havoc!” he confides with a glint in his eye, showing us close-ups with his phone.
It’s a very Danny Elfman display. The 69-year-old musician and composer is renowned for his work with director and fellow oddball Tim Burton, for whom he has scored countless movies including Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas and recent Addams Family spin-off Wednesday, though his most famous work is The Simpsons’ theme.
He got his start at age 18, when he joined his brother Richard in French theatrical troupe Le Grand Magic Circus, playing the violin. Back in LA, he joined Richard’s performance group, The Mystic Knights Of The Oingo Boingo, later reforming it as the rock band Oingo Boingo. His big scoring break came when Tim Burton asked him to work on Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), kickstarting a partnership that endures today.
In June 2021, 37 years after his debut solo album, So-Lo, Danny released follow-up Big Mess. Last year’s remix record, Bigger. Messier, featured metal royalty such as Trent Reznor, Health and Ghostemane. In April 2022, shirtless and tattooed, he played a career-spanning, headline-making set at Coachella, which included a rendition of The Simpsons theme in front of an orchestra.
Warm and smiling beneath a shock of
