November 13, 2024 • 23 mins
Legendary film composer, classical composer, singer-songwriter, and recording artist Danny Elfman joins JoJo to discuss "Nightmare Before Christmas", "Beetlejuice", "Batman" and paranormal encounters!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a special episode.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I get to interview a lot of people, right, I'm
very thankful for that, but it's not every day that
you get to talk to basically Jack Skelington, Danny Elfman.
He's done so many things Batman, Beatlejuice, Oigo Boingo, and
of course Nightmare Before Christmas, not to mention he's had
a paranormal encounter. I'm so excited. Welcome to a special
(00:25):
episode of Paranormalish. Danny Elfman.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Jojo on the radio Paranormal.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And Normal Is.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I am so excited for this episode. You have no idea.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We're about to talk to the legendary and I mean
legendary Danny Elfman. He's the guy, if you don't know,
responsible for the music in some of my favorite movies ever,
pretty much every Tim Burton movie, including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhans, Batman,
and my favorite, Nightmare Before Christmas. Not only did he
do the music for that movie, he is the singing
(01:01):
voice of Jack Skellington.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
He is Jack Skellington. Danny Elfman.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Super nice to meet you, Thank you, good to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
This may have happened to you before in the past.
I don't know, But have you ever been interviewed by
a guy with the Jack Skellington tattoo?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah? No, I don't believe I have.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Let me show you here on zoom here we look
at that.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Nice well done, Danny.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I've interviewed a lot of people, but I've never talked
to Jack Skellington. Not only did he do the Jack
Skellington singing voice. Also, if you're a fan of the movie,
you'll know the characters lock Stock and Barrel, he did
the voice of Beryl, also the clown with the tear
away face music for the entire movie. When did you
know this movie was gonna be iconic? Because I'm guessing
in the early days it was so bizarre. At the time,
(01:42):
people probably thought you guys were nuts.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I mean when we finished Nightmare, you know, we were
really left on our own for everything. It was kind
of like kids being crazy on the school yard without
adult supervision. And you know, Tim had real autonomy to
do it the way he wanted to do it without interference.
And when I worked on the songs with him, which
is how we started the whole thing. You know, Tim,
(02:07):
when he came to me, he had a story, outline
and pictures. There wasn't even a script, and we said,
let's just start with a bunch of songs, and we
just started creating this thing ourselves with no idea what
we were doing. And finally, when it was finished, I
think understandably, Disney had no idea what to do with
this thing because it was so not life. And every
(02:31):
single I did a fresh junket where you know, you
do a bazillion interviews that are all like one minute
long kind of thing, and virtually every journalist I talked
with said, so, it's not for kids, right, And I went, no, wrong,
Oh no, no, we've heard it's too scary for kids.
We we hear Santa Claus gets tortured, and I go, no, no,
he's not tortured, he's inconvenienced, and he's not even that
(02:54):
upset by it. In the end, it's but there was
this perception, so if it's not for kids, who was
it for? So the idea that decades later it developed
its own life and its own trajectory, and in fact
appeals to generation after generation of kids. Nothing could make
me happier of anything I've ever worked on than feeling
(03:15):
vindicated in that sense. You know, every song I wrote
I played for my then ten year old daughter, Molly,
and she gave me the thumbs up, and I'd go,
if this little ten year old girl is not frightened
by anything, who out there is going to be scared
by this stuff. So it took a long time to
understand it. But thank god Disney really has. I think
(03:37):
most other studios a decade or so later would have
just gone, oh, that ship has sailed, but Disney had
the smarts to go, no, there's something still there. There's
still got an ember that never went out there, and
let's put energy into bringing it back. Because they're good
at seeing a longer picture of you know, a longer view,
and they did, and now they really did understand what
(03:59):
it was and who it was for. It just took
a decade or a decade now for everybody to figure
that out.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Hey, when you said that, you guys started with just
creating a bunch of songs. I assume he gave you
his vision or a sketch of Jack and Sally, or
were the songs even before that?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
No, I mean literally he would come over with these
great drawings. Of course, you know, he had beautiful drawings
of all the characters and with an outline, and I
would say, just tell me a little bit of the story,
just like pretend you're talking to your nephews and nieces
around the fire at you know, at nighttime. And he'd
go okay, and he tell me, well, Jack's going out
(04:37):
in the forest and there's these three trees and there's
these three doors, and he gets sucked down and he
gets opens up in this now everywhere, and he's describing
it to.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Me, and I go, okay, okay, that's good. That's good.
That's all I need. And I'd go off and i'd
write what's this? What's this? And three days later i'd
call him back and I say, I got a song
for you.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And you listened to it and you go, okay, great,
now what happens? Well now, And you know he had
it all in his head. But I just really wanted
to do it a little bit at a time, let
it be revealed as we went, and until we had
ten songs, and now we had this framework because neither
of us knew how to make a musical, and so
(05:14):
we were just kind of learning as we went, and
that's just how we did it. And now that there
was this framework, and there's the ten songs. And then
Caroline Thompson, the writer you know, who I happened to
be living with at the time, and was hearing all
the songs and going hello, I'm right here, and finally
(05:35):
said you should write.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
A script and she did.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
How fascinating. Okay, how did you come up with Jack's
singing voice? Because before we did this interview, I listened
to some of your Oingo Boingo tracks and then I
listened to some of the tracks from Nightmare before Christmas,
and you clearly made a choice to make Jack sound different.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It was not even a conscious choice. It was an
unconscious choice in the sense that, to me, this is
how this character sounds. I felt like he should have
a bit of menace to his voice, but when he
gets excited, he gets very excited.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I kind of in the songs, I kind.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Of portrayed Jack as being very hyper up and down,
you know, and sometimes all within the same song. You know,
there's a song called Poor Jack where he lands in
the graveyard and he starts out was really my biggest
challenge in the show. It's like, he has to start
out totally depressed and he's what have I what, And
(06:32):
by the end, he's going to work himself into a
frenzy with nothing but his own thoughts. Nothing happens to
like change his mind. It's all his own mental workings
that he goes from the bottom to like ready to go.
So that's what I loved about the character was his
ability to just go to extremes, and the voice just
(06:54):
seemed appropriate. So essentially, Tim and I went into the
studio and we recorded all ten song songs. We did
demos and Tim was like the producer and I was
in the booth, with the exception, of course, of Sally's song,
which I had to bring you in a female voice
the same because that was the one thing I couldn't do.
And you know, I did all the little voices and
the big voices. I just did everything until we had
(07:16):
these demos. And afterwards I was going so Tim, you know,
in terms of who's gonna sing Jack, and he says.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, you'll do it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
You got it, thank God, because I was at the
point by that time when I had sung them all,
you know, I wasn't gonna let anybody else touch those songs.
You know, I felt like it was me and I
let me put it this way. If they had hired
other singers, terrible accidents would have happened, you know, like
one singer would be walking down the street and a
piano falls up out of a third story window, and
(07:50):
what a coincidence.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Meanwhile, let go, oh, what a terrible coincidence. But fortunately
that didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, I couldn't imagine anybody else doing Jack's singing voice.
It's just, you know, it just wouldn't be wouldn't be
right in my opinion. Hey, I here's something I got
to know. How often do you get to Disneyland around
the holidays, you know, and ride Haunted Mansion and hear
your music on the ride.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
That's got to be such a rush.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Well, I mean, I've been.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
There a few times, and I don't know how else
to explain it other than you know, when the movie
came out, it was so misunderstood and people didn't know
what it was, and Disney didn't know what it was,
and it didn't do that well did okay? But it
took a decade, almost a decade and a half, to
like come back and have this resurgence. And then Disney
really did understand that because Disney is great at having
a long view, and so they saw, you know what,
(08:40):
we didn't know what it was then, but we definitely
know what it is now, and that they the fact
that they were exploding it into all these different things
made me so happy because that's what I'd hope more
than anything. You know, I put so much work into Nightmare,
more than any film I'd ever done. You know, Normally
I'm only three months on a film, twelve weeks, you know,
eight ten, twelve weeks. Nightmare I was on for two
(09:01):
and a half years. Jesus, and I put so much
of myself in the Jack songs that I felt this
personal connection. And if anything I ever worked on I
was hoping would have a second life, it was that,
and it did. And Disney did a brilliant job in
just reviving this character and turning it into what it
(09:22):
is today. And I'm just so grateful to everybody who
was involved with kind of helping to bring Nightmare.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back to life.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well it's definitely back to life, for sure. And I
could talk forever on Nightmare, but there's so many other things.
Let me just touch on a few of them here.
I think twenty different Tim Burton projects, Batman which we'll
get to. Edward Scissarhan's Mars Attacks, Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I believe that was your.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
First one with Tim.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice be Oh my god, same similar questions
about Beetlejuice. I assume people in the beginning once again
thought you guys had lost your mind. Now we all
get it, it's Beetlejuice, But back in the day it
was nuts.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Same exact thing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
When Beetlejuice was coming out, they've reviewed it. It did catastrophically.
You know, a lot of Tim's movies preview really poorly,
only because people didn't know what is this thing?
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And so I remember there was like a preview and
they said, no, I forget it, this movie's dead, and
it wasn't. And again it was just like this kind
of what is this? It just doesn't nobody knew what
to compare it to, you know what I mean. But
it was so much fun, and then being able to
come back to a sequel over thirty years later is insane.
I never thought I'd get to do that music again,
(10:30):
and I mean I perform it live, but to recreate
more versions of it I mean, I would love to
do more Pee Wee or Edward Scissor Hands or you know,
all of these movies, all of these scores. But getting
a chance to do that with Beetlejuice was just being
like let back in a playground that was just so
(10:52):
much fun to be in, and remembering what everything was
like and just getting to do the whole thing all.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Over again was great.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Now a lot of people associate for good reason, with
the work that you and Tim Tim Burton have done together.
But Spider Man comes to my Men in Black the
some of these I didn't even know, Danny.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I knew the movies, but I know you.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Oh my god, Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland,
Doctor Strange, and the Multiverse. You did the theme song
for Desperate Housewives. When I saw that, my brain was
like pluck. Really the Simpsons theme?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Stop it? You know, I don't know how I.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Didn't know that one. Sorry, What the heck?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Do you have impossible question? And of all the projects
you've done, and maybe you already answered this with Nightmare,
but do you have a favorite?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Well, I don't have favorites, but I'll always have very
special connection with Nightmare. For the reasons I described for
Edward Scissorhands because it was such a magical world that
I'd never been in before. And pee wee, of course,
because it was my first time ever and I didn't
know what the hell I was doing, and so you'll
(11:52):
never forget that. But it's not the favorite so much
as of remembering the experience of doing them in a
very special way.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I read that Batman you described it as the hardest.
If that's true, why is it definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
The hardest after one hundred and ten or twenty films?
The hardest because what you got to remember when I
did Batman, first off, Tim didn't have a lot of power.
Then you know, he was still a quirky comedy guy
on this big film. Tim wanted to bring me in,
but nobody else wanted me on the film, and understandably
because I was also a quirky comedy guy, and so
understandably they would like, no, let's get somebody who knows
(12:27):
how to do a big movie, knows how to do
a darker score, knows how to do drawn all these things.
And I had to prove myself and it was really difficult.
It was like very very much an uphill battle. Convincing
everyone finally that yes, I've got this thing and it's
going to work. So I think Tim always was there
(12:49):
and new, but nobody else on the production did. And
unlike Beetlejuice and Pee Wee, where nobody was really looking
over our shoulders.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
You know, I never played music for anybody else but Tim.
On Batman, I.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Was like, Okay, this producers, there's the studio. Everybody was
very involved because it was a big budget movie. So
it was a very very different experience then that what
I've been used to do with Tim, which is just
running amock ourselves.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It's got to be somewhat bizarre, you being a creative
musician trying to convince what I picture in my head
as a bunch of guys in suits, what this dark
score should sound like.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, exactly, And it was. But you know, there's nothing
more satisfying than convincing people that don't have faith in
you that you could do something and pulling it off.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
In the end.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
It was extremely satisfying, but it was just a hard,
hard road getting there, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Danny Elfman recently did a couple of shows in LA
at the Hollywood Bowl, and the day after he did
a show up in the Bay Area at the Shoreline Amphitheater.
The show was called From Boingo to Batman, to Big
Mess and beyond. If you've got a chance to see
either of these shows, Oh my god, it was so good.
Feature you know, a lot of the music we talked
about from Beatlejeu's and Batman, among others, not to mention
(14:02):
solo music, Boying Goo, Boying go all that.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
How would you describe this show?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
The show is insane. It's a double longer version of
what I did at Coachella three years ago, which is
combining old music, new music, and film music in a
way that makes absolutely no sense. So, you know, I
just thought I'll put it in a mixed master and
see what comes out. And I thought for sure it
would be catastrophic, but it wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
How long does it take to put a show like
this together? I would imagine three months, six months, I
don't even know what, like, how long?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, no, because not that long. You know, it's a
really good band. They know the stuff, you know, since Coachella.
It was like learning more songs. But they're really quick
and it's it didn't take that long rehearse. They learned
the songs, nothing flat and putting it all together. They're
just a great group.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And of course talk about the visual element of the show.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Mean, that's actually why I went to Coachella, because they've
been trying to get me there for.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Ages my manager had and I was not convinced.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And finally my manager got me there in I think
twenty nineteen and eighteen maybe, and I saw the giant
screens and I said, oh yeah, I can put some
sick stuff up there and make it really wild.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
And that's a big part of it for me.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I love the visual side of all this stuff, so
that again is where I get to have my creative fun.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Have you considered or would you consider doing a nationwide
tour of this or a worldwide tour or just you know,
spot dates here and there.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, I can't really nationwide tour this. You know, it's
over sixty five musicians on stage. Wow, because it's the
band plus percussion section, plus a choir, plus an orchestra.
You know, just even getting us from LA to San Francisco,
it's like it's a big deal. So I want to
tour something at some point, but it would probably have
to be a trimmed down version. It's just no way
(15:54):
to take like sixty five seventy people on the road,
you know, in a reasonable way.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, I would imagine that's quite expensive. Hey, when people
see you in public, Danny in the wild, as they say,
what do they typically say to you? Or do they
just run up to you and just scream?
Speaker 4 (16:08):
What?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
What are your fans say to you?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I mean, I don't know all kinds of stuff, you know.
I have people stop me and tell me all kinds
of things. Very often it's like some piece of work
that they meant a lot to them, you know, sometimes
you know from Bondo or a song or you know,
sometimes it's film stuff, and you know, tell me about
how they you know, in their.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Childhood and you know they grew up listening to my stuff.
Things like that. It's it's always nice.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
But usually nice, probably psychos like me whipped off the jets.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Occasionally it gets a little psycho.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Another thing I heard you're working on music for Dark
Universe at Universal Studios, the new theme park in Orlando.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What can you say? What can you tease reveal? Or
is everything top?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
It's just so.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Ironic that the year started out with monster music for
Universal and it was so much fun, like pure In
inspired by Universal monster characters for Dark Universe and lack
an entire monster roller coaster ride. And I can't even
explain it other than it's going to be super fun
and crazy. And I did monster music for months and
(17:13):
then I go to Beetlejuice, go from Monsters to Beetlejuice,
and then over to where I am now, which is
to a Dracula movie directed by Luke Passon called Dracula
at the working title Dracula I Love Tale, And I'm
back to a Universal inspired character here, although it's a
very different version of it. But it just seems like
(17:35):
a monster.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Year with no pun intended.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Of course, no pun intended. I mean it really is.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And I'm having so much fun on Dracula right now
that it all seemed to fit together in this weird way.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, I can't wait to see that for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I'm a big horror movie, you know, vampire movie fan,
which leads me to a couple of questions here. I
know you're a big horror scary movie fan. Give me
your top two or three favorites. I would love to
have a Danny Elfman, you know, referral, even if it's
not a Danny Eelpman movie.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I mean, you know, at the top of the list,
because you know, horror always is most effective when you're
at the right age. It's age contingent. So the thing
that scared you as a kid will always stand out
in your mind. So the horror movie that stood up
most in my mind was the one I saw when
I was guessing I was seven years old, called The
Beast of Five Fingers, which was about Peter Lourie and
(18:25):
a hand that was trying to kill him and the
hand was crawling all over and it's one of the
reasons I have a hand obsession even now, and my
studio is filled with hands, and I'm selling a version
of my own hand right now.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I love hands.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And it all came from the Beast of Five Fingers.
Then as a young adult, it would have to be
split between The Shining and The Exorcist.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I was the opening of both movies in Los Angeles,
and to be there at the beginning of those two films,
there's no way to even describe it, you know, at
the opening night of exors and to be in the
room in the theater, people are screaming. That's a wonderful
way to see a horror film. And always, my personal
(19:10):
personal favor will always be The Shining, you know, I
just love the way I love all of Kubrick's films.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I'm a huge Kubrick fan.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
But The Shining was done in a way that just
and Jack Nicholson's performance and everything about it I just love.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Still it's a phenomenal movie.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
And I had a chance to spend some time at
the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which is where
Stephen King had his experience which inspired the book, and
I just can't I couldn't agree with you more. It's
absolutely phenomenal and another thing I would love to bring
up kind of playing off of that. Danny, I'm obsessed,
and maybe you are too.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I'm obsessed with the paranormal, ghost, haunted houses, the real stories.
I even have a podcast called PARANORMALI ish I'm off
the deep end clearly, Have you, Danny Elfman, ever had
an experience that you would consider paranormal?
Speaker 4 (19:57):
I've tried, and I've tried. Now.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We have a house up in the north of Los
Angeles that I think there's a ghost there. A woman
lived there for fifty years, an opera singer. And I've
found things out like I've found things I mean out literally,
like a photograph on the table, like how did this
get here? There's a few odd things like that that
I can't explain, and I feel like it's her and
(20:20):
my wife and I have dedicated a room of our
house to her to Her name was Lottie, and we
have all of her posters from the twenties and thirties
all over the room.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
We want her to be comfortable there.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So I have that feeling that Lottie is still in
the house with me, but I've not ever seen her.
And then I did have a night with me and
Ghierma del Toro and the writer of Hellboy two. We
were all in London and there was a hotel that
ghermouth said, there's a room in this hotel that's haunted.
(20:51):
It's got a ghost, and it was on a dare
each of us, We're going to go in there, turn
off all the lights and spend half an hour sitting
in the dark in this room, and then describe our experiences.
So I did it hoping something would happen. I've always
wanted to, but I've just never seen a ghost.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Guierimo got in there and we were knocking and there's
a turn off. The lie come on, garamoon, he goes
it's off.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But neither of us believed him. We can keep the
light on.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
God, I love it all right, Danny will wrap this
up quick. But what are you most impossible question? What
are you most proud of? When you when you look
back on what you've done? I mean, clearly you're not
You're nowhere near done. I mean, if you've seen Danny
on stage, you know there's no slow down in his
entire body. But at the moment you're a Disney legend.
I assume you get free Disney tickets for life, so
you got to love that. What are you most proud of?
Speaker 4 (21:38):
I think of my work.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I mean just the body of If you said anything
in the world I was most proud of, I'd be
most proud of my children and everything about them. But
if you're looking at my work, what I'm most proud
of is that I was able to get a wide
range of stuff out there. It was always my goal
to leave like a very diverse you know. I always
respected artists that were really, really diverse, And the fact
(22:03):
that I was able to go from on stage at
the Opera House in Vienna to the premiere of at
Cello Concerto, get on a plane, and one week later
end up with electric guitar on my hands on stage
at Coachella kind of sums up where I'm most proud.
The fact that I'm getting to have that experience, going
from the concert stage with classical works to having, you know,
(22:26):
all the film work that I still get to do,
and then now having live on stage and singing again
after twenty five years off. And they're all so very different,
and it's those extreme differences that.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
I love the most.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Before I wrap this up, Danny, I would love to
have you come into the studio one of these days
and have a nice sit down. You know, maybe we'll
bring some fans in or whatever, who knows, but whatever
you want to do, whenever you have time, pick a
day and I will make it happen perfect.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
You got it. It would be my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Love that.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And final question. Message to your fans, I mean, you've
got years and years of fans, all generations. Mess to
your fans.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Is just one word, just gratitude. I mean That just
sums it up, you know, gratitude that my fans have
allowed me to be me. Now I'm getting choked up,
so I want to go before I embarrass myself.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Danny, thank you so much. I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
My pleasure
This is a special episode.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I get to interview a lot of people, right, I'm
very thankful for that, but it's not every day that
you get to talk to basically Jack Skelington, Danny Elfman.
He's done so many things Batman, Beatlejuice, Oigo Boingo, and
of course Nightmare Before Christmas, not to mention he's had
a paranormal encounter. I'm so excited. Welcome to a special
(00:25):
episode of Paranormalish. Danny Elfman.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Jojo on the radio Paranormal.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And Normal Is.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I am so excited for this episode. You have no idea.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We're about to talk to the legendary and I mean
legendary Danny Elfman. He's the guy, if you don't know,
responsible for the music in some of my favorite movies ever,
pretty much every Tim Burton movie, including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhans, Batman,
and my favorite, Nightmare Before Christmas. Not only did he
do the music for that movie, he is the singing
(01:01):
voice of Jack Skellington.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
He is Jack Skellington. Danny Elfman.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Super nice to meet you, Thank you, good to meet you.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
This may have happened to you before in the past.
I don't know, But have you ever been interviewed by
a guy with the Jack Skellington tattoo?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah? No, I don't believe I have.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Let me show you here on zoom here we look
at that.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Nice well done, Danny.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I've interviewed a lot of people, but I've never talked
to Jack Skellington. Not only did he do the Jack
Skellington singing voice. Also, if you're a fan of the movie,
you'll know the characters lock Stock and Barrel, he did
the voice of Beryl, also the clown with the tear
away face music for the entire movie. When did you
know this movie was gonna be iconic? Because I'm guessing
in the early days it was so bizarre. At the time,
(01:42):
people probably thought you guys were nuts.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I mean when we finished Nightmare, you know, we were
really left on our own for everything. It was kind
of like kids being crazy on the school yard without
adult supervision. And you know, Tim had real autonomy to
do it the way he wanted to do it without interference.
And when I worked on the songs with him, which
is how we started the whole thing. You know, Tim,
(02:07):
when he came to me, he had a story, outline
and pictures. There wasn't even a script, and we said,
let's just start with a bunch of songs, and we
just started creating this thing ourselves with no idea what
we were doing. And finally, when it was finished, I
think understandably, Disney had no idea what to do with
this thing because it was so not life. And every
(02:31):
single I did a fresh junket where you know, you
do a bazillion interviews that are all like one minute
long kind of thing, and virtually every journalist I talked
with said, so, it's not for kids, right, And I went, no, wrong,
Oh no, no, we've heard it's too scary for kids.
We we hear Santa Claus gets tortured, and I go, no, no,
he's not tortured, he's inconvenienced, and he's not even that
(02:54):
upset by it. In the end, it's but there was
this perception, so if it's not for kids, who was
it for? So the idea that decades later it developed
its own life and its own trajectory, and in fact
appeals to generation after generation of kids. Nothing could make
me happier of anything I've ever worked on than feeling
(03:15):
vindicated in that sense. You know, every song I wrote
I played for my then ten year old daughter, Molly,
and she gave me the thumbs up, and I'd go,
if this little ten year old girl is not frightened
by anything, who out there is going to be scared
by this stuff. So it took a long time to
understand it. But thank god Disney really has. I think
(03:37):
most other studios a decade or so later would have
just gone, oh, that ship has sailed, but Disney had
the smarts to go, no, there's something still there. There's
still got an ember that never went out there, and
let's put energy into bringing it back. Because they're good
at seeing a longer picture of you know, a longer view,
and they did, and now they really did understand what
(03:59):
it was and who it was for. It just took
a decade or a decade now for everybody to figure
that out.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Hey, when you said that, you guys started with just
creating a bunch of songs. I assume he gave you
his vision or a sketch of Jack and Sally, or
were the songs even before that?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
No, I mean literally he would come over with these
great drawings. Of course, you know, he had beautiful drawings
of all the characters and with an outline, and I
would say, just tell me a little bit of the story,
just like pretend you're talking to your nephews and nieces
around the fire at you know, at nighttime. And he'd
go okay, and he tell me, well, Jack's going out
(04:37):
in the forest and there's these three trees and there's
these three doors, and he gets sucked down and he
gets opens up in this now everywhere, and he's describing
it to.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Me, and I go, okay, okay, that's good. That's good.
That's all I need. And I'd go off and i'd
write what's this? What's this? And three days later i'd
call him back and I say, I got a song
for you.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And you listened to it and you go, okay, great,
now what happens? Well now, And you know he had
it all in his head. But I just really wanted
to do it a little bit at a time, let
it be revealed as we went, and until we had
ten songs, and now we had this framework because neither
of us knew how to make a musical, and so
(05:14):
we were just kind of learning as we went, and
that's just how we did it. And now that there
was this framework, and there's the ten songs. And then
Caroline Thompson, the writer you know, who I happened to
be living with at the time, and was hearing all
the songs and going hello, I'm right here, and finally
(05:35):
said you should write.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
A script and she did.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
How fascinating. Okay, how did you come up with Jack's
singing voice? Because before we did this interview, I listened
to some of your Oingo Boingo tracks and then I
listened to some of the tracks from Nightmare before Christmas,
and you clearly made a choice to make Jack sound different.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It was not even a conscious choice. It was an
unconscious choice in the sense that, to me, this is
how this character sounds. I felt like he should have
a bit of menace to his voice, but when he
gets excited, he gets very excited.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I kind of in the songs, I kind.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Of portrayed Jack as being very hyper up and down,
you know, and sometimes all within the same song. You know,
there's a song called Poor Jack where he lands in
the graveyard and he starts out was really my biggest
challenge in the show. It's like, he has to start
out totally depressed and he's what have I what, And
(06:32):
by the end, he's going to work himself into a
frenzy with nothing but his own thoughts. Nothing happens to
like change his mind. It's all his own mental workings
that he goes from the bottom to like ready to go.
So that's what I loved about the character was his
ability to just go to extremes, and the voice just
(06:54):
seemed appropriate. So essentially, Tim and I went into the
studio and we recorded all ten song songs. We did
demos and Tim was like the producer and I was
in the booth, with the exception, of course, of Sally's song,
which I had to bring you in a female voice
the same because that was the one thing I couldn't do.
And you know, I did all the little voices and
the big voices. I just did everything until we had
(07:16):
these demos. And afterwards I was going so Tim, you know,
in terms of who's gonna sing Jack, and he says.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, you'll do it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
You got it, thank God, because I was at the
point by that time when I had sung them all,
you know, I wasn't gonna let anybody else touch those songs.
You know, I felt like it was me and I
let me put it this way. If they had hired
other singers, terrible accidents would have happened, you know, like
one singer would be walking down the street and a
piano falls up out of a third story window, and
(07:50):
what a coincidence.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Meanwhile, let go, oh, what a terrible coincidence. But fortunately
that didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, I couldn't imagine anybody else doing Jack's singing voice.
It's just, you know, it just wouldn't be wouldn't be
right in my opinion. Hey, I here's something I got
to know. How often do you get to Disneyland around
the holidays, you know, and ride Haunted Mansion and hear
your music on the ride.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
That's got to be such a rush.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Well, I mean, I've been.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
There a few times, and I don't know how else
to explain it other than you know, when the movie
came out, it was so misunderstood and people didn't know
what it was, and Disney didn't know what it was,
and it didn't do that well did okay? But it
took a decade, almost a decade and a half, to
like come back and have this resurgence. And then Disney
really did understand that because Disney is great at having
a long view, and so they saw, you know what,
(08:40):
we didn't know what it was then, but we definitely
know what it is now, and that they the fact
that they were exploding it into all these different things
made me so happy because that's what I'd hope more
than anything. You know, I put so much work into Nightmare,
more than any film I'd ever done. You know, Normally
I'm only three months on a film, twelve weeks, you know,
eight ten, twelve weeks. Nightmare I was on for two
(09:01):
and a half years. Jesus, and I put so much
of myself in the Jack songs that I felt this
personal connection. And if anything I ever worked on I
was hoping would have a second life, it was that,
and it did. And Disney did a brilliant job in
just reviving this character and turning it into what it
(09:22):
is today. And I'm just so grateful to everybody who
was involved with kind of helping to bring Nightmare.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Back to life.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well it's definitely back to life, for sure. And I
could talk forever on Nightmare, but there's so many other things.
Let me just touch on a few of them here.
I think twenty different Tim Burton projects, Batman which we'll
get to. Edward Scissarhan's Mars Attacks, Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I believe that was your.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
First one with Tim.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice be Oh my god, same similar questions
about Beetlejuice. I assume people in the beginning once again
thought you guys had lost your mind. Now we all
get it, it's Beetlejuice, But back in the day it
was nuts.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Same exact thing.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
When Beetlejuice was coming out, they've reviewed it. It did catastrophically.
You know, a lot of Tim's movies preview really poorly,
only because people didn't know what is this thing?
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You know?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
And so I remember there was like a preview and
they said, no, I forget it, this movie's dead, and
it wasn't. And again it was just like this kind
of what is this? It just doesn't nobody knew what
to compare it to, you know what I mean. But
it was so much fun, and then being able to
come back to a sequel over thirty years later is insane.
I never thought I'd get to do that music again,
(10:30):
and I mean I perform it live, but to recreate
more versions of it I mean, I would love to
do more Pee Wee or Edward Scissor Hands or you know,
all of these movies, all of these scores. But getting
a chance to do that with Beetlejuice was just being
like let back in a playground that was just so
(10:52):
much fun to be in, and remembering what everything was
like and just getting to do the whole thing all.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Over again was great.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Now a lot of people associate for good reason, with
the work that you and Tim Tim Burton have done together.
But Spider Man comes to my Men in Black the
some of these I didn't even know, Danny.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I knew the movies, but I know you.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Oh my god, Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland,
Doctor Strange, and the Multiverse. You did the theme song
for Desperate Housewives. When I saw that, my brain was
like pluck. Really the Simpsons theme?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Stop it? You know, I don't know how I.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Didn't know that one. Sorry, What the heck?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Do you have impossible question? And of all the projects
you've done, and maybe you already answered this with Nightmare,
but do you have a favorite?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Well, I don't have favorites, but I'll always have very
special connection with Nightmare. For the reasons I described for
Edward Scissorhands because it was such a magical world that
I'd never been in before. And pee wee, of course,
because it was my first time ever and I didn't
know what the hell I was doing, and so you'll
(11:52):
never forget that. But it's not the favorite so much
as of remembering the experience of doing them in a
very special way.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I read that Batman you described it as the hardest.
If that's true, why is it definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
The hardest after one hundred and ten or twenty films?
The hardest because what you got to remember when I
did Batman, first off, Tim didn't have a lot of power.
Then you know, he was still a quirky comedy guy
on this big film. Tim wanted to bring me in,
but nobody else wanted me on the film, and understandably
because I was also a quirky comedy guy, and so
understandably they would like, no, let's get somebody who knows
(12:27):
how to do a big movie, knows how to do
a darker score, knows how to do drawn all these things.
And I had to prove myself and it was really difficult.
It was like very very much an uphill battle. Convincing
everyone finally that yes, I've got this thing and it's
going to work. So I think Tim always was there
(12:49):
and new, but nobody else on the production did. And
unlike Beetlejuice and Pee Wee, where nobody was really looking
over our shoulders.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
You know, I never played music for anybody else but Tim.
On Batman, I.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Was like, Okay, this producers, there's the studio. Everybody was
very involved because it was a big budget movie. So
it was a very very different experience then that what
I've been used to do with Tim, which is just
running amock ourselves.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It's got to be somewhat bizarre, you being a creative
musician trying to convince what I picture in my head
as a bunch of guys in suits, what this dark
score should sound like.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, exactly, And it was. But you know, there's nothing
more satisfying than convincing people that don't have faith in
you that you could do something and pulling it off.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
In the end.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
It was extremely satisfying, but it was just a hard,
hard road getting there, all right.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Danny Elfman recently did a couple of shows in LA
at the Hollywood Bowl, and the day after he did
a show up in the Bay Area at the Shoreline Amphitheater.
The show was called From Boingo to Batman, to Big
Mess and beyond. If you've got a chance to see
either of these shows, Oh my god, it was so good.
Feature you know, a lot of the music we talked
about from Beatlejeu's and Batman, among others, not to mention
(14:02):
solo music, Boying Goo, Boying go all that.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
How would you describe this show?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
The show is insane. It's a double longer version of
what I did at Coachella three years ago, which is
combining old music, new music, and film music in a
way that makes absolutely no sense. So, you know, I
just thought I'll put it in a mixed master and
see what comes out. And I thought for sure it
would be catastrophic, but it wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
How long does it take to put a show like
this together? I would imagine three months, six months, I
don't even know what, like, how long?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, no, because not that long. You know, it's a
really good band. They know the stuff, you know, since Coachella.
It was like learning more songs. But they're really quick
and it's it didn't take that long rehearse. They learned
the songs, nothing flat and putting it all together. They're
just a great group.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
And of course talk about the visual element of the show.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Mean, that's actually why I went to Coachella, because they've
been trying to get me there for.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Ages my manager had and I was not convinced.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And finally my manager got me there in I think
twenty nineteen and eighteen maybe, and I saw the giant
screens and I said, oh yeah, I can put some
sick stuff up there and make it really wild.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
And that's a big part of it for me.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I love the visual side of all this stuff, so
that again is where I get to have my creative fun.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Have you considered or would you consider doing a nationwide
tour of this or a worldwide tour or just you know,
spot dates here and there.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, I can't really nationwide tour this. You know, it's
over sixty five musicians on stage. Wow, because it's the
band plus percussion section, plus a choir, plus an orchestra.
You know, just even getting us from LA to San Francisco,
it's like it's a big deal. So I want to
tour something at some point, but it would probably have
to be a trimmed down version. It's just no way
(15:54):
to take like sixty five seventy people on the road,
you know, in a reasonable way.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, I would imagine that's quite expensive. Hey, when people
see you in public, Danny in the wild, as they say,
what do they typically say to you? Or do they
just run up to you and just scream?
Speaker 4 (16:08):
What?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
What are your fans say to you?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I mean, I don't know all kinds of stuff, you know.
I have people stop me and tell me all kinds
of things. Very often it's like some piece of work
that they meant a lot to them, you know, sometimes
you know from Bondo or a song or you know,
sometimes it's film stuff, and you know, tell me about
how they you know, in their.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Childhood and you know they grew up listening to my stuff.
Things like that. It's it's always nice.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
But usually nice, probably psychos like me whipped off the jets.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Occasionally it gets a little psycho.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Another thing I heard you're working on music for Dark
Universe at Universal Studios, the new theme park in Orlando.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What can you say? What can you tease reveal? Or
is everything top?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
It's just so.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Ironic that the year started out with monster music for
Universal and it was so much fun, like pure In
inspired by Universal monster characters for Dark Universe and lack
an entire monster roller coaster ride. And I can't even
explain it other than it's going to be super fun
and crazy. And I did monster music for months and
(17:13):
then I go to Beetlejuice, go from Monsters to Beetlejuice,
and then over to where I am now, which is
to a Dracula movie directed by Luke Passon called Dracula
at the working title Dracula I Love Tale, And I'm
back to a Universal inspired character here, although it's a
very different version of it. But it just seems like
(17:35):
a monster.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Year with no pun intended.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Of course, no pun intended. I mean it really is.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And I'm having so much fun on Dracula right now
that it all seemed to fit together in this weird way.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Well, I can't wait to see that for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I'm a big horror movie, you know, vampire movie fan,
which leads me to a couple of questions here. I
know you're a big horror scary movie fan. Give me
your top two or three favorites. I would love to
have a Danny Elfman, you know, referral, even if it's
not a Danny Eelpman movie.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I mean, you know, at the top of the list,
because you know, horror always is most effective when you're
at the right age. It's age contingent. So the thing
that scared you as a kid will always stand out
in your mind. So the horror movie that stood up
most in my mind was the one I saw when
I was guessing I was seven years old, called The
Beast of Five Fingers, which was about Peter Lourie and
(18:25):
a hand that was trying to kill him and the
hand was crawling all over and it's one of the
reasons I have a hand obsession even now, and my
studio is filled with hands, and I'm selling a version
of my own hand right now.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I love hands.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And it all came from the Beast of Five Fingers.
Then as a young adult, it would have to be
split between The Shining and The Exorcist.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
I was the opening of both movies in Los Angeles,
and to be there at the beginning of those two films,
there's no way to even describe it, you know, at
the opening night of exors and to be in the
room in the theater, people are screaming. That's a wonderful
way to see a horror film. And always, my personal
(19:10):
personal favor will always be The Shining, you know, I
just love the way I love all of Kubrick's films.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I'm a huge Kubrick fan.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
But The Shining was done in a way that just
and Jack Nicholson's performance and everything about it I just love.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Still it's a phenomenal movie.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
And I had a chance to spend some time at
the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which is where
Stephen King had his experience which inspired the book, and
I just can't I couldn't agree with you more. It's
absolutely phenomenal and another thing I would love to bring
up kind of playing off of that. Danny, I'm obsessed,
and maybe you are too.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I'm obsessed with the paranormal, ghost, haunted houses, the real stories.
I even have a podcast called PARANORMALI ish I'm off
the deep end clearly, Have you, Danny Elfman, ever had
an experience that you would consider paranormal?
Speaker 4 (19:57):
I've tried, and I've tried. Now.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We have a house up in the north of Los
Angeles that I think there's a ghost there. A woman
lived there for fifty years, an opera singer. And I've
found things out like I've found things I mean out literally,
like a photograph on the table, like how did this
get here? There's a few odd things like that that
I can't explain, and I feel like it's her and
(20:20):
my wife and I have dedicated a room of our
house to her to Her name was Lottie, and we
have all of her posters from the twenties and thirties
all over the room.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
We want her to be comfortable there.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So I have that feeling that Lottie is still in
the house with me, but I've not ever seen her.
And then I did have a night with me and
Ghierma del Toro and the writer of Hellboy two. We
were all in London and there was a hotel that
ghermouth said, there's a room in this hotel that's haunted.
(20:51):
It's got a ghost, and it was on a dare
each of us, We're going to go in there, turn
off all the lights and spend half an hour sitting
in the dark in this room, and then describe our experiences.
So I did it hoping something would happen. I've always
wanted to, but I've just never seen a ghost.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Guierimo got in there and we were knocking and there's
a turn off. The lie come on, garamoon, he goes
it's off.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But neither of us believed him. We can keep the
light on.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
God, I love it all right, Danny will wrap this
up quick. But what are you most impossible question? What
are you most proud of? When you when you look
back on what you've done? I mean, clearly you're not
You're nowhere near done. I mean, if you've seen Danny
on stage, you know there's no slow down in his
entire body. But at the moment you're a Disney legend.
I assume you get free Disney tickets for life, so
you got to love that. What are you most proud of?
Speaker 4 (21:38):
I think of my work.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
I mean just the body of If you said anything
in the world I was most proud of, I'd be
most proud of my children and everything about them. But
if you're looking at my work, what I'm most proud
of is that I was able to get a wide
range of stuff out there. It was always my goal
to leave like a very diverse you know. I always
respected artists that were really, really diverse, And the fact
(22:03):
that I was able to go from on stage at
the Opera House in Vienna to the premiere of at
Cello Concerto, get on a plane, and one week later
end up with electric guitar on my hands on stage
at Coachella kind of sums up where I'm most proud.
The fact that I'm getting to have that experience, going
from the concert stage with classical works to having, you know,
(22:26):
all the film work that I still get to do,
and then now having live on stage and singing again
after twenty five years off. And they're all so very different,
and it's those extreme differences that.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
I love the most.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Before I wrap this up, Danny, I would love to
have you come into the studio one of these days
and have a nice sit down. You know, maybe we'll
bring some fans in or whatever, who knows, but whatever
you want to do, whenever you have time, pick a
day and I will make it happen perfect.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
You got it. It would be my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Love that.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And final question. Message to your fans, I mean, you've
got years and years of fans, all generations. Mess to
your fans.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Is just one word, just gratitude. I mean That just
sums it up, you know, gratitude that my fans have
allowed me to be me. Now I'm getting choked up,
so I want to go before I embarrass myself.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Danny, thank you so much. I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
My pleasure
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