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I apologize if this has been done before, but I am curious to know. I suppose I will give you people the misfortune of reading my “Danny Elfman moment”, the moment where I thought, “Hey, this guy writes good music!”
Rewind to the year 2007. It was Summer Break, and I was trying my best to ignore the ominous thunderclouds that loomed in few months’ time: freshman year of high school. I taught myself how to play the piano (keyboard, really) by ear, and in the month of July, I received a magnificent gift: a (rather cheap, as far as price went) piano! Finally, eighty-eight keys to reign over! However, after a week or so, I realized something: I barely knew how to play anything. My repetoire consisted soley of Nintendo pieces that I learned to play by placing my left ear by the television speakers and stumbling along, so to speak, until I got it right. So I was in a depressing state of musical stagnation. What did I do? I looked on the Internet for interesting pieces to listen to, so I may add them to my “repetoire”. Somehow, I found “Birth of a Penguin” by a fellow named Danny Elfman. I was aware of the name, having been a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, so I thought. “Why not?” and I listened to it.
I was flabbergasted, and I immediately forgot my piano. It was so…powerful, so…atmospheric, so…so…I was at a loss of words to describe the profound feelings the piece stirred in me. Middle school (and many other places, I would unfortunately realize) held this view-point: if there is no one singing, then it is not music. I was what could be called a “people-pleaser” in middle school, before I converted to Christianity and gained a sense of individuality( but I suppose that is an entirely other story), and so to hear a type of music that was labeled “non-music”, and to find it so compelling was astonishing to me. Could my friends be wrong about my tastes in music? And so, many months later, I would open a gift-wrapped present to find “Batman Returns: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” (as well as the Star Wars Original Trilogy soundtracks, which started my love for John Williams), and my life would never be the same.
Well, there you have it. I spared some of the more mind-numbingly boring details, as I am too fond of you guys to put you through that ( I think I did enough damage already), but that is the ultimate “gist” of it.
So, what was your “Danny Elfman” moment?
I downloaded his Gremlins theme on Kazaa…
More seriously, it was Beetlejuice then Batman’s main titles that got me into his music. I remember watching them for hours when I got the film’s VHS copies; I was around 6 years old and it was the early nineties.
I always enjoyed what he wrote since and knew his name by noticing it when it popped up in movies or TV Series credits (most notably The Simpsons end credits).
I rediscovered his work at the end of my teenage years, buying the Sleepy Hollow Soundtrack. Since then, I’ve never missed one release, eagerly looking forward for the next and buying every single one I’ve missed in the past. And I’m pretty sure it will only stops when he will…It was between ’89 and ’90, although I never got a CD of his until ’92. I was pretty young and it was on my own that I just realized everything I loved involved this guy: The Simpsons, Weird Science, Tim Burton’s movies, etc. It was weird when I realized it. Like several interests hinging on this one common factor. It’s been forever that I’ve listened to his stuff.
I was nine years old. We went to see Batman. At this point in my life I was only aware of Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams in terms of film scoring. Because of Superman:The Movie, I was expecting John Williams to do Batman as well. When the main title started The music hit me like truck! I didn’t care about the cast or the DP or the costumes, I wanted to know who wrote the music. Well, the rest, as they say, is history. My dad bought the score album a few months later when it finally came out. The next Elfman album to become part of the family was Dick Tracy, but that was quite a few years later, when we found it in a bargain bin in Media Play (which is now completely closed in my area. Curses!) Batman Returns soon followed and then I really started collecting Elfman when I found Men in Black a full six months after that movie came out! After that I’ve been slowly but surely adding to my collection and trying to make sure I have every album of his when it first comes out.
I blame all of this on my dad, who got me hooked on film music in the first place and because he’s the one who bought Batman( I’ve since bought my own copy.)
My parents had me listen to Boingo via headphones while I was still in the womb. I guess you could say I was an Elfman fan before I was born!
Although, when I was seven, I became obsessed with Nightmare and Jurassic Park, and absolutely loved the music in both. I turned out to be more of an Elfman fan.
1989 — BATMAN in movie theatres. Lining up an hour before showtime, line went outside the mall. It was an event, and I was the perfect age (12). The main titles changed me — like a radioactive spider bite, I now had new powers of perception.
I of course had seen PEE-WEE and BEETLEJUICE in theatres, but it was the perfect alchemy of being 12, BATMAN and that summer of ’89 that forever made me a fan.
I’ve been living with BATMAN for almost 20 years. Longer with BATMAN than without.
I’ve probably mentioned this here before, but it was Elfman’s first Spider-Man score that did it for me. Coming from a musical family with a sci-fi geek for a dad, it was pretty fitting that I be exposed to lots of Star Trek and Star Wars music. My dad was a huge audiophile, too, and he was a fan of some of the earlier Cincinnati Pops Orchestra film music compilation CDs, which were astounding recordings. One of those had albums had a 15-minute suite from Batman. I would imagine that “planted the seeds.” Fast-forward to 1997 after seeing Men in Black. My younger sister bought the “inspired by” album, which included Elfman’s “Main Title” and “End Credits” from the movie. I definitely liked those tracks more than the songs on the album, but still didn’t really think much of it.
Time warp five years ahead to 2002, at 15 years old, decided spontaneously to see Spider-Man with a buddy of mine. I wasn’t really even a fan of the comic books, so I had absolutely no preconceptions of the film. Three and a half minutes into the movie, I was absolutely hooked, and it was all due to the music. There was another part of the film that jumped out at me and showed me what music could really do in the context of a scene, and that was the first time Peter wall-crawls up that brick building. The way Elfman animated Parker’s movements with those low brass punches, and then develops the crawl into a rhythm was just fascinating to me, not like anything I’d ever bothered to notice in film music before. I found the score album as soon as I could and irritated my family to death by playing that disc dozens of times over. When I couldn’t get enough, I did some research to find out who this Elfman guy was, and proceeded to start my collection. Now seven years later, Elfman is to me as Herrmann was to Elfman. I wouldn’t be a film composer if it weren’t for him.
It was in 1988. I used to watch the Beetlejuice cartoons and I really loved the theme music. I live in Switzerland, and it was, at that time, pretty hard to find soundtracks on cd… A few years later (1992), I heard the “Birth Of The Pinguin” theme in the Super Nintendo game “Batman Returns”, and I had to finish the game to finally be able to see who was the composer of the soundtrack…
The first cd of Danny Elfman I found was the “Music For A Darkened Theater, vol 1”. At that time, I didn’t speak english, and the only word I remembered from the cd title was “DARKENED”…. I remember I used to talk to my friends about Danny Elfman, by saying : “It’s the DARKENED guy”… Since that time, the words “dark” and “elfman” always seem to get along pretty well… After all this, I found the Forbidden Zone cd in 1995, and I fell in love with Oingo Boingo… Sadly, it was the wrong year to get to know them, since it was the year the stopped playing… That’s how this whole thing started…
I had been a big John Williams fan and even had 8-tracks of his scores to Jaws, Superman, and Star Wars. I mostly listened to classical music, but did have a few other Albums, two of which were Oingo Boingo’s “Nothing to Fear” and “Good for your Soul”. I didn’t really make the connection when I saw Pee-Wee or Beetlejuice, but I did when Batman came out (I believe I saw a behind the scenes that mentioned that he was the same guy in Oingo Boingo). I bought Music for a Darkened Theater when it came out and then searched for everything he had produced up until then (both Oingo Boingo and scores).
Before I graduated High School, I had to chance to conduct a Symphony Band composition I had written that was Danny Elfman inspired called “Incalzondo Mysterioso” and I haven’t looked back since.
I seriously can’t remember. It was probably around 1992 or 1993 or thereabouts (I was a teenager of some 15-16 years and consequently a bit older than most of you guys). I had been interested in film music (and esp. Williams) for at least a year after a gradual musical evolution that you can read about here:
http://www.celluloidtunes.net/howigotinto.htm
I liked his whole dark/burlesque/quirky style.
However, I’m pretty confident that although I had been aware of him for quite a while, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS was my first Danny soundtrack. I remember buying Goldsmith’s CONGO first, then being disappointed in it and running back to the store and swapping it with NIGHTMARE. Haven’t regretted it since.
It really is interesting to see how much of an impact one man has made on our lives, and we never even met him (well, perhaps one of us did, but let us not get into technicalities here)….
(Currently listening to “Jazz Autographs”)
One of Danny Elfman’s relatives used to work as a temp for me last Spring. Donald Elfman, Danny’s second cousin, is also a musican and has worked for many Record companies (like Telarc and Electra/Nonsuch), but oddly enough, has never met Danny. He did mentioned that he had met Richard Elfman on many occasions. Donald did mention to me that his favorite score was Ennio Morricone’s “Once Upon A Time In America”, but that he was more of a Jazz man. Don’t know what’s that is worth but he was a cool, and laid-back guy.
Wow.. It’s funny to hear a lot of you being big Elfman fans in like the 80s and 90s. I wasn’t born until ’91 but it’s cool to hear it.
I didn’t get into music until 6th grade when I joined band! I was put on trombone and my director made me listen to some music. My friends were getting into NIGHTMARE so I of course followed. My mom soon bought me the soundtrack from Hastings and so I thought I would look into him. I asked my parents and they gave me the most general definition of Danny Elfman they knew(they didn’t really know) so I looked myself! Soon after that I got a present from my parents… another CD from Hastings…. Music for a Darkened Theatre Volume 1. On the way home, listening to it on the CD player in the car my dad fast forwarded it through “Up the Cathedral” cause it was boring(you all agree, no one likes that song enough to listen to it on its own). Then it got to “Decent into Mystery” and I sat there in chills. That did it for me!
5 years later, I’m still playing Trombone.. well.. Bass Trombone… in the top band at my high school. All of my friends make fun of me for my obsession! And I’m taking piano lessons! I have a lot of soundtracks including Ottman, Newman, Herrmann, and Williams… But it all started with Elfman and Batman.. well..”Decent into Mystery” to be exact!
So when it comes to reading a lot of your Elfman histories from the 80s and 90s, many of you said Batman. I may be younger… but.. I still find it funny that one score can have such a huge impact on so many people! I love Elfman’s music! And I will always love it.
…
On the way home, listening to it on the CD player in the car my dad fast forwarded it through “Up the Cathedral” cause it was boring (you all agree, no one likes that song enough to listen to it on its own).
Really? No one?
We all agree?
I actually think it’s a very powerful piece of music, and quite enjoy listening to it. I suppose that makes me a boring person, though.
Yes, elfboy91, some of us are old. Well, anyway, I’m gonna be more specific from my original post. When I found out that Beetlejuice, Batman, and Simpsons were composed by the same guy I became a fan.
My story is similar to D-Bo’s. I saw “Spider-Man” when I was 13 and was captivated by the music. I had been into some Williams and Horner scores at the time, but I had never heard of Danny Elfman. I went home and got a hold of the Main Titles and listened to them over and over. I even remember going to my friend’s house to hang out, but I wanted to go home so that I could go listen to that track again. I got the album and listened to it over and over. When the DVD of the film came out, I believe I watched it every day for a few weeks. From there I listened to some other Elfman stuff… “Nightmare”, “Army of Darkness”, “Batman”, “Edward Scissorhands”, “Dick Tracy”, “Men in Black”, and on from there. But “Spider-Man” was without doubt the movie that made me love Elfman’s music, hence my username.
So… 7 years later, and I’m still hooked. I absolutely loved “Wanted” this year and I’m very excited to hear what he brings to “The Wolf Man” and “Terminator Salvation”.
BEETLEJUICE. I would watch and re-watch the opening credits on the VHS cassette tape that my step dad recorded off of Showtime. I loved it. It only took a few years later for me to buy the soundtrack to that, BATMAN and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. I’ve been a fan of his film scores as long as I can remember liking music.
I didn’t say the piece isn’t powerful or affective… I’m just sayin.. when it pops up on my iPod, sadly I hit next so I can sway with “Waltz To The Death”. I was just jokin’.. And Im sure you’re not boring : )
you know what’s funny is my Elfman hook was also like D-Bo’s and Spider-Fan’s……….and I was also 15. So that’s 3 of us in the same age range with the same film score that changed our lives
When I was little, I loved watching Pee-wee, Batman and Batman Returns on video. Later, a friend introduced me to Nightmare, and explained to me the coalition between the director and composer, figuring out why I loved the music in those movies, that turned out to be Tim Burton films.
Haha. I probably bring the lamest story of them all.
It started about 2 years ago, I was looking through this site, and came across an article on pedophiles, and found a video on Little Girls. I thought it was the funniest song ever, so I started to look up more Boingo music.
Yup. It just kinda evolved from there…
Only A Lad. It was 1983 and I was a sophomore in high school. My girlfriend at the time bought the first Oingo Boingo album (vinyl) because she liked the cover art. I became infatuated with the band because I hadn’t heard anything like it before. It was dark but funny and somewhat light-hearted, and I loved the rhythms, tempo and the horns. I followed the band and it’s leader thru the 80’s and was excited to hear that Danny had written the score to the Pee Wee Herman film. I thought it was great and critics praised the score, so I felt a bit of justification for my admiration of Mr. Elfman and his talents. Then when Batman came out, I couldn’t stop telling everyone about this genius piece of music.
Because I have followed and admired him for so long, I feel somehow proud when I see the tremendous success he has enjoyed. Like he’s a friend or relative. He has had that strong of an affect and influence on my life.
I hope he continues for many years to come.
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