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I’m studying Danny Elfman’s score for Batman for my A-level Music Technology exam, and I’m clueless to why Elfman has used Prince, especially for the end credits.
I don’t think that Prince adds any musical gain to the movie, and wondering was it just for commerical gain for the film?Just wondering for your views, that’d be great. Thanks!
Apart from maybe in the scene with the Joker in the museum. I think that could just present his cartoony nature.
It wasn’t Danny’s decision to use Prince on the soundtrack, that was the decision of Mr.Peters and Mr. Guber, the producers. But Danny did adapt Prince’s “Scandalous” into the love theme, probably more for consistency sake than anything else.
Yeah! It’s all in the book: “Danny Elfman’s Batman: A Film Score Guide” by Janet K. Halfyard. Really awesome book. Everyone should have it!
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Well, actually, if you really listen closely, the 5 notes motif of Prince’s Scandalous theme IS Elfman’s Batman’s theme. The only difference is that the second note is one semi-tone lower. Instead of being : A – B – C – F – E (Elfman’s theme), it’s : A – Bflat – C – F – E !!!
These are the same notes !Yeah, that resemblance always made me wonder if this was pure coincidence or if Prince wrote the song after listening to Elfman’s music (hopefully…not the other way around !).
I hate to disappoint people, but the songs were written WAY in advance! Burton needed them cause they were being used within the movie. Remember that there’s two scenes with Joker dancing to Prince, first at the Museum and then at the Parade. Usually when songs are being used as part of the story the filmmakers and actors need to hear them in advance to know what they are supposed to be listening to in the movie. All the important songs were recorded in mid 1988, as the movie was in production. The rest of the album was recorded in EARLY 1989.
The album was released on June 20, three days before the movie opened. Which pissed off Elfman since, as a result, his score album was released months later so it wouldn’t affect the sales of Prince.
I do know that songs that are actually in the film have to be recorded earlier if the scene(s) require(s) an interaction with them but in Burton on Burton, Burton does mention that Prince was supposed to write one or two of these but started to enjoyed it and composed a all bunch of others.
So technically, it is possible that Prince, while writing these additional songs, heard Elfman’s score, that was also recorded quite early, and adapted the theme. After all, Scandalous only appears in the end credits and you can always change that cue late in the game…So, now that my highly hypotetical theory is settled, I’m going to check my Janet K. Halfyard book to see how wrong I am…
Ok, so maybe Elfman had come up with the main theme before that… You don’t need to have a finished movie to compose a theme… I remember his story about being on an airplane when he got the idea… Maybe that was before Scandalous…
Or maybe, instead of ripping his Batman theme off Herrmann and Wagner’s work, he just asked Prince to write it…
That was the rumor at the time. This was the beginning of the period when people accused Elfman of using ghost writers. Everyone claimed it was Shirley Walker who was writing most of his scores. Which is why eventually the went their seperate ways. Elfman just couldn’t keep using Walker as a conductor if people were thinking that it was her writing the music.
As for Prince, Elfman did credit Scandalous on the CD. So, if any ripping off was done there was credit given.
Descent Into Mystery Wrote:
> As for Prince, Elfman did credit Scandalous on the
> CD. So, if any ripping off was done there was
> credit given.This is BS. Everyone that talk about the batman theme Elfman COMPOSED hear the Hermannisms.And that’s not a criticism. I remember one critic thought Elfman was watching “Journey of the Center of the Earth” on the plane the day he came up with the batman theme. Even the FSM Spider-man podcast joked about how he came up with his spiderman theme and played JOTCOTE music. So that’s a bunch of BS about Elfman copying Prince. He was only FORCED to adapt ” Scandelous ” into his score for the the love theme.
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