Danny Elfman has written over 100 film scores. ‘Batman’, ‘Edward Scissorhands’, are his but the one he is most fond of is his Theme for The Simpsons.
“That was a rarity, Danny tells Noise11.com. “I’ve done like, 105, 110 film scores, and most of them are really, really hard work. But there are a few moment here and there where something just goes ‘bang’, like that and The Simpsons was one of them”.
Elfman had a meeting with the creator of The Simpsons in 1989 when the show was still in development. “I went and met with Matt Groening, the creator, and they showed me a bit of it. I said ‘no-one is going to see this thing. It’s just for fun’. I told Matt ‘if you want something really crazy retro I’m the guy. If you want something contemporary I just don’t fell it”.
The inspiration for the theme was “prehistoric”. Danny summonised The Flintstones as his starting point. “There was something that reminded me of an old Hanna-Barbera Flintstones,” Danny says. “Maybe because Homer was driving the car and the beginning of The Flintstones was also driving a car, crazy. I thought it should just be crazy retro. I thought it will air three times and get forgotten. I wrote it in the car on the way home from that meeting. By the time I got home it was done”.
Everything happened that night. “I ran downstairs, I took a 4-track tape player, I made a demo and it was done. It took me a couple of hours, three, four hours, I don’t remember. The next day I sent Matt the demo and he called me back and he just said ‘Yeah’. That’s it. I have never done anything that went that easy”.
Danny cannot believe how easy it was and what an impact that night would have. “The fact that it wasn’t a throwaway that nobody heard was just amazing. It was just a lucky break. I was in the right place at the right time”.
Jump forward to 2021 and Danny’s first album of contemporary music is about to be released. ‘Big Mess’. Is a double album with origins that became prior to covid but accelerated during.
‘Big Mess’ will be released on 11 June, 2021.
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