Okay, we're taping from this end.
I do love it how we still call it tape.
Even if we're recording an interview via Zoom, we say, "I've got to tape that."
I still do exactly the same thing. I go, "Are we getting this on tape? Is tape running?" It never changes. It doesn't matter if it's all [Avid] Pro Tools or not. "We've got it on tape."
Even the word "analog" means "comparable."
I know. I thought about putting a 24-track back in my studio again for the hell of it. I know that some people do believe in that.
There are two decks here.
[rotates camera]
What are those?
Otari MX-80s.
Otaris, yeah. At my first studio, back in Topanga, I was down 85 steps under the house on a hillside. I dug out, lifted up the house, put in a retaining wall, put the house back down on it, and called that my studio. I had an MCI 24-track and a Soundcraft mixing board, and I was so excited. "I'm in business here." That was my world, for years.
Keeping those running was a pain.
Do you remember the synchronizers, the [Time Line] Lynx [Time Code] Modules?
Yeah. I've got an Adams-Smith Zeta~Three in here. I've never even hooked it up!
Back in the day, that's what we had to use. I reached a point, in the '90s, where it was getting insane. On film scores we had four 24-track [tape decks] going. Then we'd bring in four of these digital multitracks, 8-track units, and we must have had eight Lynx all going. We'd start out a cue, and we'd be watching. Like, "Sync 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… No, come on; god damn it! Cut. We didn't get the last Lynx up."
They'd have to have a lot of pre-roll on tape to get the units to have time to sync.
So much pre-roll. I swear to god, we had to roll a minute before it started to sync up.
There are obviously aspects that none of us miss about that analog world. It's hard to explain to someone who didn't grow up seeing that in action.
It's funny, because when it comes to tracking for a song, I still sometimes miss tape. It's not as big of a luxury as it is in the film score, where we've got 100 tracks going. Being able to stop and start, roll back four bars and pick it up again with an orchestra… oh, my god; that was a game changer. When I'm playing along and hit a mistake, "Okay, cut! Let's roll back to bar 116 and pick it up. There we go. Thank you."
And to be able to easily "see" and know where that is, instead of rewinding and searching around for the bar.
Exactly, exactly. Anyhow, I'm sorry. I already digressed hugely. Apologies.
Oh, no issue! I thought we'd have an easy chat. I co-produced and recorded "Miss Misery" for Elliott Smith for Good Will Hunting. You did the score, and you arranged and co-produced his "Between the Bars (orchestral)" version for the soundtrack.
Sitting with Elliott and Gus [Van Sant, director] in the basement of Gus's house is still one of the great treats I've had. I do remember heading out to see Gus in Boston, [Massachusetts], and he goes, "Look, I know this seems odd, but I'm going to give you a tape. Do you know who Elliott Smith is?" At that point I hadn't been aware of him. He goes, "I think this will be the only artist in the score for songs, and I'd like to get your opinion and soak that up." I listened, and it totally made sense. It was such a rare treat. Usually, songs are dropped in at the end. When I'm scoring, I don't even know what they are until I go to the premiere, because they've changed ten times. Here I was able to take the score and make it go rather seamlessly into the song and back into the score. To try to make it all cohesive was such a pleasure. Of course, Elliott was a pleasure. Later, for the Academy Awards, we were both nominated. Elliott called me one day, and he said, "Danny, I'm at rehearsal, and it's not going well." Bill Conti did an arrangement of the song ["Miss Misery"] for the rehearsal. I could see that was a bad match. I said, "So, when do you need something by?" He said, "By tomorrow." I banged out the arrangement and got him his music by the next day!
He told me you had done the arrangement he sang to during the awards.
Well, I didn't really do anything. It was just the strings. They wanted to have the orchestra play along. Keep it simple and stay out of the way. It was the most basic, simple, easy arrangement, because there was nothing that needed amplification or help. It was really to give it some texture, let it play along, and stay out of the way. Don't try to compete with the song. It was a lovely way to end that process with Elliott, to get called into that emergency orchestration. After 110 films, or whatever it's been, one of the only two times I feel I collaborated with anybody – between the score and the songs – was with Elliott on Good Will Hunting and with Tyler, The Creator on The Grinch. Everything else has been totally separate and removed.
The people who do music placement for film frequently just seem to drop something in.
Yeah, exactly. With Gus, it's all very purposeful. He was already shooting the movie. He had a clear idea, and he was only halfway through the shooting.
Speaking of songs and string arrangements, your new record, Big Mess, is intense! I wouldn't call it a mess, but it is big.
Well, there are 18 songs. By the time I was at eight songs, I already could see what was happening. There was this dichotomy that was coming out. By then, I'd already said, "This is going to be a big mess," because it was going to be two records, written by two different artists, both of whom live inside my head. They don't get along. In fact, they can't stand each other. Laura [Engel], my manager, was saying, "Maybe you should release one of the albums now, and we'll do the other in a year or two." I said, "Laura, in two years I'm not going to want to release any of this. I'm going to be into something else completely." That was the whole frustration of being in a band [Oingo Boingo] for all those years. Every two years I wanted to be in a different band.
Right, right.
I never had a sense of what we were or who I was. Decades later, I finally gave up trying. I don't know if I have an identity or not. If I do, I don't know what it is. It's a big mess in there!
I know you had a Coachella show scheduled before this album that didn't end up happening. Was that the impetus to start writing new vocal-based material?
Yeah. Definitely guitar-based, but with the orchestra. Coachella had been trying to get me to put together an Oingo Boingo reunion for years. I'm so sorry, but it's never going to happen. After Hans Zimmer did an orchestral show at Coachella [in 2017], they wanted to do an orchestra film date. I said, "That still doesn't feel quite right to me." It means playing with a lot of pre-recorded tracks. They cannot mic an orchestra on stage with 30 minutes between sets. It's impossible. Laura brought me out there in 2019. I had written this piece of instrumental music that became the song "Sorry." I wanted it originally to be part of this music festival in Tasmania, called Dark Mofo. It's a great festival. I pitched it as "chamber punk." I said, "I've got an idea for a piece of music with an orchestra and a rock band." I wrote "Sorry" as a 12-minute instrumental. I wasn't singing on it; I was only playing guitar. The only vocals were, "I'm so sorry," by a female choir. The problem was I couldn't put together the rest of a set to go out there and pull it together in 2019. I didn't have time. When I saw Coachella, I said, "Wait a minute, what if it's half film music and half rock band?" I'd revive half a dozen Oingo Boingo tracks that I could still tolerate, and I'd rework them. I'd turn "Sorry" into a song. That's how I approached Coachella. Then it was three months of work, playing with this new band that I was loving being with.
That sounds fun.
It was so inspiring to me, and then it all collapsed. I went into quarantine, like everybody did. I took no film work for 2020, as I had 22 concerts planned. I had concerts for The Nightmare Before Christmas. I had concerts for the Elfman and Burton show [Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton]. I had two world premieres of classical music scheduled. I had Coachella, and we were going to do more shows around that. I'd committed 2020 to concert work. Three months of prep to put together this Coachella show, and nothing. I have a place, not far from Santa Barbara, and I've had it as a second home for many, many years. I've never spent more than a week here. I grabbed my wife, son, and dog, and said, "Let's get out of L.A. for this. It could get nasty." After sitting out here for a month or so, I started working on a classical piece. It was for The Proms, the big classical festival in London, England, in August. They hadn't yet officially canceled. Come April, they announced that nothing was going to happen. That's when I said, "I'm going to write a couple more pieces, just for the hell of it." I was angry, frustrated, and depressed. I had one acoustic guitar, one electric guitar, a handheld microphone, and no headphones. I had my Axe-Fx [amp modeling] rack, so I didn't need a [guitar] amp.
And you started writing?
Yeah, it's a writing room. It's not even a studio. I have my samples, so I could do orchestral work when I'm away from home. I think it's because of Coachella that I had the feel of an electric guitar in my hand. That's why it's a guitar-based album, because it could easily have gone synth-based. At that moment I was feeling the strings still on my fingers, and that became the heart of it. The sound of the band and the orchestra playing together became my center of what I was hearing. That brought me to the direction that the Big Mess went into. Taking on that attitude was due to having been in that mode with a band.
Right. When you're angry, there's nothing better than hitting a guitar. It's very different than playing a keyboard or a synth.
Yeah, exactly right. I let out a lot of aggression with my guitars and vocals. I realized, after my first week, "Fuck the headphones. I'll sing in front of the speakers."
Were those a lot of keeper vocals that you did?
