13th Floor Interview: Danny Elfman – Making a Big Mess

Brace yourself! Big Mess, the new solo album by acclaimed film composer/Oingo Boingo man Danny Elfman, will shake you up and wake you up.

The 18 songs that comprise Big Mess sound like nothing Elfman has done before. Already there have been comparisons to the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. 

While several of the tracks have been drip-fed over the previous months, the entire double album is released today.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Danny Elfman about the cathartic experience that was making Big Mess.

Listen to the interview here:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So, How’s things in LA?

DE: God! I couldn’t even tell you. I’m in my loft.

MD: Oh, gotcha, yeah!

DE: I have no windows. It could be hot or cold out there, and I wouldn’t know it.

MD: Alright. Far out!

DE: Now, you definitely don’t sound like you’re from New Zealand.

MD: No, I moved here in 1994 from Rochester, New York.

DE: Great choice.

MD: My kids agree with me 100%. They thank me every day. They’re adults now.

DE: I think growing up in New Zealand is a good thing.

MD: Have you been here much?

DE: Only for one day. I mean, I just haven’t been there. I just finished  another radio show with another New Zealand gentleman, and I ended it with, “Please, rattle the cage! Get us over there! Get me over there! I don’t care for what. I don’t care if it’s Big Mess, Nightmare Before Christmas, Burt and Elfman Show!” It’s like, “Get us over there!”

MD: You do have a little bit of a Kiwi connection with Peter Jackson, having done one of his films.

DE: Not a very strong connection, but yeah.

MD: You’ve done films for just about everybody, I guess.

DE: Yeah, yeah. I, unfortunately, did not stay in touch with Peter over the years, but nonetheless, I have this strong sense of New Zealand being this place that I am really going to love. I’ve been to Australia, and not New Zealand, and I tried very hard, the year before last, to get to Tasmania.

MD: Okay.

I myself was surprised by how much venom was in me just trying to get out, and then, once I started writing more, I realised that I was just filled with frustration.

DE: In fact, in a weird way, Tasmania is responsible for what led to Big Mess.

MD: Okay. How’s that?

DE: There’s a story: Okay, 2019, I was talking with the curators of the festival, Dark Mofo, in Tasmania. And it’s a festival I’ve always wanted to be a part of, and I had an idea for thing, and I told them, I said, “I don’t know what to call it,” “I’ll call it Chamber Punk: rock band and female voices and… chamber orchestra,” and they were like, “Well that’s interesting.” And I wrote the song called I’m So Sorry, and at that point, it was a ten-twelve minute instrumental piece – I wasn’t singing on it at all; I was only playing guitar – and, unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with a rest of the show to go out there and play – because you can’t just come out with one ten minute piece of music: you need the rest of the show, and the year just did not allow me to do that – … but then, when Cochella popped up for the beginning of 2020, I said, “I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to put together this crazy show with half film music, half band, and I’ve got this new piece of music, and I’m going to walk out there and have the pleasure of having my audience – that hasn’t seen me on stage in years and years doing anything but Jack Skellington – go, “What the fuck is this?” and they’ll have no idea, and that excited me to no end. And so, the instrumental, I’m so Sorry, became the song Sorry, and then when everything collapsed and I went into quarantine, I found that , “I got this song; I’ll write a few more.”

MD: You wrote a few more? Yeah!

DE: And I intended just to do half a dozen. And eighteen songs later, here’s the Big Mess… but it started with that!

MD: And the reaction from all of your longtime fans is going to be kind of what you just described. It’s like, “Where did this come from?” so, I guess that’s the obvious question: where did this come from?

DE: In the beginning of 2020, and even from the end of 2019, when I wrote I’m so Sorry and put lyrics to it: when I put the lyrics to that song, I myself was surprised by how much venom was in me just trying to get out, and then, once I started writing more, I realised that I was just filled with frustration. Even without the pandemic and quarantine, it was like the most surrealistic, depressing time to be an American in my lifetime. I was watching us willfully hand the keys over to a Putin-style, authoritarian democracy. And for however many years – I figure it to be at least four, because it wouldn’t have even been a surprise to me if they changed the rules and made it twelve … they were no longer interested in being America as we knew it. It was going to be this new thing modelled after the hero, Vladimir Putin – what a great job he did doing democracy in Russia – so it was a bad time, and then add a pandemic and a quarantine to that: It was just, you know, “I gotta get out of here.” and I’d never thought that in my life…that I actually have to pack up my family, and look for another place to live, or – you know, we were trying to decide – we hole up in California, and try to think of California as our own country, which it should be right now. I wish it was. I mean, we are the seventh largest economy in the world. The fact that we’re tied to the rest of this country of insanity is… I’d give anything to extricate that, and make that bubble really a bubble, but that’s never going to happen. So it was either do we do that mentally – think of us as separate from America – or do we physically have to uproot ourselves and move to Australia, New Zealand, Canada or Great Britain – you know, United Kingdom – because I only speak English?

I always led with the song Sorry, and I wanted to get that right out of the gate. This is the centre of it; and if this throws you off the horse, then you’re not going to get back on!

MD: Were you aware of these repressed feelings of anger and frustration before you wrote those lyrics? Did you know that was in you?

DE: Oh yeah! It’s all I’d been feeling for four years. It’s like everybody I knew, it was living in a state of disbelief. And the ironic thing is that, as I start pulling old songs for Cochella, I said, “I’ll pull more songs that are a little more socially [and politically relevant], and it was easy to do, because I was sarcastically talking about dystopia for years! I couldn’t believe how many songs I was able to pull out, and just say, “Alright, I could play that now,” and its fine today, either in a sarcastic way or in a real, fearful way. I was afraid of a fascist America forty years ago; I just didn’t think it would actually happen.

MD: The lyrics are one thing, but the music is another. That’s the other thing that’s going to surprise a lot of people. I mean, anybody who’s listened to Oingo Boingo or your soundtrack stuff or The Simpsons or whatever. They’re going to put this on, and just be completely floored. It’s being compared to Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Where did that come from?

DE: It’s just where I’m at. It’s just me. When my manager, Laura, and I started setting up meetings with record companies, to hear music, it was really a challenge, because it meant we all quarantined for ten days, we all took our test, then they’d come in – only two people – and four of us – me and Laura, two representatives – we’d sit in my studio in four separate chairs, and I’d play the record: not an easy thing. But Laura would warn them: she says, “I’d better warn you right now: this is not Oingo Boingo.” They’d go, “No, no, no! We know, we know. We really want to hear what Danny’s up to.” Okay, just know…

MD: Brace yourself!

DE: Purposely, I always led with the song Sorry, and I wanted to get that right out of the gate. This is the centre of it; and if this throws you off the horse, then you’re not going to get back on! It was kind of like weirdly, perversely fun, because I was getting some horrified reactions, and part of me really kind of liked that, because it was like – I don’t know – I’ve always thrived on that type of thing, in a weird way, until I got Anti- and Epitaph in there, and it was a whole different ball game. From I’m so Sorry onwards, Andy from Anti- just… he stood up and applauded, and he wanted to talk about the song for ten minutes, and all the different things we were doing and meant to him, and was like, “Wow! He actually gets this thing more than I do!” and then I went and played more… and every song, he would talk about the connection of where he saw the source of it coming from, and they were so locked into it, and I said, “Okay, I’ve found a home.”

MD: I know I was surprised and did a double take when I saw, “Oh, you’re signed to Epitaph? This is going to be interesting.”

DE: Yeah! And then Andy brought in his partner, Brett – Andy is Anti-, and Brett is Epitaph – and Brett really became almost like a producing partner. I’ve never had a partnership like this. Record companies are always, “Finish the record, play it for them, put it out,” and Brett: every mix, he was really involved in the mixing, the mastering, the decisions, and I got really used to…as soon as I’d finished something…send  it to Brett, and we’d talk about it, “Where’s the bass sitting? How’s the drums feeling?” He was very specific, and his ears were, to me, really helpful. He was like a great sounding board. That was also a first-time experience, where I had somebody in a label that I actually really trusted – their ears – and sonically, what we were doing, and all of his input was really good input, and I became very dependent…. As soon as we finished a first track of a mix – first pass of a mix – it went right to Brett. We’d talk about it, and then I’d give notes, and I’d get into where the mix is going.

MD: We discussed the opening track, Sorry. I want to jump to the end, to Insects, simply because it has an extremely intense vocal performance from you…

DE: Well, that’s what made me put it on the album. It was one of the many things I did for Cochella, and it was the only piece that was so different from the original – in what it became – and I really like the performance of it – it was so much fun – that I said, “I’m going to put this one old song on Big Mess.” It’s the only one a wanted to put on there, because it felt fresh enough to me, that I said, “This’ll be the one exception.”

MD: So when you’re recording a vocal like that, are you alone in a room? Are there other people around? Where are you mentally, physically? How did you do that?

I was singing in front of speakers, because I didn’t have headphones, I didn’t care. I was like, “This doesn’t matter. This is rock & roll.”

DE: The whole album was recorded in quarantine in Santa Barbara, a hundred miles away from my studio, where I have a great collection of microphones and guitars and all kinds of gear, and I was in a little writing room that just has my computer. It has my samples. I could write orchestral works, if I needed to, but nothing, other than a desk, my computer, one electric guitar, one microphone – one hand-held microphone. I did the entire album there. I played all the parts. I did all the vocals, and I would say ninety percent of those demo vocals – I made a demo of every song – and ninety percent of them stayed on the album.

MD: Man!

DE: I knew enough from the past to know never discard a demo vocal. When I did Nightmare Before Christmas many years ago, when I first wrote the songs, I went into the studio, and one long session with Tim Burton was on the other side of the glass with the engineer – he was like the producer – and we recorded all the vocals on all ten songs, and I did every part but Sally – and for Sally, I brought in a female vocalist. Obviously, I couldn’t do Sally, but I did all the other parts: big parts, little parts, Jack’s parts, Oogey Boogey, everything. It was just to get Henry started on the production – Henry Selick, the director – in Oakland, California, so we needed these mixes, these demos. Now… cut to… almost two years later, now we’re back in the studio doing the finished vocals – this is way down the line – and every song I was doing – I’d do many passes, I’d record, I’d do it again, I’d do it again, I’m standing in front of a nice microphone – and Tim would go, “Can you just play the demo for that part? I just want to hear it,” and he would play the demo… and we’d listen to it, and he goes, “God, I hate to say it,” but on this verse or this chorus, he goes, “I kinda liked the demo more.”

MD: Right!

DE: But you know what? I didn’t disagree with them once.

MD: Right. It’s nice to have that confirmation from somebody else who’s outside of the…

DE: Yeah, and I understood that… sometimes your first approach to a vocal, which sometimes you could out-do and do better, and sometimes you’ll just never get the spirit back of the first approach, so I knew that well enough to know to take it seriously, so even though it was a hand-held mic, and I was singing in front of speakers, because I didn’t have headphones, I didn’t care. I was like, “This doesn’t matter. This is rock & roll.” I was like, “Who the fuck cares?” There were only a few things that I re-did, and, mostly, not because I wasn’t even happy with the performance, but I changed some lyrics and re-did some parts, and there’s a few things I did a little differently, but I would say ninety percent of it was from that single, hand-held mic by myself is the Big Mess, and half of the guitar is you’re hearing also.

MD: Oh cool! Because you do let some other folks [play]. There’s Josh Freese playing drums, and Robin (Finck) and Nili (Brosh) playing guitars, so I assume that was kind of just stuff that you felt to fill up the spaces later.

DE: Well, no… I intended Robin and Nili to do all the parts, really, but I found that as they were laying their parts in, my stuff would keep it funky, and so we found that in the mixing, there was a balance… Nili would nail the shit, and Robin is brilliant… it sounds so good now, and if we mix some of me in there, it’s just enough to make it wonky, because my playing is definitely funkier than either of those two, and so… there were things that I hit: feedback and noise and, sometimes, the way I’d play a line. There was only one song, True, where I kept all of my guitars, but, for the most part, it became a mix between the three of us, and it worked out just really, really well. There’s one song in particular that I did not want to use m performance of, and it’s one of my favourite songs. It was done as an improv: whole thing, top to bottom, two days, improvised vocals, improvised guitar riffs, and it’s called Devil Take Away, and it’s the last song I wrote for the album…. It’s really a hard part; it’s really difficult – difficult timing, difficult part – and Nili, it was her turn to come in and play, and it was like, “Nili, do you think you can handle this?” “Oh yeah! I’m okay. I’m fine,” “Okay, so take your time. We’ll just do one section at a time,” and we roll tape – give her a first pass at running through it – and she fucking nails it!

MD: Don’tcha love it?

DE: And we stopped the tape, and the engineer, Noah and I, both start laughing, just because we couldn’t believe it, and Nili was all like, “I’m sorry. Did I fuck it up? What did I do? I’m sorry. I could do it better,” and we’re like, “No, no, no, no! Nili, you don’t understand. We’re laughing just as a reaction to your awesomeness!”

MD: I love it!

DE: Not that anything you did was funny or wrong, because… neither of us thought that that was possible.

MD: So now, the album is due out in June – and it’s a double album, there’s eighteen songs, like you mentioned – but you’ve been kind of drip feeding songs once a month, I think it is, and there are videos attached with them, which we would have to touch on, because they’re pretty awesome, and if the music doesn’t blow us [away]… the video is going to put them away, and so a song like Love In The Time of COVID, with this video with this green monster, kind of devilish thing with horns and all that. How involved are you with the video making?

DE: Well, I mean, involved but to the point where I’m bringing in people that I could trust, and say, “Do your thing,” because it was really just to do seven videos, and I did not want to micro manage the seven videos and do it that way. I really decided to take an approach – right from the first one with Sorry – where Jesse Kanda – well, Sorry and Happy were both being done at the same time – Aaron Johnson and Jesse Kanda… they’d already done some of the visuals for Cochella, for those pieces, and I was like, “Can you turn these into videos?” I really decided, “I gotta let them run with it, and Jesse’s brilliant. He’s off in Tokyo; just let him do his thing,” And by doing that, you don’t know what you’re going to come out with exactly, but… your chances of getting something really surprising are better than if you’re trying to micro manage them into doing exactly what you want.  I have a creative director, Berit Gilma, and she and I came up with an idea for laying out how to lay out seven videos but bringing in directors that are very diverse, and just giving a concept or, even, part of a performance, but then allowing them to express themselves, and take the gamble of trusting other artists.

Sarah’s madness is all over Big Mess. And it was just one of those rare moments where you meet an artist, and you realise, “This is how I want to represent my music.

MD: Sometimes you find out… learn a few things about your own music… from having someone have a whack at it, and putting their own stamp on it as well.

DE: Absolutely! Absolutely.

MD: So, Love In The Time of COVID, that was shot in Berlin, was it?

DE: Yeah. That was completely in Berlin, and that’s why the only bits that I have on there are just on the phone, because they’re just little things that we shot here in my studio, and sent over to them, because I couldn’t be there for any of it. That was another thing: I couldn’t actually get on a plane, and go to Tokyo or Berlin. I couldn’t go to New York. I couldn’t go anywhere, so it was rough, so that was like, “Let’s do this concept with Sven in Berlin, and simultaneously, we have the stuff that’s developing that we’re going to do here with Sarah Sitkin and for True, and so there was overlapping…. Sven told me the concept of what he was doing, but I didn’t know how it was going to look. Jesse Kanda told me a sense of what he was doing, but I had no idea what he was talking about… this digital construction of this thing he was making.…. Petro, who did Kick Me, we had a concept of doing positive negative, positive negative inverse photography, but how he was going to put it together was all in his own mind…and it was just like, “Petro, look, just do your thing, and it’ll be fine,” and even now, I only saw a rough cut, this morning, of Sam Rolfes’ wonderful animator, who’s off in New York doing Insects.  He got it about three weeks ago, here in LA, but me shooting was shooting with body motion sensors for an avatar, and the avatar is what he’s actually putting in the video. It’s a bit hard to explain, but it’s going to be really whacked!

MD: I’ll bet! And the album cover itself? The artwork for that, with the three headed kind of I don’t know…

DE: Oh, the album artwork: all of the artwork is Sarah Sitkin. When I met Sarah, and saw her work, I realised I had a complete harmony with her sensibility and my sensibility. We clicked instantly, and I just said, “Every piece of art in this Big Mess project is going to be Sarah,” and, even, right now as we speak, Berit and I are putting together a book of Sarah’s images that she did of me – it’ll be, probably, a forty, fifty page book – for the deluxe box set.

MD: Oh yeah! I saw something about that. I’m like, “Oh my god, there’s more!”

DE: Yeah! So, we’re assembling that now, so Sarah’s madness is all over Big Mess. And it was just one of those rare moments where you meet an artist, and you realise, “This is how I want to represent my music.”

MD: And there are remixes and retreatments…?

DE: A lot of remixes! Oh my god, that’s been really exciting, because this has all been… generated by Stu Brooks, the bass player, and he approached me saying, “Are you open to doing some remixes? It’ll be a good way to reach out to…” and I go, “Yeah!” I mean, I love the idea of other people reinterpreting, but I said, “No one’s going to want to do my shit. I’m just an old film composer.”

I’ve got two freight trains heading towards me: one called Sixty Five – a big science fiction fantasy starring Adam Driver – and Dr. Strange 2 – Marvel Universe. I can already hear their whistles, in the distance.

MD: Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.

DE: And to my surprise, it’s not been that way. It’s been just a great group of remixers have come on board, and we’ve only gotten three so far, but there’s six more coming in the next month. I don’t know whether I’m allowed to talk with you about the reinterpretations that are coming out, still, in the future… other vocalists coming…

MD: That’s going to be cool.

DE: Yeah. Let me just say that there’s a couple of duets that came out of this, that I wouldn’t have dreamed of happening in a million years, or, even, one year ago. Stu was like, “Let me just send your music to this person or that person,” and I go, “No! I’m embarrassed. I can’t do that,” he goes, “Oh, I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” Next thing I know….

MD: That’s cool. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

DE: It’s really great. The people have been responding to the material in  a very positive way, so whether I find an audience or not, I don’t know, but from other artists, it’s been really, very sweet….

MD: How have you changed as an artist? How has what has happened in the last year – politically, socially, pandemically – affected how you work and how you think about what you’re doing?

DE: It hasn’t yet. I mean, politically, obviously, we’re given a reprieve. We’ve been given a four year reprieve, but that’s all I see this as: as a four year reprieve. I don’t think anything has changed in the country right now. Ironically, if it weren’t for the pandemic, we’d be in the middle of the second of God knows how many Trump terms, or ‘Trumpian’ terms: probably Trump leading the Trump Junior…who the fuck knows.

MD: I see you’ve sampled him a bit in one of your tunes.

DE: Yeah. And so, we got a reprieve. That’s the unexpected, good thing that came out of. The only unexpected, positive thing that came out of the pandemic, was toppling the Trump regime temporarily. Clearly that’s the only reason he wasn’t re-elected. But, other than that, we’re not over the pandemic. Nothing’s normal yet. We just see light at the end of the tunnel, which is great. I’m going to have a small 4th of July celebration this year, which I couldn’t have last year with my family, and I’ve not gotten together with my family in over a year.

MD: Man! That’s rough.

DE: So, that’s good, and we are announcing a Halloween concert of Nightmare Before Christmas.

MD: Oh cool!

DE: So, fingers crossed by Halloween….

MD: What are you going to do on the day that Big Mess is released? Have you got plans?

DE: Oh, maybe have a drink.

MD: Very good!

DE: I’ll sit down, and poor myself a nice glass of bourbon on the rocks, and go, “A year’s worth of work. A year’s worth of my life. Big Mess, here it goes, for better or worse.”

MD: And what’s next? Have you got something else in the planning stages?

DE: Oh, yeah! I’m piled up right now. I’m finishing touches on… a cello concerto for the French cellist, Gautier Capicon. At the same time, I’ve got two freight trains heading towards me: one called Sixty Five – a big science fiction fantasy starring Adam Driver – and Dr. Strange 2 – Marvel Universe. I can already hear their whistles, in the distance, coming towards me. And on top of that, oh my God, I’ve got two more commissions that I’m finishing up, and so, between the classical world, which is half of my life, and film world, which is half of my life, and now Big Mess, which is half of my life, it’s a bit of a problem, because it’s three halves.

MD: That’s not good math! Alright, I think we have to wrap up, but thank you so much for spending your time talking to me. Hopefully, you can make it down to New Zealand sometime soon, and spend more than a day here.

DE: Please! I’ll say the same thing to you. Rattle the cage! Help get me down there. Build some interest, because I really would love to spend more time in New Zealand and Australia very much. I feel that I’d like to connect with that part of the world, musically. That was what was attracting me to Dark Mofo two years ago. That same attraction is still there, and so, I’m just looking for the chance to get over there, so give it your best.

MD: Alright, I’ll do my best. Thank you very much.

Danny Elfman’s Big Mess is released today. Click here to order.