Danny Elfman Never Planned to Become a Film Composer. Then Tim Burton Called
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Danny Elfman first became famous as the lead singer of Oingo Boingo before building a career as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable film composers. His work on Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Simpsons helped shape the sound of movies and television for an entire generation. But music was not always his passion. From a punk-ska band to an unexpected partnership with Tim Burton, Elfman shares the story of how an unlikely path through music led him into film scoring.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:13.9 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:17.9 | Danny Elfman came to prominence as the lead vocalist and songwriter for the new wave |
| 0:23.2 | band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s, as seen in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy back to school. |
| 0:30.2 | Since scoring his first studio album in 1985, Elfman is composed over 100 feature film scores like |
| 0:37.2 | Batman, Beetlejuice, Men in Black, and Goodwill Hunting, to name a few, |
| 0:42.3 | as well as compositions for TV shows like The Simpsons and other work as well. |
| 0:48.3 | Here to share his story is the man himself, Danny Elfman. Let's take a listen. |
| 0:59.4 | Music came to me very late in life. I didn't grow up with music around me. |
| 1:07.1 | By the time I was in middle school, I was pretty certain I wanted to pursue a career in nuclear biology, |
| 1:13.6 | although I'm sure I wouldn't have lasted long enough, but it just seemed like a cool thing back then. And really the luck part was that my parents moved from one neighborhood to another in Los Angeles |
| 1:20.6 | between middle school and high school. And so I started high school with no friends. |
| 1:26.6 | I had to make new friends from scratch. |
| 1:29.3 | And I happened to fall in with a kind of an arty group. |
| 1:33.3 | And I realized that I'm like the only one in this group |
| 1:36.3 | that doesn't play an instrument. |
| 1:38.3 | I was like the non-musical member. |
| 1:40.3 | But in that group of friends was a trumpet player named Michael Byron, |
| 1:45.0 | and he turned me on to Stravinsky. |
| 1:48.0 | ... And suddenly it was like a whole new world for me. |
| 2:13.6 | And suddenly it was like a whole new world for me. |
... |
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