After debuting his career-encapsulating show at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival back in April, Danny Elfman will bring an extended version of his desert performance to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles Oct. 28-29.
For years, the singer-songwriter, producer and composer has reprised his role as the singing voice of Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s beloved 1993 movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” as an orchestra, choir and special guests performed the score during live-to-film events in the L.A. area each Halloween season.
This year, you’ll want to leave the kids at home since Skellington only plays a tiny role in Elfman’s latest show, dubbed Danny Elfman: From Boingo to Batman To Big Mess And Beyond!
It features Elfman, backed by a full rock band, orchestra and choir, playing songs like “Dead Man’s Party,” “Only a Lad” and “Just Another Day” from his tenure fronting Los Angeles new wave band Oingo Boingo, solo material — including the tracks “Sorry,” “Kick Me” and “Happy” from 2021’s “Big Mess,” his first solo collection in over three decades — and selections from his film and television scores including “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “The Simpsons.” Tickets are $59.50-$499.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 26 at Ticketmaster.com.
“I put tons of work into trimming the show for Coachella,” Elfman said during a recent video chat of his strict one-hour time slot at the festival in Indio. He’ll be working back in an additional 30 minutes of music and visuals for the upcoming Halloween shows.
“I had seven or eight edits of each of the songs and I’d try to trim 12 seconds here, 27 more seconds there, because Coachella is a tight ship,” he recalled. “So there are really two things for these new shows: the first is that I’m going to untruncate some of the songs that were a bit too truncated, like some Boingo songs that got cut way down, and the other thing is that I get to put in more songs that I would have liked to, but they just ended up getting cut.”
While fans will get to experience the director’s cut version of Elfman’s concerts in the desert at the Hollywood Bowl, he admits that those initial shows topped the most nerve-racking moments of his life. It was the first time in well over two decades that Elfman had served as the frontman for a full performance.
“It was by far the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. He initially pitched the idea to Paul Tollett, president of Goldenvoice and producer of Coachella, back in 2019. But he wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to blend his audiences — from the Oingo Boingo fanatics to the film buffs — to put on a show that made sense.
“I found myself putting it together and going ‘Oh my God this is crazy’ … and then it all canceled,” he said of building the set before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. “I got depressed and went into quarantine like everybody did and I dealt with that by making ‘Big Mess,’ which was a shock. Two years went by and I got the call saying ‘It’s on in 2022!’ We were just as far behind as we were the first time with the show in 2020 and we had to hustle.”
Elfman and his crew — which included a backing band consisting of drummer Josh Freese (The Vandals, Sting), bassist Stu Brooks (Dub Trio) and Nili Brosh and Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit) on guitars, with an orchestra and choir, conducted by Oingo Boingo guitarist and orchestrator Steve Bartek — added in more content to the 2022 performance since “Big Mess” had been released during the pandemic.
“Honestly, as it got closer to the date and we were rehearsing, I said ‘This will either be the best or worst decision of my career … probably the worst,’” he said. “In the final moments, before taking the stage, I was thinking that this was going to be the absolute train wreck of my life. I had designed a train that is going to go off the tracks and it’s going to go up in a fiery explosion and I have never felt more of a sense of doom because this show seemed impossible.”
Elfman said he was up against crazy time restraints, having only 35 minutes to get his entire 50-person ensemble mic’d up and ready to go. He was also having issues hearing himself and others through in-ear monitors due to the overwhelming amount of sound equipment and bass. Then the dust kicked up in the wind just minutes before showtime.
“I was like ‘OK, what else could go wrong,” he said with a laugh.
“About a third of the way into the show, I couldn’t even tell if anybody was hearing me,” he continued. “So I said ‘[expletive] it, have a good time.’ I decided I didn’t care. The exact moment my shirt came off was exactly the point where I just tapped into how I used to feel on stage years ago … that grounded me and I just said, ‘I don’t care. Even if no one can hear me, I’m going to have a good time.’ And I did.”
The audience could definitely hear him and the performance ended up being one of the most talked about sets of both Coachella weekends. Despite all of his fears, Elfman said he only messed up a couple of times, but that the ship sailed rather smoothly. It was the band, he said, that truly kept him sane.
“It was such a supportive, talented, loving group of people,” he said. “They got me, they cared and they were committed. I just feel like I lucked out in falling into this particular group of musicians who make me feel so comfortable and confident.”
Earlier this month, Elfman released “Bigger. Messier.,” an album of remixed versions of the songs off of “Big Mess” that had Elfman collaborating with artists like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, Iggy Pop, Death Grips’ Zach Hill, Xiu Xiu, Squarepusher, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Blixa Bargeld and many more. Elfman said the last time he even entertained a musical collaborative effort was back in 1991 when he worked on the song “Face to Face” with Siouxsie and the Banshees for the film “Batman Returns.”
“It was a real exercise in giving up control,” he said of working with others on the remixes. “I made the decision at the beginning to try to not guide anybody into do anything to please me. The only input I gave to all of these artists was to just be themselves and it was such a pleasure getting these things back and having no idea what to expect.”
While it was fun creating in the studio and listening to on record, Elfman said the electronic remixes don’t quite work in the live setting.
“So, no, we’re not bringing out Iggy Pop or Trent Reznor, as fun as that would be,” he said with a laugh. “Trent has his own shows and God knows where Iggy is on the planet, and Blixa is out in Germany. So, you’re just stuck with me. Sorry!”
The venture into experimenting with multiple genres coupled with returning to the stage got Elfman’s creative juices flowing, but he’s not looking to rush into the next project. At the moment, he said he’s a bit frazzled since he’s seemingly crammed three years worth of work into one, including opening his Cello Concerto in Paris, France, and the Percussion Concerto in Vienna, Austria and London, England earlier this year. He’s also finishing up the music for Tim Burton’s new Addams Family-inspired Netflix series, “Wednesday,” as well as working on director Noah Baumbach’s black comedy, “White Noise,” which will also hit the streaming platform later this year.
“I’m not planning what I’m going to do next, but I have fragmented ideas,” he said. “I hate to ever announce what I’m thinking about because sometimes it evolves into something worthwhile and sometimes it’s just an experiment. But all of this definitely has opened my mind to exploring that universe more. Anything is possible … and perhaps there will be nothing. I never like to make promises or set expectations. I like to set the lowest expectations possible. That’s my M.O.”
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