The Danny Elfman score that was considered “unplayable”
Every artist seeks a challenge when revisiting their classic songs. Stagnation is the enemy, and the most esteemed musicians often explore diverse sonic paths throughout their careers. While many mainstream artists experiment with their sound, there’s a niche for the unconventional, and Danny Elfman crafted music deemed unplayable by classically trained musicians for Beetlejuice.
Before becoming known as one of the most cinematic film composers of his time, Elfman was already getting his foot in the door as the brains behind Oingo Boingo. Even for as weird as the late-period new wave bands could get, Elfman was in a class by himself, making different songs like ‘Dead Man’s Party’, whose calling card was about the pure spectacle behind it rather than anything remotely catchy.
Although Elfman could make a slightly off-kilter vibe whenever he went into the studio or on stage, he was just as interested in how music enhanced other art forms. When working on his first handful of films with Tim Burton, like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands, Elfman wasn’t going to take the conventional structure that he saw from most classical composers.
If anything, part of Elfman’s charm was about taking the kind of epic scores heard by legends like John Williams and putting his own quirky spin on them. In his iconic theme for Batman, for instance, there’s a lot more whimsy than one would expect when talking about ‘The Caped Crusader’, playing into the campy nature of a man that swings on grappling hooks decked out in tights.
For one of Elfman’s first collaborations with Burton, he initially thought that his score for Beetlejuice should feel much more traditional. Once he saw the size of Michael Keaton’s performance, he knew that he had the freedom to do something unconventional, using different pieces that played on the offbeat rather than the traditional rhythmic structure.
While it might have been easy for Elfman to play that kind of music on a keyboard or orchestrate it in his mind, he didn’t account for the endurance that it placed on the studio musicians. When working on the first cut of the song, Elfman recalled many members of the orchestra becoming strained, including the tuba player turning blue trying to catch his breath for every single section.
Elfman even remembered getting lambasted by a conductor, telling GQ, “They tried to record it in England for a best-of album. The conductor in England looked at the score they’re playing, and he picked it up and threw it on the floor and said, ‘This shit is unplayable’. But I kind of enjoyed it…I was a brat, and I thrived on negative energy”.
While Elfman’s arrangements weren’t earning him any favours with his classical contemporaries, his style would go on to be emulated by millions later, as he continued to lend his talents to later Burton films and eventually made the iconic theme for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. It may not have been the “correct” way of playing, but Elfman brought that punk-rock ethos to every genre that he decided to play.
