Born the 29th of May,
1953 in
Amarillo (my home state of)
Texas, Danny Elfman was the son of a
air force father, which means he was a
military brat and moved around a lot as a child. This could partially explain his eccentric perspective, but it would take a
child psychologist to explain that better than me. It wasn't until the early
1970s that he actually discovered his talent as a
composer. His brother
Richard Elfman started a performance art group in
Paris,
France called
The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and Danny was instrumental with the group from the start. Richard directed a movie called
The Forbidden Zone and Danny composed the music for it. That started Danny on a wild journey as the leading lunatic for a fantastic band based loosely off the performing group:
Oingo Boingo is Danny Elfman's legacy. He didn't stop there though. After Oingo Boingo went the distance and they did their swan song, Elfman went to Hollywood and became a motion picture score composer. He's done most of the scores for
Tim Burton's movies, as well as
The Simpsons theme song, other television shows, commercials and a bunch of other
great shit. He's composed work for at least seventy films. Elfman is fantastic! I hear he's an
asshole if you ever met him face to face, but what creative fruitcake isn't? He is a musical genius who has definitely
earned his bullshit if ever anyone has.
You can learn more about Elfman at newsgroups like rec.music.artists.danny-elfman and alt.fan.oingo-boingo. A great FAQ about him is at http://www.rit.edu/~elnppr/faqs/defaq.html.