I may simply have fallen victim to expectations, but if someone were to ask me to draw what I thought an Academy Award nominated film composer looked like, I have a general idea of the direction I would go in. I would probably draw a slight, bookish man, the type you might find browsing the wares of a shop full of antiques and curios. Round, owlish glasses would likely be perched on his nose, a balding pate of salt-and-pepper hair. A comfortably fitted sports jacket, in one of the intellectual fabrics, like a tweed or a worsted wool. All I’m saying is, in my mind’s eye, on a spectrum of Anthony Kiedis to Bob Balaban, they’d be heavily, heavily swung towards the Balaban side of things.
Even when I was told that Danny Elfman performed at Coachella, this broad image persisted. I would have expected that same nebbish fellow to be shrunk behind a large organ or piano, or conducting an orchestra with subtle flicks of a wand. What I definitely did not expect was for Danny Elfman to be absolutely, undeniably ripped and covered in tattoos, with an electric guitar slung over his shoulder. At first I figured the picture I was looking at was some reunion tour of a 90s grunge act, one of the few ones where the former frontman actually aged gracefully. I expected Philip Seymour Hoffman and I got redheaded Chris Cornell.