Hans Florian Zimmer has gone from The Buggles to Burbank in 30 incident-packed years. An inspiration for a generation of movie composers, he's on speed dial for directors of the calibre of Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott and Steve McQueen. The diversity of those filmmakers is testament to his sheer versatility and capacity for invention and reinvention. Abandoning Inception's 'BRRAAAMMM' motif to a legion of imitators, he's since decorated Rango, Man Of Steel and, most recently, 12 Years A Slave with his mighty compositions. He's also a thoroughly nice man who kindly agreed to take Empire through the key moments of his career to date.
GOING FOR GOLD (1987)"Let me tell you why I love Going For Gold. Going For Gold truly meant that I wasn't starving, and I could pay my rent and I could pay the electricity bill. If you want to be an electronic whizz-kid synthesiser composer there's nothing worse than when the electricity gets cut off, which kept happening to me frequently in those days for non-payment of bills. And Going For Gold, God bless them, they kept me alive!
%20TAFFIN%20(1988)%22I%20didn't%20know%20what%20I%20was%20doing.%20I%20had%20no%20idea!%20I%20ran%20into%20Pierce%20Brosnan%20a%20couple%20of%20years%20ago%20and%20I%20said,%20have%20we%20ever%20worked%20together?+And+then+I+suddenly+went%2C+%27Yeah%2C+Taffin%21%27+I+was+still+Stanley+Myers%27+%28British+composer+whose+work+includes+The+Deer+Hunter+and+My+Beautiful+Laundrette=&auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
%20%22It%20was%20surreal%20to%20be%20nominated%20(for%20the%20Oscar?auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
%20%22I%20grew%20up%20in%20Germany,%20and%20one%20of%20the%20things%20that%20was%20de%20rigeur%20in%20German%20schools%20was%20to%20do%20this%20sort%20of%20Carl%20Orff%20music%20technique,%20where%20all%20the%20kids%20were%20banging%20around%20on%20xylophones%20and%20marimbas%20and%20those%20that%20didn%E2%80%99t%20want%20to%20bang%20around%20had%20to%20play%20treble%20recorder.%20There%20is%20no%20sound%20worse%20than%20a%20whole%20classroom%20of%20kids%20playing%20out%20of%20time,%20really%20loudly,%20all%20blowing%20into%20treble%20recorders.%20They%20have%20no%20dynamic,%20it%E2%80%99s%20on%20or%20off,%20like%20piercingly%20loud%20or%20whatever.%20But%20there%E2%80%99s%20such%20an%20innocence%20about%20it,%20it%E2%80%99s%20such%20an%20absurd%20sound.%20Tony%20(Scott?auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
%20Chris%20(Nolan)%20had%20a%20really%20clear%20idea,%20it%E2%80%99s%20really%20like%20a%20co-composition.%20First%20of%20all%20the%20Piaf%20idea%20was%20in%20the%20script;%20secondly,%20the%20idea%20of%20slowing%20it%20down%20and%20isolating%20those%20brass%20chords%20was%20in%20the%20script.%20(*On%20the%20BRRAAAMMM%20sound*?auto=format&w=1440&q=80){kind=spacer}
I always saw Inception more as a time-travel movie as opposed to a movie about dreams. It’s only after the movie came out that people focused so much on the dreams, but I always took that for granted. I remember asking Chris, 'Will people get this idea? Are people going to get this subdivision of time?' It's what we do in music all the time, you know: this is your tempo, your bass drum, it’s doing one tempo and then we subdivide it and subdivide it again, music can do that very easily. This is how music functions, music functions like dreams, music functions like time travel, music functions like those layers. It was interesting because what was complicated for him as a filmmaker or as a writer is to get that sense across in words, whereas it's second nature in the language of music. So I never saw Inception as a big triumph for the music. I just remember it as being a lot of fun. Johnny Marr came in and it was all really easy. But I need to be a bit careful because people who were working on it keep reminding me of things that I just can’t remember, that I really put myself through it! It’s like when you go to the dentist, you can’t really remember it afterwards.
12 Years A Slave OST is available now on CD and digital download, courtesy of Sony Music