Interview: Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer has composed incredible music for some incredible movies: The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Driving Miss Daisy, Gladiator, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Interstellar, Inception,… The list goes on and on, up to this point including over 150 movies. His most recent score is for the movie Dunkirk, currently out in theaters.

Zimmer’s early musical career involved working with the rock ‘n’ roll bands The Buggles and The Damned, but under the mentorship of Stanley Meyers he transitioned to writing music for movies. As a measure of his success, he has thus far been nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won the Oscar for Best Original Score in 1995 for The Lion King. He has also won two Golden Globe Awards (for The Lion King and Gladiator), and four Grammy Awards (two for The Lion King, and one each for Crimson Tide and The Dark Knight). Over the years, he has worked with notable directors including Christopher Nolan, Ron Howard, Ridley Scott, and Barry Levinson.

This interview was for a preview article for noozhawk.com for Zimmer’s concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl on 8/13/17. It was done by phone on 7/21/17. This was a group interview, of which the highlights were included in the preview article for noozhawk.com (also copied below). Zimmer’s full answers to questions asked by yours truly are given here. (Ed Robinson photo)

Interview: Chris Geddes

Belle and Sebastian’s early days are legendary. The Scottish indie pop band quickly recorded their first album Tigermilk in Glasgow in 1996 as part of the yearly project for a music business course at Stow College, pressing 1000 vinyl copies which they could barely give away.

But the law of supply and demand kicked in as interest in the band grew, thanks to the popularity of their follow-up If You’re Feeling Sinister which had a much wider release, and copies of Tigermilk started commanding prices in the hundreds of pounds. Meanwhile, the band laid low, with singer and main songwriter Stuart Murdoch refusing to do interviews for years. But the buzz continued to build, and the band cracked into the American market.

Fast-forwarding to the present, Belle and Sebastian has by now released eight albums and loads of EPs and singles, with their music drawing favorable comparisons to notables such as The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, and Nick Drake.

The following interview was done with Belle and Sebastian’s keyboard player Chris Geddes by phone on 7/8/13 for a preview article for the band’s concert on 7/17/13 at the Santa Barbara Bowl, the only California appearance of its tour.