Neither Hans Zimmer nor thousands of sweaty millennials in the California desert had any real idea of what to expect from the acclaimed film composer's debut at the biggest music festival in America.
"It was hovering at the edge of complete disaster, you know: 'This isn't going to work. What are we doing?'" Zimmer said of his debut at Coachella last month. "And the audience was probably feeing the same way.
Hours before Zimmer went on stage at the festival, he and his band were still preparing their set on the bus to those hallowed grounds of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. ("It was down to me changing the set 200 times in the days before going on," he said.) This would be his first large-scale performance on U.S. soil—ahead of his first-ever U.S. tour.
Even though he's won an Oscar, four Grammys, two Golden Globes, and scored more than 100 movies, the largely twentysomething crowd at Coachella probably couldn't pick Zimmer out of the crowd of his own 66-person band. They know him best as the name, which has appeared on the posters and in the credits of some of the most beloved movies for decades. Never on a Coachella poster, though—that seemed unthinkable before the 2017 lineup was announced at the beginning of the year. Possibly driven by intrigue or nostalgia, thousands of kids chose to see a 59-year-old film composer rather than the Snapchat-famous DJ Khaled or 29-year-old sensation Tove Lo, who were both playing sets at other nearby stages at the same time.
"I think they grew up with [my music]," Zimmer said of the stunningly large crowd. "A large part of the audience wasn't even born when we did The Lion King. I keep running into people who've gone to college, and they all studied to my music. There are no words to distract [them]. I think that was part of the experiment—we go out there and not show any images from the movies. The subtext is what you felt at the time when you saw this or when you heard this for the first time. That was the big experiment for me. Can the music stand on its own two feet, or is it really just in the old fashioned way that film music used to be called background music. I just needed to find that out for myself."
Swallowing his stage fright, Zimmer walked out in front of the crowd, and—rather than conduct in the traditional way—strapped on a guitar alongside dozens of musicians on stage, an orchestra which included percussionists, multiple synthesizers, and keyboards. The result was the most unexpected triumph of the weekend. They created a transcendent tide of music from Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, Gladiator, and brought out Pharrell to perform "Freedom." The audience's stunned reaction—and inability to dance to a movie score—went viral along with the glowing reviews of Zimmer.
And those memes of kids getting some sort of musical inception from a full live orchestra playing songs from Inception and The Dark Knight—Zimmer definitely saw them.
"When I decided to do The Dark Knight, which is rhythmically all over the place, I wondered if I should straighten it out," Zimmer said. "Then I suddenly went, 'No! Leave it.' They get to have an experience they've never had before, as well. We might as well all go off the deep end here together." Zimmer isn't used to being in front of his audience, as they are often secluded to dark movie theaters, focusing primarily on the imagery of a film rather than the music that underscores it. "One of the things that I never really knew was [that] it's not just you and the musicians on the stage," he explained. "It's the audience that completes the music. That gives the music wings—and that's actually, in a peculiar way, what makes the music have any value at all."
After a 30-year career of making music, Zimmer was suddenly experiencing a side of his craft he'd never known before. And that's because he'd found what's likely the most successful profession for a musician terrified to play music live in front of an audience. Even today, he says he is "literally having an anxiety attack from start to finish" when he's on stage.
"I'm a composer, I'm not a performer," Zimmer says. "I write music that is actually quite hard to play—because what I'm trying to do is write things which are interesting for the musicians to play. Now, I suddenly find myself in the position of regretting writing some of these things because they're slightly outside my technical ability. "
The composer could have gone his entire life without going on a U.S. tour, but two friends convinced him to "stop hiding behind a screen." A few years ago, Pharrell convinced Zimmer to play guitar for him during his performance of "Happy" at the Grammys. Though the prospect was horrifying, Zimmer couldn't turn down the offer. He went on stage during one of the biggest televised events of the year, and Pharrell kept a reassuring eye on him throughout the entire performance. "One of the things Pharrell said to me as well is you just cannot let fear stop you from living your life," Zimmer said. The Smiths' Johnny Marr, who worked with Zimmer on the soundtracks for Inception and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, also encouraged Zimmer to go live, challenging the composer to "look the audience in the eye, see what happens."
While his appearance at Coachella initially seemed like a surprise, Zimmer's music has always quietly defied genre boundaries, and, at its core, fits in well among the pop, rock, and EDM acts at a music festival. Along with Pharrell and Marr, Zimmer excitedly talks about working with Kendrick Lamar (whom he really wanted to see after his own set at Coachella, but couldn't make the show) and hanging out with Skrillex creating music until the early hours of the morning.
His music has always incorporated elements of EDM, and EDM has always relied heavily on orchestral music. In fact, a young Zimmer can be seen playing a keyboard in the video for The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star."
"Whenever I'm doing an orchestral score, I really want to go and do an electronic score. Whenever I'm doing an electronic score, I can't wait to get an orchestra back. I'll plug a guitar and turn the amp up to 11 and destroy some speakers," Zimmer said. "I think something happened at the beginning of the 20th century where the paths of music sort of divided, and orchestral music became not even elitist—it somehow became removed from its purpose of actually being the people's music. I always liked the fact that I was doing film music. I wasn't being an artist-with-a capital-A, I wasn't trying to write a symphony."
He has no album to pitch, no career to sell—he's just trying to push himself and audiences past their comfort zone. And in the process, he's had a spiritual moment hearing tens of thousands of fans sing The Lion King's "Circle of Life" back to him. "In my little head, I was going, 'Oh, I wish I had had that when we were recording it. What a great choir to have.'" That's what happens when you finally step on stage.
