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Danny Elfman is in really good shape. A week ago, the film and TV composer and former Oingo Boingo frontman played a set at Coachella, in the heat, shirtless, with photos from the show circulating to genuine shock. How does he look this good? Who knew he was this cut? Here’s Elfman, 68 years old, resembling something between a boxer and a personal trainer, covered in tattoos, looking about half his age. For all of the remarkable ubiquity of Elfman’s work—the Simpsons theme and The Nightmare Before Christmas are just the tip of the iceberg—many people apparently didn’t know what he looked like. Which made for a big first impression.
Turns out Elfman is a bit of a gym rat. After a lower-back flareup in his fifties, the composer, who’s playing Coachella again on Saturday, began to approach his health with a little more purpose, which led to harder, every day workouts, a dialed-in diet and, well, results. GQ caught up with Elfman to discuss intermittent fasting, light weights versus heavy, the tyranny of cardio and the importance of good shoulders.
For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.
*GQ:* What do you usually eat for breakfast? What’s your routine?
Danny Elfman: I’m definitely a creature of routine, but I have a weird lifestyle—Nosferatu’s fitness program would be the best way to put it, because I work until 2 a.m. every night. I try to get to bed by 2:30, and usually wake up close to 10. I work out before breakfast, which is at noon… let me backtrack. I’m trying to do intermittent fasting, so I eat dinner around 7:30 so I’m done by 8, and try to do breakfast at noon, which is 16 hours. I don’t always succeed, because of schedules, but that’s my goal every day.
On a good day I wake up and work out, one way or another, between 10:30 and 12. Sometimes it’s actually Working Out Working Out, sometimes it’s more cardio, and back work. I mix it up. I try for three full workouts a week and at least some cardio every day, and usually core work on a mat. My workout is always a cross between things I like to do—which make me feel good and keep me strong—and things I need to do, for my back. Cardio is the most important thing each day to keep me alive and functioning, and I hate it the most. I can’t describe how much I hate my treadmill time. And floor work, for my core, because keeping my back going is crucial. Everything else is stuff I’d rather be doing: weights, shoulders, upper body, a gazillion other things. But cardio and back and core work are things I’m supposed to do every day.
Is that prescription for back work from a doctor? Or to counter sitting over a piano or computer at a studio all day?
Yeah, exactly spot on. I could easily sit down at my computer composing for 12, 14 hours a day and not move—and I used to for a long time. It’s partly my doctor saying, “Get your fucking ass on your treadmill or you’re going to die,” and I get that message, that if I want to keep my brain and heart functioning, I have to do that. And the second part comes from a physical therapist I’ve been working with for a long time, Gale Hazeltine, when I threw my lower back out many years ago and was really debilitated. Gale started a routine for me—for my shoulders especially. I tore both my rotator cuffs and didn’t want surgery, and I healed both with just exercise. I also play water volleyball every Sunday, with my family, for years, rain or shine. That probably exacerbated the shoulder stuff.
You know, health-wise, we look genetically at what happened to our parents. In my case, my father had his first heart attack at 50, and by my age he already went through a triple bypass. And his back really almost killed him at the end of his life. It was his biggest problem. So I got the message. I have to control my cholesterol and my weight if I don’t want that fate, and I got that message too when my lower back went out 16 years ago. I understood: I have to start working on this the same way I have to start working on my heart.
Which is part of my burnt-in brain messaging: managing cholesterol, exercise and core work is essential for my functioning. And everything else goes on top of that. Now it’s evolved into a conscious routine: “Do your cardio, do your core,” a regimen of low-weight, upper body exercises with lots of repetitions. That’s just become part of my life, building up my overall strength.
You do high-rep upper body workouts that seem like part cardio, like prison workouts.
Yeah, they probably are. She’s really a believer in more repetitions with lower weights. With the exception of pull-ups, which I’ve always loved—I’ve always had gymnastics rings in my studio—I do my entire workout with weights between 10 and 25 lbs.
About that Coachella photo: When did you get ripped, in shape like that? Was it a pandemic thing? Did it come out of your PT experience?
You know, I’ve never really gotten out of shape. It goes in waves, up and down. There was a point in the pandemic where I probably weighed more, and so I started getting into a more rigorous everyday exercise routine because I had more time on my hands. For the first time in 35 years I was writing songs for an album with no deadline. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a deadline! So I had a year of working out in the morning, controlled, not eating at restaurants, controlling my diet, doing my own work at my own pace, and I brought my weight back down to where I’d like to be. So the pandemic helped, and there was a point at the end of it where I started going back to work, and got that five, six pounds back. But we’re talking a relatively small amount. It’s not like gaining 30 pounds.
I should add that when I was around 50 I put on some weight, and so for my 60th birthday, my present to myself was getting down to where I was when I was 30. I was around 155 to 160 then. I had gotten up to 185, and by my 60th birthday I got myself back down to 155.
It takes work to go from solid, under 15% body fat to below 10, with abs. Were you doing water cycling or salt cutting before performing? Or was it smaller portions and more cardio to get in game day shape?
Just the miserable combination of less food and more exercise. I’d love to hear what you were just describing with the water.
It’s an old olympic weightlifting/boxing trick—you drink two liters of water for a few days, and cycle it down to a quarter liter, and it flushes the water from your body. You lose a few pounds in a few days if you do it right.
Oh, I didn’t know that. I did it the old school, miserable way. Controlled diet, up the cardio, old school.
Are there foods you stay away from or avoid? Any eating protocols on top of the intermittent fasting?
It’s funny: Since years ago, when I was in my 40s and trying to get into shape, I went on this high protein diet, at the time called the Zone, and it really fucked up my digestion. It didn’t work well for me, so I abandoned it for a high fiber vegetable diet, and I kind of became over the years something of a pescatarian. I don’t eat dairy, I’m also gluten free, because of minor allergies, the kind that don’t make me sick but were enough to get off the stuff. And I’m a sugar addict. Back before my 60th, that was the big one, giving up processed sugar completely. That was the hardest.
I was at 4th of July with my family, and all the pies come out—seven, eight really tasty pies—and I’m watching everybody cutting their slices, and a friend of mine tells me that this is like my version of porn. I’m watching everybody chowing down on these creme pies, [in a raspy voice] “Yeah, have another slice, go for it.” I’m not touching it. But I’m taking pleasure watching everybody. And there’s some truth in that, I was almost salivating and grinning.
Do you have cheat days? After the show, are you taking your foot off the gas?
Yeah. I believe in cheat days for everything. “Everything Bad in Moderation” would be my motto: I eat beef maybe once a month. But twice a year, on my birthday and Labor Day, I have a full-on fucking cheeseburger, with the bun, with everything. Fuck the gluten, fuck the cheese, lay it on me. And I’m dreaming about that cheeseburger months before my birthday. And also, then and on Thanksgiving, I have whatever dessert I want. Pecan pie, smothered with whipped cream, fuck it. But I reserve these splurges for special occasions. If I survive Saturday night at Coachella, I’ll probably have an early birthday cheeseburger.
Do you go anywhere—are you hitting The Apple Pan?—or do you make the burger?
I usually make it. I make myself a rare bison burger, smothered in cheese. But that’s funny you say that, I’ve been thinking about The Apple Pan, because that’s where I grew up. I used to go every Sunday night with my friends and I’d do the hickory cheeseburger with the pecan pie. Sunday night they’d make it fresh, smother it in whipped cream.
Is your workout routine different on days when you play a show? Do you count the calories you burn onstage?
No, I’m not that specific, I’m just trying to do what I would normally do: eat vegetables and fish. My regular diet is very Japanese. When I’m in Japan, it’s one of the only places in the world where I can eat anything I want, because it’s all fish. And a little bit of rice. It’s not a big deal. I haven’t done anything really special other than working out a little more regularly and watching my intake a little more, but it hasn’t been a big shift. Since I hit 60, my weight goes up and down five pounds at a time. It’s not a big deal anymore. I get that alarm at a certain point: “Listen, man, get your shit together.” Then I do, and I slip a little bit.
But it’s harder for someone like me. A lot of lawyers and agents I know, their days are more conducive to exercising because they’re up early at 6:30, in the gym at 7, they have their breakfast and are in their office at 8, and they’ve got this routine. Go to bed early, get up early, work out. And my lifestyle is such a vampire style that it’s harder to get that. There’s that tendency when you work super late to have a really slow morning. I’m dragging my ass to my gym, and I have mornings where I lie down on the mat, because that’s the only way I’ll get onto the treadmill is if I put on a movie that makes me forget about time so it feels like 10 minutes. And I’ll put it on and I’ll realize, “Oh my God, I’ve been lying here on this mat trying to do core work for 30 minutes, just watching this movie, not moving.” I just went catatonic, I have to snap out of that, and I say to myself, “Get going, get going, get going.” That shit’s hard.
You're watching a movie, but how do you decide what music you play when you work out?
I never listen to music: it’s always got to be a movie or TV I’m binging on. For some reason when I play music at the gym, I constantly want to switch it up, no matter what I’m listening to, starting and stopping songs, saying, “That’s not working for me.” What works for me is to get into some action thing I wouldn’t watch normally— a movie that’s engaging on some real simple level, and lose myself in it. I tend to do what most people might call their guilty TV watching when I’m on the treadmill and on the mat. But the show or movie is preferably very active and engaging and noisy, and I can watch and not think about it too much, but instead zone out and get into the workout. But I need visual activity.
If I’m in a hotel gym, I have a playlist because I don’t want to do Fox News or CNN. My workout music there is kind of a combination of Tool, Nine Inch Nails, [Einsturzende] Neubauten, the German industrial group. It’s that kind of playlist. It’s the same stuff I listen to when I’m on a tattoo table. It’s loud, I lose myself in it, and it distracts me from the needle and the treadmill—both painful things I hate doing.
When did you start getting the tattoos? How long has that been going on?
Actually, for 35 years. I started what was supposed to be my right leg and left arm and I never finished. Eight years ago I decided to finish it up and started doing designs with my niece, who’s a graphic artist. The first designs ended up going on my back, though I didn’t really start them until about three, four years ago. It takes me that long to get around to stuff. “Oh yeah, I like these lizard skeletons…” then five years later, I’m doing it. I’ve been doing it steadily since about then.
Was it the same artist you started with?
Yeah. One artist only, since I returned to the needle four years ago, Zoey Taylor. She’s the only needle that touches me.
Are there any PRs, workout goals you’re trying to do this next year?
I’d love to get back down to 155. I’m at 158 now. But in my head, I’ve already got my 20 pull-ups, and as long as I can keep doing 20, I’m good. I’ve always been pretty proud of that, and the little bit of work I do on the rings has helped me. But I don’t have specific goals, no. Really, my specific goal is to stay alive and healthy: keep the weight down, keep the exercise up, control the diet. It’s those three things.
Simple.
Harder than they say.
Simple, but not easy.
Yes. And I should mention, I always used to train boxing. I started again not that long ago, and that’s always been part of my psyche. I never got in the ring, because I never wanted to get hit, but I love boxing. Boxing training is always on and off in my life that I’ve done. And in a weird way, it kind of models the image I have of my body. About 25, 30 years ago, I had a trainer. He asks me, [in a very raspy voice] “Danny, what kind of body do you imagine for yourself? I always imagine Nureyev or Baryshnikov.” I tell him I imagine myself as a newly retired boxer. He thinks I’m kidding. But no, that’s it for me: somebody who boxed and recently finished, with a little bit of extra body fat. They’re not cut, like a boxer might be. Because I’m never going to be that kind of lean or super cut, but the ideal is looking like someone who boxed. He didn’t understand that at all: “What the fuck?” But that’s what I have in my head, and I’ve always loved that kind of big shouldered physique.
And the last story I’ll tell you, my mother told me before she died about the time when she met my father. He was a soldier, in uniform, just back from World War II. I asked her, “What was it that attracted you to him?” She tells me, “his shoulders.” I guess it goes back, in my DNA. I look at his early pictures and notice that he had good upper body strength. Pictures of him, probably in his late 30s, he hadn’t gone to a gym in years, and he still looked pretty good. I guess it runs in the family. He also came to California trying to be a songwriter and a musician, and he gave it up and became a schoolteacher. So maybe I’m just following in all of his dreams? I don’t know.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
