H A N S  Z I M M E R facts:
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Hans Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, on September 12, 1957. For years, Hans Zimmer has been one of the most successful composers of filmmusic in Hollywood. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he started his career in England, where he worked with composer Stanley Meyers. After some co-compositions for Meyers, soon commissions followed for projects of his own. After this came his move to Hollywood and he finally broke through with his music for Oscar-winner ‘Rain Man’. Before Hans Zimmer became active in filmmusic, he was a member of the 1980’s band The Buggles, that scored a hit with their ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, in 1979. If you would dig up an old TV-performance, you can recognize Hans Zimmer behind the synthesizer. Media Ventures is the L.A. based music-studio of Hans Zimmer and his partner, Jay Rifkin. Zimmer himself described MV as ‘School of Sounds’. Zimmer founded the firm to give young, talented composers a career-start in Hollywood. Hans’ second name is Florian and on some soundtracks he is even listed as Hans F. Zimmer, like i.a. on the CDs for ‘The Last Emperor’ and on ‘Broken Arrow’ under the heading synthesizer. For the film ‘Scream’, Zimmer’s music from ‘Broken Arrow’ was used. And further, the tracks ‘Brothers’ and ‘Secure’ are credited at the end of the film, under Songs. Unfortunately, there is but rarely information on filmmusic or more specifically on Hans Zimmer in medialand. On a seperate site, we will gather information on press-reports in the writing media, on TV or radio. If you should find anything appropriate, simply send us an e-mail. Unfortunately, to this day, there is no official ‘Days Of Thunder’ score out on CD. Two tracks are unofficially released on the ‘Follow Your Dreams’ promo. The only thing official is (was) a maxi-CD, which, beside the songs ‘Show Me Heaven’ and ‘Hearts In Trouble’ also contains the good 2.5 minute lasting score-track ‘Car Building’. This track however, corresponds to 95% of the clip from the ‘Follow Your Dreams’ promo. Only, the beginning on the maxi-CD is a few seconds longer and for this, the promo-version was coupled with a short passage from the ‘Days Of Thunder’ laserdisc. For the Tony Scott film ‘Enemy Of The State’ Hans Zimmer was actually to be the main composer. However, at the time of the project, Zimmer was so much occupied with the ‘The Thin Red Line’ score that he passed the job on to ‘his people’ Harry Gregson-Williams (and Trevor Rabin). That is why in some teasers and TV-spots Hans Zimmer was partly listed as main composer. Rare silver discs: It is not just the soundtrack-CD from the film ‘Paperhouse’ that is now only rarely found. There are a whole lot of real collector’s items, for which the Zimmer-fans often go hunting. Therefore, we have opened an appropriate feature for you, where you can find out about real Zimmer-trophies. The music of Zimmer’s early work on ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ that he co-wrote with Stanley Meyers, is partly available on a Meyers CD-sampler. On this CD there are three tracks that also contain music by Hans Zimmer. The disc was brought out on the Milan label, meanwhile however, out-of-print and likewise already a curio. For Shirley Walker, Hans Zimmer took part as a synthesist, i.a. in the film ‘Batman And The Phantom’ as well as ‘Hunt For An Invisible’. Both scores were brought out on CD, partly out-of-print. Jeff Rona has been responsible for the CD-arrangement of countless Hans Zimmer scores. Both befriended composers worked together on a great number of different productions. Further information on Jeff can be found in our detailed Jeff Rona section. As a special treat, there is also a short interview. For the film ‘Liar/Deceiver’ Hans Zimmer appeared as sound advisor. The music was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams, the score is at the moment only available as Japan-version. Small CD-mistake: on the ‘The Fan’ CD, the cover mentions 11 tracks, while the CD in fact contains 12 tracks. The long Zimmer score-track ‘Sacrifice’ is track number 12. Small CD-mistake II: part of the CD-edition of ‘The Whole Wide World’ contains only 9 instead of 12 tracks. In addition to this, the name Hans is misspelled on the shorter faulty disc. They wrote his name down as Hanz. On his label Mojo Records, Jay Rifkin produces the punkband ‘Goldfinger’. On the CD by that same name, Hans Zimmer’s orchestrator Bruce Fowler can be heard on the song ‘Answers’ with a solo on trumpet. Moreover, the CD was recorded at Media Ventures and both "Antz" co-composer Geoff Zanelli and Slamm Andrews were given technical credits for their share in making the CD. Zimmer-songs: To countless soundtracks Hans Zimmer has contributed pop- and rock-songs. For ‘Days Of Thunder’ he wrote the music for ‘The Last Note Of Freedom’, the words were written by Billy Idol and it was finally sung by David Coverdale. For ‘Calendar Girl’ it was the Aaron Neville song ‘Letting Go’, which was performed by Trent D’Arby. In addition to that, he produced and arranged many pieces for ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Prince Of Egypt’. More can be found at the Hans Zimmer song domain. Distinctions: Zimmer was awarded a Grammy for his ‘Crimson Tide’ score, ‘The Lion King’ was honoured with an Oscar and a Golden Globe as best score. The Oscar-nominations were further divided among his work for ‘Rain Man’, ‘The Preacher’s Wife’, ‘As Good As It Gets’, ‘Prince Of Egypt’ , ‘The Thin Red Line’ – and most recently ‘Gladiator’. Little extra I: If you should listen about 1.5 minutes longer to the last track on the ‘The Whole Wide World’ CD, the end credit, you can quite suddenly hear a short intensive warming up of the vocal version of the theme. Little extra II: Everyone owning a ‘The Fan’ CD, should check out the back (!!!) of the CD-backcover. In some cases, a nice surprise can be found there.

 

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