Hans Zimmer’s Seductive Santa Monica Lair
HANS ZIMMER CAN’T REMOVE HIMSELF from society completely while recording like some artists — after all, he explains, “I always like to be close to where I can get a hold of the great musicians.” But the revered film composer has still managed to build himself an escape at the seven-building Santa Monica, Calif., complex that houses his film scoring company, Remote Control Productions. With walls lined with vintage synthesizers, shelves of old books and even an original by the Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele, Zimmer’s surreal inner sanctum is, as he puts it, a place where “your ideas can run free and you can be a little bit naughty and a little bit wicked” — and the perfect setting to score some of the century’s most iconic movies.
I was recording at Jackson Browne’s studio and saw a “For Lease” sign next door. We leased that building and then eventually bought the freehold on it. But everybody told us we were doing it wrong: “If you want to work in Hollywood, you should work in Hollywood.” For me, coming from Europe, I just wanted to be close by the sea.
I had an architect, Bret Thoeny [who designed Prince’s Paisley Park in Minnesota], come and help so that the thing wasn’t actually going to collapse. I had my friend Roger Quested, who has always built my speakers and who I’ve known my whole professional life, come and help out with the acoustics. The rooms I like are the rooms that you can have a normal conversation in, that are not too dead and not too echoey. You don’t feel like you’re walking into an alien space, because your audience isn’t going to be in an alien space.
I said to everybody working on things, “I want it to look like a late-19th-century Viennese brothel.” Where you feel free, where you can have a good glass of wine, where you want to go and have a good chat, where you feel unshackled by society, where you feel unshackled by anything. There’s Pro Tools and there’s Cubase, like with everybody else. But I feel, since the heart of the system is the same for everybody else, it’s as important to create an environment that is — well, if you think about it, I suppose 90% of my life is spent in that room, so I might as well have some fun with it. There is absolute purpose behind everything I did in there. It’s not just ostentatious and over the top for the reason of being ostentatious and over the top.
You can cram a fair amount of people into there. [The soundtrack to 2013 film] 12 Years a Slave was recorded in that room because that’s a small ensemble and I could have the director there.
You want to make the director part of the band. We recorded [the soundtrack to 2013 movie] Rush in there with Ron Howard absolutely being part of the band. I did something with Gore Verbinski, and Gore was actually playing guitar. It’s great when the director can play something and you can put them to use and save money on one musician. I mean, we’re all working with limited budgets. (Laughs.)
I wanted a library, really. There’s an enormous amount of books in there. Most directors that I work with are literate and are visual. So having them within a library where I can just go to the wall and pick up a book about Caravaggio or any old painter or whatever it is, you can instantly cross those two divides. You can go between sound and picture very easily in this room because it’s supposed to inspire both.
It’s a constantly changing, constantly evolving laboratory. Once, Ron Howard was leaving and was nearly finished with his movie and he said, “Just remember, don’t shut the laboratory doors too early.” I thought that was a really great statement. Always leave room for the next question to be asked.
Let it evolve all the time.