Hans Zimmer Wanted ‘to Imagine an Orgy at the Edge of the Universe’ for the ‘Dune’ Score

Vincent Perella
·3-min read

On Thursday, March 14, Hans Zimmer hosted a live discussion, along with two of his closest collaborators, at The Whitby Hotel in New York City to talk about creating some of cinema’s most iconic scores and taking his music out of the studio and on tour with Hans Zimmer Live.

“It is my greatest passion and honor to receive directions from Hans,” said Loire Cotler, the vocalist behind both “Dune” soundtracks. “Musical directions, directions about character, directions about the sonic landscape, the atmosphere of the scene or of the emotion. It could be that Hans will say to me something like, ‘Imagine you’ve just swallowed sand.’ Then we are about to say goodbye on the phone and then Hans will say, ‘One more thing, go swallow sand.'” Zimmer immediately interjected, “Hang on, they need some context.”

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“The first ‘Dune’ movie, we did during COVID. Loire was recording in her closet with her coat. There’s photographic evidence, but she’s sitting in the bottom of her closet with her coat hanging on her head and she’s doing that banshee yell you hear in ‘Dune.’ The pure female power, that’s what I wanted. ‘Dune’ is very much about the strength of the female characters. I think both films revolve around reading the strength of the female character.”

“I think my experience is very similar to what Loire mentioned when Hans and I work together,” Tina Guo said, who has been working closely with Zimmer for nearly 15 years. For both “Dune” films, Guo can be heard playing the electric cello. “I love that everything to me is communicated, it’s not anything theoretical. Even on ‘Dune,’ I don’t know if I should even say this, but one of the prompts that Hans gave me over Facetime, because it was COVID, was ‘Try to imagine an orgy at the edge of the universe.’ I’m like, ‘I know exactly what you mean.'”

Hans Zimmer went on to announce that he will be taking his live shows to America, finally, this September. Excited about one date in particular, he will be playing at Madison Square Garden on his birthday. Most recently, he has been touring Europe playing to upwards of 800,000 people, which Guo “has rounded to a million.”

Zimmer is quite excited to bring the orchestral scene back to life, as he feels as though they are “starting to disappear.” “I can understand some of that as well,” Zimmer said, “because unless you’re a great conductor like Lenny Bernstein, you’re watching a man with his back to you all night while a bunch of guys and girls in dark suits are reading the papers and it’s like a bad marriage on a Sunday morning breakfast.”

He continued to praise Cotler, who has been opening these shows with a four-minute-long vocal performance. “There’s a whole bunch of people in Europe, a million according to Tina, 800,000 according to the actual numbers, who sort of somehow have some weird emotional relationship to something that they’ve heard or that they experienced or something. In best of Christopher Nolan fashion, I reversed time, where I did the tune before the movie happened.”

And that tune was revealed to be a theme in “Dune: Part Two.” Yes, little did we know, but Hans Zimmer introduced a theme for “Dune: Part Two” at his live shows first, before people heard it in the movie. “It was sort of an interesting experiment of seeing will this work,” Zimmer continued.

As to how Zimmer got into performing his live shows, he credits Pharrell Williams, who asked him to play guitar during his 2015 Grammys performance of “Happy.” “I thought only an idiot would say no,” Zimmer said. “And so that, that really started it.”

Tickets for Zimmer’s tour on sale at www.HansZimmerLive.com starting March 22.

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