Hans Zimmer: 'I'm not a composer at all – I just make stuff up!'

Given that wealth of iconic music, it's no surprise that Zimmer's live tours – which he has been taking on the road alongside a band and orchestra since 2016 – have proven a major success.

And now, that tour is set to become more accessible than ever thanks to a new film that brings one of his grand shows to cinema screens, alongside interviews with a number of key collaborators including Nolan, Villeneuve, Billie Eilish, Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr.

Filmed over several nights at various locations in Dubai – "just around the corner" from where Villeneuve was shooting Dune – the film includes performances of a number of his most celebrated works. And speaking exclusively to RadioTimes,com, the composer reveals why now was the right time to get the show on film.

"I felt that the band was about as good as they would ever get during this show, and I wanted to capture that for posterity," he explains. "[And] the other thing I thought was that we [have to] drag our show around, in 15 articulated lorries and 13 buses, so we can't go everywhere, but the film could go everywhere.

"We are very expensive as a live show for tickets, but I think cinema tickets can be cheaper – so people could see it."

As is revealed in a conversation with Marr towards the beginning of the documentary, Zimmer has done something of a 180 regarding live shows over the years. Where once he was a man resistant to the idea of life on the road, he is now someone who enjoys nothing more than the thrill of these live performances.

This view changed pretty early on into his touring life, when he and his band performed a landmark live set at Coachella in 2017.

"We were supposed to go on at eight o'clock at night," he says. "I hear in my ears the lighting crew going, 'We can't get the lights to work.' And I'm saying to the road manager, 'I'm going on at eight o'clock lights or no lights.'

"I look out and it's a complete shambles. I mean, just fabulous, mankind at its most disorganised! And I thought, wow, this is really funny and fun, I can handle this.

"And so I went out, no lights for the first, I don't know, 30 seconds, and they thought that was art. And then the lights came on. They thought that was art too! And I survived, no lights."

That night also gave him an indication as to quite how deeply the live performances resonated with audiences. Prior to the show, he hadn't been especially keen for any music from The Lion King to be part of the set – it was just "a children's movie", he thought – but he was fortunately persuaded otherwise by band member Nile Marr (Johnny's son).

"He said, 'Get over yourself, Zimmer, that's the music of my youth, we're doing Lion King,'" Zimmer explains. "So we [did] Lion King, and 80,000 people just start weeping. So that was quite surprising. We hit on something, and it really seems to work."

From watching the film, it appears that – tears or no tears – the audience reception is just as enthusiastic for many of his other works. So, which is the piece of music that tends to get the best response of all from the crowd?

"I can tell you exactly," he says without a moment's hesitation. "I finish the show, as you see in the movie... with Time from Inception. And you get to the bit at the end where it's just me on the piano, and I play really quietly. And I know I got them if I don't hear a peep out of them, if I hear total silence.

"And that's usually what happens, people are really into that moment. And not just respectful, but they're emotionally having an experience. That's great."

Zimmer is showing no signs of letting up when it comes to touring, and already has multiple dates lined up across Asia, Australia and Europe throughout 2025.

But he explains that he and his band are currently working on a brand new set – with the film being seen as the "way of finishing that period" which came before. The new set won't come into effect until autumn, and he's still figuring out exactly what it will look like, but he teases that audiences can expect it to be a little more electronic.

"I love Kraftwerk," he says. "I mean, I come from two weeks of piano lessons and hanging out with the guys in Tangerine Dream and producing The Damned and working with Trevor Horn and being in the first video on MTV (Video Killed the Radio Star, by The Buggles).

"I mean, I'm not a classical composer," he adds. "I'm not a classical film composer. I'm not a composer at all, actually. I just make stuff up!"

Hang on, so what's the difference between being a composer and just being someone who makes stuff up?

"The huge advantage I have making stuff up is I'm always open to what's coming towards me," he answers. "I'm always open to the director, I'm always open to the story.

"It's always the same process: I go out for dinner with the director and don't really read the script, and I say, 'Tell me the story,' because then I know what's important to him. And you can tell from the tone as well, how the scenes should play. So that's one different way that I handle the whole thing."

He adds that in most cases he also spends an "enormous amount" of time making demos and sketching things out before a director has even started shooting anything. He pinpoints his work on Inception, on which he was writing music at the same time Christopher Nolan was filming without actually seeing any of the footage himself.

"When he finished shooting, I said, 'Send the movie over,' and he said, 'Oh, not really, it's been going really well like this, let's just carry on!'" Zimmer explains.

"And so I didn't see the movie until I'd finished writing it, and he put all the music in. But we both knew what movie we wanted to make. And I'm not saying I wanted to make exactly Chris's movie and he didn't want to make a movie that was exactly fitting my music. But two different things would add up."

It's clear that he and Nolan had an especially great collaboration going, and he further illustrates this with an example from Interstellar, mentioning that there was a "monumental piece" in the film that he had been in the middle of writing when Nolan had stepped into the room one day.

"And actually, that's where the piece stops," he says. "Because we started talking, and I said, 'I don't know where it goes, but I think it's right for this film.' He said, 'Yeah I feel the same way. Don't know where it goes, but it's right for this film.'

"[So he sent] it to Lee [Smith], our editor, who instantly took it, back synced it from where the rockets blast off. And it does that whole father leaving his daughter behind scene brilliantly, it hits every emotion at all the right times. And that is completely by chance, and it's completely not by chance. It's completely that Chris and I feel time in in a very similar way."

Despite this clearly close bond, the last couple of Nolan films – Tenet and the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer – have seen Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson take over scoring duties after Zimmer turned down the opportunity to work on the former so he could focus on Dune. So what are the chances of the pair re-teaming again in the future?

"I never say no to these things," is Zimmer's response. "And I mean, as you can see in the film, we're good friends. But right now, I'm having a lot of fun doing something completely different with Denis Villeneuve... and I can only really invent for one, you know. I do multitask, but it's not very good!"

Clearly, that aforementioned work with Villeneuve – which started with Blade Runner 2049 before leading into the Dune films – has been especially fulfilling for Zimmer.

More than anything, it has given him the chance to really lean into experimentation by crafting a variety of completely new musical instruments that he felt more acutely captured a sense of wonder perfect for the sci-fi genre.

"When I was young, and I was watching science fiction movies – which I loved – the first thing that would happen... was usually the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) would start playing, right from the beginning," he says.

"And you go, 'Really? This is a science fiction movie set in the future, and it's still just orchestral music like any other movie?' And that's why, when I said to Denis, you know, I'd love to build my own instruments. I would love to go and invent things, and keep one thing absolutely, purely human, which is the female voice."

He continues: "And then the other thing was Denis had shot the bagpipe guy when they arrived on Arrakis, and I forgot to tell him that the sound you hear isn't the bagpipes, but it's my extraordinary guitarist, Guthrie Govan.

"And we're in New York, and we're doing this question and answer thing after the screening, and somebody asked me about the bagpipe and I'm going, well, actually, it's not bagpipes, it's Guthrie Govan, and Denis goes, 'What, my beautiful bagpipes are not my beautiful bagpipes?'

"This goes on for a while, and then back to the chat with the audience. And he stops. He goes, 'Are there any other secrets you need to tell me? Any other confessions?' I couldn't think of any, but I'm sure there are!"

With Dune, it helped that, like Villeneuve, Zimmer had been a huge fan of the books since he was a teenager, and had even avoided watching the previous adaptation by the late David Lynch as he "knew that wasn't the movie I wanted to make in my head".

And so, when the Canadian director asked him if he wanted to become involved, he became a little "over excited", in his own words.

"What happened was that in our heads, spiritually, we became those teenagers again," he says "But we had made movies, so we knew how to make a movie. We knew how to do the work. So the spirit was that of a teenager. The work was that of a knowledgeable craftsman."

Of course, next up is Dune: Messiah – the third film in the series, which Zimmer says is "starting any day now". As fans of the books will know, the novel has a rather different tone to the epic tome on which the first two movies were based – and Zimmer concedes that writing the music for this one is " a different task".

"I'm not really going to talk about it right now, because there's still too many holes," he adds. "You've got to lay out the theoretical ideas, and you have to be careful about that, because if you talk about it too much, you don't want to do them anymore, I've talked them to death!"

Anyway, back to the concert film. Zimmer hopes that as wide an audience as possible will go and see Diamonds in the Desert, with his stated ambition being that the film can "shake [cinemagoers] out of basically a dull life".

"I mean, not everybody has a dull life," he immediately clarifies. "But I think I want us to be... like when I was a kid, when the circus came to town, it was a big thing. It was frivolous, it was dangerous, it was a little absurd. It was all of those things.

"It just marked some time away from homework and school and everything they were telling us. And the absurdity was the great thing. And I think that's sort of pretty much what I'm doing. We are the circus coming to town now."

He adds that he has noticed "over and over again" while performing his sets that the music really seems to bring people toegther.

"And I think that we live in dreadful times," he says. "Let's face it, things are not what they should be. So I think music is actually quite important, because there's a sense of togetherness and a sense of joy that comes when we do these things.

"I look at our audience, and this is not an exaggeration, there's a grandma sitting there next to a punk with spiky hair, next to two little children, and it goes on like this. I mean, we are much more wide in our audience than other people."

He concludes: "I want to make a movie of this chaos that we create, and I hope people go and see it, because I promise you, nobody else will be as chaotic as us. I have goats in this movie. I have the beauty of Zendaya and goats!"

Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert is released in cinemas on Wednesday 19th March 2025.

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