Burton hired Elfman to compose the music score for
Batman. For inspiration, Elfman was given
The Dark Knight Returns. Elfman was worried, as he had never worked on a production this large in budget and scale. In an interview with
Keyboard in October 1989, Elfman said that he never read Batman as a child, preferring
Marvel heroes such as
Spider-Man and the
Fantastic Four. In addition, producer Jon Peters was skeptical of hiring Elfman, but was later convinced when he heard the opening number. Peters and Peter Guber wanted
Prince to write music for the Joker and
Michael Jackson to do the romance songs. Elfman would then combine the style of Prince and Jackson's songs together for the entire film score. Elfman worked separately from Prince, who was responsible for writing songs for the film. Prince proposed to extend his songs into the score, and the producers asked Elfman to collaborate with Prince on the score. Elfman refused because he was already working on the score, and did not want to serve as mere
music arranger under Prince. Elfman enlisted the help of
Oingo Boingo lead guitarist
Steve Bartek and
Shirley Walker to arrange the compositions for the orchestra. Elfman was later displeased with the
audio mixing of his film score. According to Elfman: "
Batman was done in England by technicians who didn't care, and the non-caring showed. I'm not putting down England because they've done gorgeous
dubs there, but this particular crew elected not to". Despite it, Elfman included several synthesizer cues in the film, mostly percussion samples. == Track listing ==