Danny Elfman might seem much more fit and healthy than most other men of his age, but as he told GQ, he’s had his share of health issues. A lot of it, he says, comes from his tendency to get lost in his work for up to 14 hours a day, which hasn’t done too many favors for his body. Over the years, he’s suffered from nasty back issues, and has torn the rotator cuffs on his shoulders.
Not all of Elfman’s physical issues have been musculoskeletal, though. In an interview with Variety, Elfman noted that his years with Oingo Boingo damaged his hearing, which wasn’t a great thing for a composer with hearing loss already running in the family. This, he says, was a big part of why he quit the band in the mid-1990s and moved away from live performances for a long time.
“When we were preparing for Coachella, I was using in-ears and realized that could control the level,” Elfman said. But like many rock artists, his hearing had been permanently damaged during “that last decade and a half with the band. So that finally is what put the nail in the coffin of Oingo Boingo and touring. I just said, I’ve got this in the family already, so I’m already working with a deficit, and all I ended up doing was taking 10 years off of my hearing.”
