Hans Zimmer: Blood and thunder?

The score for Gladiator has gained a new lease of life in Iraq. Its composer Hans Zimmer tells Geoffrey Macnab why he's devastated

Hans Zimmer sounds incredulous when he is told the news, reported by Robert Fisk in The Independent this week, that Iraqi TV was "preparing Baghdad people for the war to come" by playing music from his score for Gladiator. "Well, everybody is allowed to misuse things," says the Oscar-winning German composer, but his dismay is obvious. Reports don't specify which part of the score Iraqi TV is broadcasting. "I'm sure it won't be the piece of music written when the battle is over and all you have is sadness, carnage and emptiness," he mutters darkly.

Like much of his work, Zimmer's soundtrack for Gladiator comes laced with irony. "Zimmer's score has enough blood and thunder to blanket the mightiest Roman arena, as orchestral riffs on Holst and Wagner are put through a gloriously sweaty workout," one gung-ho critic enthused. But the composer points out that this was a Hollywood movie about men in "skirts and sandals" and that the music wasn't supposed to be taken at face value.

"Look, all that heroic bombast is bullshit and uncivilised," he says curtly. "The music is really about how the [Roman] Empire has gone wrong. It's corrupt. There's nothing civilised about it, so maybe..." he adds playfully, "it's not inappropriate [to use it in Iraq]. It's been misunderstood in the right way." Then, more seriously: "Here's what I wish: I wish they didn't have to play any fucking music to get their people ready to have bombs dropped on them. That's my bottom line. These are crazy times we live in. I hate that my stuff is being misused – of course I do."

He goes on to rail at the way the US media has been covering the conflict. "I'm sure the BBC is a bit better. If you watch the news here in America, it's astonishing how much like B-movies it has become. They have trailers for what the news is going to be and what horror stories it's going to tell you..." Aghast at the erosion of civil liberties in the US since September 11, he says he has a problem with being patriotic about anything. "It just goes against my intelligence."

This isn't the first time that Zimmer's work has been co-opted by forces he distrusts. This year, he discovered that some of his compositions were being used by Belgium's neo-fascist party, Vlaams Blok, for its party-political broadcasts. "They got it wrong. It [my music] was all written in the spirit of anarchy and socialism," he protests.

His background certainly doesn't suggest that he's some latter-day Wagner, turning out rousing, martial choruses along the lines of the "Ride of the Valkyries". Zimmer was born in 1957 in Frankfurt, the son of an inventor. He was largely educated in England but was slung out of school after school. He had little formal musical education and spent his adolescence and early adulthood playing experimental music. ("Anything that made a noise... I was making singularly awful music, but it was great fun.") He was a founder member, along with Trevor Horn, of pop group The Buggles ("Video Killed the Radio Star"), but doesn't look back on his days as a pop musician with much affection. "I was in lots of bands that never got any record deals, travelling up and down the M1. I know every cesspool in the British Isles," he reminisces forlornly. "I wonder if Middlesbrough has improved since I was last there. Probably not."

Zimmer has strong counterculture credentials. One of his closest musical collaborators is Bruce Fowler, who was the trombonist in Frank Zappa's band. He reads WG Sebald books and collects paintings by Käthe Kollwitz, a German socialist anti-war artist who was banned in the Nazi era. "The whole idea of war as entertainment is pretty repulsive," he says.

Still, scan his filmography and it's unnerving how many war movies you spot. Having written the scores for Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, The Thin Red Line, Crimson Tide and The Siege, it's understandable that some critics have dubbed him a master of mayhem. "Do war photographers propagate war?" he asks. "It should be the opposite... they should tell you, 'Don't go to war.'" His music, he argues, is designed to have the same effect. He relishes the challenge that war movies set. "I find it fascinating – how do you talk about the unspeakable, how do you give voice to that emotion? To just say, 'War is hell' – that's as dull as dishwater. Go and explore your subject."

Right now, he is struggling to put the final touches to his score for Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men. He's also working on the light-hearted DreamWorks animation epic SharkSlayer. "What's really tough is trying to write a comedy when you know all that stuff is going on," he confesses. "It just doesn't seem appropriate."

In the light of events in Iraq, he advocates cancelling the Academy Awards. What depresses him most is the sense of powerlessness he feels stuck away in Hollywood. "So much for the idea that we form the opinions of America. I don't think that's true at all. I don't think that, say, The Thin Red Line has changed anything."

Still, having his music played in Baghdad on the eve of war suggests that he has a certain influence, albeit not in a way he ever intended. "It is fascinating to see how things get turned into a lie," he muses. "For the rest of my life I could sit here and write nice things like my score for Driving Miss Daisy. I'm sure he [Saddam] is not using that, but in America I promise you even Driving Miss Daisy could instantly be turned into some patriotic thing about the home fires.

"I don't mind being pigeonholed as the guy who writes music for war movies... but, no, I don't want to be the guy providing the soundtrack for the apocalypse, thank you very much."