"The old fish was always intended to be played on a keyboard (Fairlight, probably) but Hans Zimmer - in his only big production contribution to Oil and Gold - suggested a Shakuhachi. The main reason he suggested this was because he had just been working on the music for the Nic Roeg movie ‘Insignificance’ in which, after what some may find excessively wordy exchanges between (among others) Marilyn Monroe and Einstein, a nuclear blast rips the room apart in slo-mo to the sound of - that’s right - a meditative Shakuhachi.
So - after I’d stropped about a bit - we got the same guy down and Coelacanth as we know it was born."
From a December 2015 blog post by Barry Andrews:
"The old fish was always intended to be played on a keyboard (Fairlight, probably) but Hans Zimmer - in his only big production contribution to Oil and Gold - suggested a Shakuhachi. The main reason he suggested this was because he had just been working on the music for the Nic Roeg movie ‘Insignificance’ in which, after what some may find excessively wordy exchanges between (among others) Marilyn Monroe and Einstein, a nuclear blast rips the room apart in slo-mo to the sound of - that’s right - a meditative Shakuhachi.
So - after I’d stropped about a bit - we got the same guy down and Coelacanth as we know it was born."