His family has been moving all over Europe until finally they have settled in London. He was fourteen years old at the time (Contemporary Musicians 2). Throughout his childhood, he has been expelled by many different schools because he preferred to study music over his schoolwork. His music career started when he finished his schooling. He started by writing jingles or commercials and by playing in rock bands, “In 1979, Zimmer, along with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, put together a band called the Buggles,” (Contemporary Musicians 3). The Buggles recorded the album, “The Age Of Plastic,” which contains their greatest hit Video killed The Radio Star. The song’s music video was actually the first video to appear on MTV. Although the band was becoming very successful, Zimmer did not enjoy the recording process with the Buggles, because he was not happy with just playing with only one type of style of music. "I used to be in a band, but that got to be boring," Zimmer later recalled to David Kohner Zuckerman in Brtnwd magazine. "Now I have bigger bands for shorter periods of time," (Contempoary Musicians 3).
He left the Buggles, and he decides to start a new type of music which is film score. He started working for the composer Stanley Myers who began to teach him more