Any kid (or shall we say, any perpetually youthful adult) should be able to hum along to the “Imperial March” from Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back or dream away with the “Flying Theme” from “ET – The Extra-Terrestrial”. devices. John Williams developed melodies for millions and created scores that immediately bring each of their accompanied films to mind – with all colorful scene details.
But the background to the life of the film composer, who has been nominated for an Oscar more often than anyone else, is often hardly known and ramifications in his work are far too rarely the focus. ROLLING STONE shares facts you should know about John Williams.
► John Williams composed the music for almost all of Steven Spielberg’s films – with the exception of three films: The Color Purple (1985, Quincy Jones), Bridge of Spies (2015, Thomas Newman) and Ready Player One (2018 , Alan Silvestri).
► John Williams was the conductor of the Boston Pop Orchestra for 12 years. From 1980 onwards, not only numerous own soundtracks were recorded under his guidance, but also many other recordings were produced. After retiring in late 1993, Williams was named Conductor Laureate.
John Williams live
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John Williams at number 1 in the German album charts!
► Hitchcock’s regular composer Bernard Herrmann is one of John Williams’ greatest inspirations. It influenced him above all in the orchestration of instruments, the penchant for precise, repetitive leitmotifs and a fine feeling for melodies. Herrmann also guided Williams in writing his first symphony (1965). Other inspirations for the composer’s style were Jean Sibelius, Richard Wagner, Gustav Holst, Igor Stravinsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Edward Elgar. In the field of film music, one of the least known (late) inspirations is probably the composer Yôko Kanno, whom Williams greatly admired. She has written the music for dozens of anime, including the music for the series Cowboy Bebop.
► Probably also because of his enthusiasm for Bernhard Herrman and the resulting contacts, John Williams wrote the film music for Alfred Hitchcock’s last film: “Family Grave” (1976). One of his most underrated scores. The composition for the thriller comedy even contains the first ideas for the later sound of “Harry Potter”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0iT8g6FXM
► One of John Williams’ earliest successes in the background was playing the (legendary) piano motif in Henry Mancini’s theme for the TV series Peter Gunn (recorded in 1958). The crime series by “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” director Blake Edwards is cult in the United States. Williams also played piano on scores by Jerry Goldsmith, David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein.
► John Williams is the son of jazz musician John Francis Towner Williams, who also performed under the name John Williams. He is also the father of former TOTO singer Joseph Williams, who also helped him compose the soundtrack for Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. The song is performed at Jabba’s palace but was canceled for the special edition of the trilogy in the ’90s. Williams is also the great-uncle of actors Christian Curwood and Rebekah Curwood and brother of studio drummers Donald Williams and Jerry Williams
► In 2002, John Williams set a record that no one will be able to take away from him any time soon: that year he received his 41st Oscar nomination. Record at the time for living filmmakers (previously held by Alfred Newman with 45 nominees, but he died in 1970). No other creative has been nominated for an Academy Award so many times. He has now been nominated for the golden boy 53 times and won it five times in total. Incidentally, the first score for which John Williams was nominated for an Oscar was for “The Valley of the Dolls” (1968). The first Academy Award was for the film music for “Anatevka” (1972). Williams also won Oscars for his work on Jaws, Star Wars, ET and Schindler’s List. Even more amazing is his success at the Grammys. He has been nominated for the music prize a total of 73 times and won the trophy 25 times.
► John Williams also holds another record, namely that of the most successful instrumental single of all time. But this success would be unthinkable without Domenico Monardo. Domenico who? The musician and producer is best known under the name Meco. He made a disco album from the Star Wars soundtrack in 1977 entitled Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. The single “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” sold 2 million copies. Even more absurd, but true: The disco record sold 300,000 more units than the original soundtrack to “Star Wars” by John Williams.
► When the American Film Institute chose the most important film scores of the last 100 years in 2005, “Star Wars” came in at number one, “Jaws” at number six and “ET – The Extra-Terrestrial” at position 14. Read the ROLLING HERE -STONE hit list of the best soundtracks of all time.
► Perhaps the most popular anecdote about the work of John Williams is when he played the tune for Jaws to his director Steven Spielberg. It was only the second collaboration between the two after “Sugarland Express”. According to the composer, Spielberg burst out laughing and didn’t want to take the idea seriously. After all, the theme consisted of just two notes: e and f (and could possibly have been unknowingly taken from a small part of Beethoven’s 7th symphony). But Williams was able to persuade Spielberg. A win for both: Hollywood’s later child prodigy invented the popcorn cinema with the monster thriller and the multi-talented composer had found his first of numerous musical leitmotifs for a film that immediately creates goosebumps even without looking at the pictures and is always recognizable.
► It almost never happened that John Williams wrote film history with “Star Wars”. It was actually intended for the recording of the soundtrack to “Hexensabbat” in 1977. Steven Spielberg, who has been good friends with George Lucas since he was a film student, pulled out all the stops for Williams to accompany the fairy tale of the warriors of the stars. A win for all sides, even for the producers of “Witches’ Sabbath”. Because although Williams’ replacement Michael Small turned out to be the wrong cast and he was quickly withdrawn from the project, his successor Gil Mellé (known, among other things, for “Andromeda: Deadly Dust from Space” and for what was possibly the first use of synthesizers for orchestral film music) to compose an ingenious score that even partially bows to Williams’ composing technique and at the same time refers to the music of Jerry Fielding (“Who Sows Violence”).
► The list of projects that John Williams was supposed to work on but couldn’t (or didn’t want to) is long and famous: “Heaven’s Gate” (1980, Williams left the project when production problems arose and took over the music for “Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), “Shining” (1980, director Stanley Kubrick decided early on, even before production started, to adopt the soundtrack concept of “Uhwerk Orange” and “2001 – A Space Odyssey” and to use already finished classical compositions, among others by Krzysztof Penderecki, and combined them with newly recorded electro tracks by Wendy Carlos), “Psycho II” (1983) and also the last ones Harry Potter films (where it would have been more difficult for him to work when the order situation was still very high at the time, when it became clear that the last film would be divided into two parts).
► Bonus fact: How does perhaps the greatest film composer of all time work? According to his own statement, always in front of a piano or keyboard, with paper and pencil as tools. Williams: “There have been so many amazing technological changes in the music industry over the decades, but I’ve been so busy I’ve never switched.”
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