The iconic theme song John Williams called “a little overwritten”
Hum a movie theme tune, right now; give it a go. What’s the first one that springs to mind? It’s probably Jurassic Park, or probably Superman. No? Well then, it’s likely Star Wars, or at a push, Harry Potter, or it has to be the Indiana Jones theme. Of course, the connection between all of those is they were written by one man: John Williams.
Williams has basically completely owned blockbuster film scores for well over 50 years now, his work with some of the biggest directors around putting him on a level that nobody else has come close to, not even the likes of Hans Zimmer, who is probably his closest rival in recent years thanks to his staggering themes for Oscar-winning movies including Interstellar and Gladiator.
Classically trained, Williams started off as a musician in US Air Force bands before becoming a session musician, playing on soundtracks as important as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and To Kill a Mockingbird. He discovered that he preferred composing to playing, however, and began to move into writing scores for films himself, bagging his first Oscar nomination for 1967’s Valley of the Dolls.
After that he began to work on genuine, big-budget blockbusters, starting with the brilliant upside-down boat disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman and following it up with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen’s The Towering Inferno two years later.
Then came his first work alongside Steven Spielberg, the man, who together with fellow film student George Lucas, would provide the movies for his most beloved work. That was 1974’s The Sugarland Express starring Goldie Hawn, but it was a year later that the duo produced their first genuinely iconic soundtrack.
Jaws was the mainstream horror film that broke box office records and made people around the world think twice about jumping into the sea, much of which can be attributed to those two simple cello notes, E and F, that everyone ever since has had in their heads while paddling through the waves. It landed Williams a second Oscar and cemented a partnership they continued with 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for which Williams conjured up a five-note refrain that became an integral part of how the visiting aliens and humans eventually communicated.
That same year, thanks to Spielberg recommending Williams to Lucas, the composer began work on a space opera that many thought was doomed to fail, but couldn’t have been more wrong. Star Wars became perhaps Williams’ most famous score—a huge, sweeping, nuanced body of work influenced by Holst’s ‘The Planets’ and landed the composer a third Oscar statue for ‘Best Original Score’.
Speaking to The New Yorker about his initial memories of recording that first Star Wars music, Williams revealed, “That fanfare at the beginning, I think it’s the last thing I wrote. It’s probably a little overwritten, I don’t know. The 30-second notes in the trombones are hard to get, in that register of the trombone.”
He added, “And the high trumpet part! Maurice Murphy, the great trumpet player of the LSO [London Symphony Orchestra] that first day of recording was actually his first day with the orchestra, and the first thing he played was that high C. There was a kind of team roar when he hit it perfectly. He’s gone now, but I love that man.”
Williams would go on to more Oscar-winning success with Spielberg when he took home the Academy Award for his score for Schindler’s List, his fifth win among some 54 nominations in total, making him the most-nominated living person and second only to Walt Disney in all of history.
In later years, his most famous film score has undoubtedly been the themes for the first three Harry Potter movies, including the core track known as ‘Hedwig’s Theme’, which will forever be synonymous with the character. Now 93, Williams has understandably slowed down, although just this year his music was heard again in the latest Superman and Jurassic Park reboots.
Also, enjoy the video below, it is absolutely brilliant to see the man at work and in his element, proving how much he loves his job, overwritten or not.
