John Williams: A Composer’s Legacy

Twenty Thousand Hertz - Dallas Taylor

This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz explores the legendary career of film composer John Williams, highlighting his collaborations with Spielberg, his iconic scores, and his enduring passion for music. It delves into his creative process, personal discipline, and lasting impact on cinema.

Key takeaways

• Williams' music blends simplicity with deep complexity, making it accessible yet rich for analysis.
• He pioneered the concert performance of film scores, elevating them to classical status.
• His partnership with Spielberg spans decades, marked by trust and mutual inspiration.

Transcript preview

Hey listeners, I'm so grateful to have advertisers on this show that I believe in. But in a perfect world, I'd love it if the bulk of our revenue came directly from you, our listeners. That way, we wouldn't have to continually stress day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, maintaining our ad bookings, and could just focus on making the best show we can. In other words, I really just want to work for you. So if you're able and believe in our mission of helping more people appreciate the incredible world of sound, world of sound, sign up for our premium feed, 20,000 hurts plus. Once you do, you'll get every single episode with zero ads. But you'll still get the mystery sound and you'll get new episodes three days early. And also, if you do it right now, it'll actually take you less time than listening to the ads in this very episode. There's two really fast ways to sign up. One, you can just go to your browser on your phone and type in 20K.org.org, slash plus, that's 2-O-K.org. a link to your personal subscriber feed, which works in almost every podcast app. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, it's as simple as just going to our show page and tapping subscribe. Thanks. You're listening to 20,000 hurts. The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. In our last episode, we explored the early life and career of legendary film composer John Williams. John got his start as a session piano player, recording with orchestras and pop singers, and then started composing for film and TV. In the early 70s, he teamed up with a young Stephen Spielberg and scored two of his early blockbusters, Jaws and close encounters of the third kind. Through Spielberg, John met George Lucas, and for Star Wars. By the end of the 1970s, John was the hottest composer in Hollywood, scoring huge films like the 1978 Superman movie. The star of Superman, and even showed up for the recording sessions. In the liner notes for a Superman music, or sit in the recording room. And also later films that I did, Chris would come around, sometimes even unannounced, and just sit and enjoy listening to the orchestra. In 1979, John was back with his friend Stephen Spielberg, and after two consecutive hits, Spielberg is on top of the world. That's Tim Grieving, author of John Williams, a composer's life. He gets his proverbial blank check to make his next movie, which is 1941, which is a, in my opinion, horrible whiff of something. attempting to be a comedy set during World War II. It's a great score. But as for the film itself, well if you've never heard of Stephen Spielberg's 1941, there's probably a reason for that. Here's Roger Ebert's take. With all this huge box office successes, even Stephen Spielberg is human and even Spielberg can make a stinker and the big stinker of his career was a 1979 movie named 1941, a critical. And Bots office does. after there was supposed to be a non-stop slapstick comedy, but only really qualified in the non-stop department. So it's coming off that that he makes Raiders of Lost Arc, which he does to kind of prove himself and to prove that he can make a film on budget and on time that works, that's tight, that's fun. The character of Indiana Jones was created by George Lucas and inspired by the action cereals of the 1930s. George imagined him as an adventurer slash archaeologist. who would explore exotic locations and fight evil villains. Spielberg loved the idea and the two of them developed the movie together. Here's Lucas giving a toast to John Williams at an AFI award ceremony. Steve and I sat on the beach to talk about the story for Indy and instantly we both said at the same time John has to write the music. Steve said, great, that's the most important part. Let's go have lunch and we can write the story later. On Raiders, John had two possible themes and he played both of them for Spielberg and Spielberg just said, can't we just use them both? So the Raiders March, which has kind of two parts, if you think about it, is the two alternate ideas that he demoed for Spielberg, which I like. The first melody is one idea. one. Now, India isn't a soldier, so it's interesting that John composed a military style march for the character. If you think about it, it's like why does Indiana Jones have a march? I think what John Williams was tapping into was this nostalgia we have for past adventures. Like when we hear a march, it reminds us of something you might hear. a 4th of July parade. George Lucas jokingly compared the Raiders music to Hogan's heroes, a 60 sitcom set during World War II. Here's that show's credits theme. There's just something kind of subtly comforting and throwback about the sound of a march and a marching band that fit with that character and with that adventure. The early 80s were a whirlwind for John. He married his second wife, Samantha Winslow, who he met through some of the work he did for a PBS station, and he had back-to-back hits with the Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's just sort of on fire as a composer and working with directors who are giving him these amazing canvases. On top of all that, an interesting and important thing that happens in 1980s in 19. is the conductor of the Boston Pops. The Boston Pops is an offshoot of the world-renowned Boston Symphony Orchestra, which is kind of an unusual zigzag for him. It wasn't really common for a busy successful film composer to go conduct an orchestra. But he kind of wanted to prove that he could do more than just score films. He wanted to have more time with an orchestra that he basically could develop as a composer and a conductor with his own group. But it also put him kind of on a national... television level. He was already famous because of the scores, but now he was on PBS conducting an orchestra. From Symphony Hall in Boston, John Williams, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and special guest Sammy Davis Jr. Tonight, for an evening that pops. One of the important things about that is that film music had never really been taken seriously in concert halls before. It was seen as a kind of second-class sellout. kind of music among a lot of classical folks. But slowly, but surely, John Williams starts programming the best of film music in these concerts and just getting audiences and culture used to hearing this music in concert and taking it seriously and recognizing that the best film music is just great music. Under John's direction, the Boston Pops played pieces by all kinds of film composers, from John's heroes like Max Steiner. to his peers like Jerry Goldsmith. To himself. So throughout the 80s. So, himself. So throughout the 80s and into the early 90s he was doing that and he took the pops on tour throughout the country. He took them on tour to Japan. It was a really important part of his life. every Christmas conducting all these concerts in Boston. Tonight, John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra invite you to a Christmas at Pops. But conducting an orchestra didn't slow down John's work as a film composer, and in 1982 he scored Spielberg's next movie, E.T. the Extraterrestrial. In the film's most famous scene, a group of kids are riding bicycles with E.T. in a basket, and in a by the authorities. Then ET uses some alien magic to make the bikes fly into the air so they can escape. John wrote a long dynamic piece to score that section, but when it came time to record it with the orchestra he had a hard time matching it to the picture edit. Here's John in an interview with conductor Stephen de Neve. I was trying over and over again. It's a long sequence about 10 minutes and every bar has something to match here. And if it doesn't match on the screen, it doesn't have its effect, it doesn't really look right. And I don't know how many takes, how many performances attempts to do this. I couldn't get it right. So Stephen Spielberg stepped in saying, John, just play the music. I know it fits. It has exactly the silhouette of the action. You have the orchestra. Play it was comfortable. And I will recut the film to the orchestra performance, which he did. This is a pretty rare move. In filmmaking, the music almost always follows the picture at it, not the other way around. And it's a testament to how much