Five More Undersung John Williams Pieces: The Sequel
This is a sequel to “Five Undersung John Williams Pieces” which I submitted to The Riff in hopes it would published in time for the great man’s birthday.
Kicking off with the theme he wrote for the TV series Checkmate with a pre-1970s British-made fantasy movies Doug McClure and a pre-American TV’s original Buffy on the sitcom Family Affair (I know that wasn’t shown on network TV in the UK unlike Ghost Story, but referencing a Buffy (if not the Buffy) is much less niche than Winston Essex) Sebastian Cabot as part of a team who stop crimes before they can be committed. Classy and exciting. Go on, play air piano and air rhythm section. You know you want to.
They don’t get the opportunity to write them like that these days…or like this.
Probably the punniest cue title in Williams’ oeuvre for Richard Roundtree’s character on a motorcycle. Staying in the 1970s, a few years later he did a very moody score for the Western The Missouri Breaks which (unlike a later movie with Jack Nicholson that Williams scored) went down as well as J.K. Rowling at a Mermaids meeting.
Just a month before Star Wars opened in the US and John Williams started turning more people onto film music than probably anyone in history, Black Sunday opened. No soundtrack release in 1977, it didn’t happen until 2010. Powerful stuff.
Leaping forward to the last of his Tom Cruise quartet (Born on the Fourth of July, Far and Away, and Minority Report precede it if you’re wondering). War Of The Worlds is a lot less melodic that most Williams scores for Steven Spielberg, which is probably why it’s not a concert regular. Damned effective in the movie and good music away from it.
Staying with his most famous collaborator, with the dreariest Spielberg movie I’ve sat through not called Hook. Williams’ music for Always has the wistful appeal the movie deeply lacked.
The River saw Williams contributing to that cycle of 80s movies about the struggles of American farmers that led to Bob Dylan infuriating a Smash Hits (or was it Just Seventeen?) reader to letter-to-the-editor levels by asking if some money raised by Live Aid could go to helping those farmers. Leading eventually to this.
Heartbeeps was a big enough flop that the movie went straight to video (in the UK and likely everywhere else outside North America) and MCA Records cancelled the soundtrack album release with Robert Townson-era Varèse Sarabande (i.e. proper Varèse Sarabande, when they were THE soundtrack label…) issued it as part of the CD Club limited edition line. It’s to believe a science-fiction movie about robots in love could spawn music as lovely as this….
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace’s faults are legion. But it’s infinitely preferable to Man Of Steel. Also considering the chances of John Williams doing an entire movie for Cannon were approximately on a par on the chances of me watching Ricky Gervais; it’s amazing he agreed contribute new themes, with Nuclear Man getting a theme much more foreboding than he was. And this theme for The Daily Planet’s new editor Lacy Warfield is sumptuous enough to be at home in a a sophisticated romantic comedy. Musical swoonworthiness.
Finally Stanley & Iris — a tender small-scale score for a drama with Jane Fonda as a widow who meets Robert DeNiro’s illiterate cook and the unsuing relationship.
