Ten things you prob­a­bly didn’t know about John Williams

This year the Roy­al Albert Hall is hon­our­ing leg­endary com­pos­er John Williams by screen­ing a whole sea­son of films fea­tur­ing his incred­i­ble music. To cel­e­brate, here are 10 inter­est­ing facts about the man wav­ing the baton on some of the most beloved film sound­tracks of all time.

1. Musi­cal tal­ent runs in the Williams fam­i­ly – John’s father, John­ny Williams, was a jazz per­cus­sion­ist with the Ray­mond Scott Quin­tet, and lat­er worked for Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Fox. John’s broth­ers Don­ald and Jer­ry are also per­cus­sion­ists, while John’s son Joseph is the lead vocal­ist for rock band Toto, best known for their 1982 hit ​‘Africa’.

2. While attend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Williams was tutored by the com­pos­er Mario Castel­n­uo­vo-Tedesco, who also taught Hen­ry Manci­ni. Williams would go on to work for Manci­ni as a ses­sion musi­cian, notably work­ing with him on the sound­track for pri­vate eye tele­vi­sion series Peter Gunn.

3. Williams has pro­vid­ed the scores for all but three of Steven Spielberg’s 31 films, includ­ing Jaws, E.T., and Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind. The ones he missed? The Colour Pur­ple (Quin­cy Jones pro­vid­ed the music), Bridge of Spies (Williams dropped out due to poor health, and rec­om­mend­ed Thomas New­man to Spiel­berg as his replace­ment) and Ready Play­er One, which Williams was sup­posed to score, but dropped out of, in order to work on The Post instead. He was replaced by Alan Silvestri.

4. The dis­tinc­tive two-note shark theme from Jaws was played on a tuba – though the musi­cian who per­formed it, Tom­my John­son, ques­tioned why it wasn’t played on the more suit­able French horn. Williams replied that he want­ed it to sound ​“a lit­tle more threat­en­ing”. When Williams first demon­strat­ed the decep­tive­ly sim­ple idea to Spiel­berg, he is believed to have laughed and thought it was a joke.

5. Williams has been nom­i­nat­ed for 51 Acad­e­my Awards, six Emmys, 25 Gold­en Globes, 67 Gram­mys and 15 Baf­tas. He received his first Oscar nom­i­na­tion in 1967 for his Val­ley of the Dolls score, and his first win in 1971 for Fid­dler on the Roof. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, Williams is the most Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed per­son alive today. He’s just behind the most Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed per­son ever – Walt Dis­ney – who received 59 nom­i­na­tions dur­ing his life­time. We can only assume Williams has a big mantelpiece.

6. Not all of his works have been win­ners though. In 1981, he com­posed a score for Allan Arkush’s Heart­beeps star­ring Andy Kauf­man. The film, which cen­tres on two robots who fall in love and attempt to start a fam­i­ly togeth­er, was a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal flop, but Williams’ score is an exper­i­men­tal delight, fea­tur­ing elec­tron­ic key­boards com­bined with a tra­di­tion­al orchestra.

7. In a 2002 inter­view with The Guardian, Williams picked Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind and Schindler’s List as his favourite Spiel­berg films. Of Close Encoun­ters, Williams remarked, ​“It was more than just Cel­lo­phane going through a pro­ject­ing machine, it had a kind of life.”

8. Williams first record­ed a score with the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra in 1971, for Fid­dler on the Roof. Since then he has record­ed 15 of his scores with the LSO, includ­ing Star Wars, Super­man, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

9. When work­ing on Close Encoun­ters, Williams com­posed over 300 exam­ple of the five-note com­mu­ni­ca­tion motif – which the sci­en­tists use to com­mu­ni­cate with the vis­it­ing space­ship – before Spiel­berg chose one, which was then incor­po­rat­ed into the film’s (now icon­ic) sig­na­ture theme.

10. Williams still holds the record for the high­est gross­ing instru­men­tal-only sound­track album of all time for 1977’s Star Wars. A fur­ther six of Williams’ scores are cer­ti­fied gold by the Record­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca, mean­ing they have sold over 500,000 copies each. Inci­den­tal­ly, Williams’ favourite Star Wars char­ac­ter is Yoda.

Expe­ri­ence the sound­tracks of John Williams brought to life with live orches­tra at screen­ings of Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, Juras­sic Park, Star Wars and more, as well as a spe­cial appear­ance from the leg­endary com­pos­er him­self, con­duct­ing the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra lat­er this year. Dis­cov­er more at roy​alal​berthall​.com/​films