Behave, John Williams! Part 2

Mail Bag Concoction Assembled by Lukas Kendall

Continued from yesterday. Subject: Is John Williams "bad" for producing albums like The Phantom Menace out of sequence and incomplete?

From: Matthew.Perkins@ft.com (Matthew Perkins)

I am soooooooooo sick of hearing John Williams fans (most recently Josh Gizelt) gripe about the fact the his albums don't contain every single last note of score and the fact that he re-arranges his music into a sequential order that doesn't slavishly follow the film sequence. Josh, I kind of know where you're coming from in your disappointment that certain nice cues don't always make it onto the albums (and this is true of other composers' albums, not just Williams) but I think you're just plain wrong in your assertion that Williams has to lay out the score complete and chronologically on his soundtrack albums in order to satisfy sad fanboy needs. The original albums of "Star Wars", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Superman" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" were (and still are) fine representations of those scores and the reason people like me (at the tender age of nine or ten) got into Williams (and later other greats like Goldsmith, Barry and Morricone) in the first place. I think the recent complete issues of, say, "Raiders", "E.T." or the "Star Wars" trilogy prove completely the opposite of what you're saying, and that while it's cool to now have certain cues that didn't appear on the original albums, it's also true that the "bitty" structure and interminable length of the new albums leaves one exhausted and yearning for the breathtaking ebb and flow of Williams's original album sequencing. ("The Phantom Menace" album, whatever its flaws, is still a fantastic album - for crying out loud, it's got 70-odd minutes of score, nicely sequenced into some kind of cogent muscal statement which rewards repeated listening, instead of a pointless trudge through every note of the score as represented in the movie. How can you have a problem with Williams putting his awesome "Duel of the Fates" cue as the second track on the album, so stunningly does it kick the album into life following the main title?).

I am not a "layperson", to quote your condescending term (my god, no wonder so many people think us soundtrack fans are sad geeks), I am a huge Williams fan - I just don't see why you need every note of every score tediously put onto the album (it'll never happen anyway - thank god). Lukas, you know what I'm saying - you yourself, on numerous occasions, have said (quite rightly) that it would absolutely boring to hear scores presented completely and chronologically (nobody, including me, would be able to sit through the albums more than once). PLEASE, guys, stop moaning and be grateful for the fact that a genius like Williams not only writes stunning music for films, but then puts some thought into putting together a structured, balanced album for ungrateful wretches like us. Just enjoy the music, you know??

By the way, I think FSM is the greatest - I've been reading it for years (although the mag always turns up in London specialist shops about two months late - I'd subscribe but I don't have a credit card!!) - Lukas, you are the man!

From: Jeff Commings, Jeffswim@aol.com

As a self-professed John Williams freak, I can say that have been perturbed by his (or his staff's) decision to make the Phantom Menace CD run out of order to better the listening experience. But think of it this way...many of the people who bought the soundtrack really are NOT Williams fans, or for that matter, big soundtrack fans. They are usually the ones who don't care if a silly pop song is put smack in the middle of the CD or that a major plot point is revealed. But for us soundtrack fans, we may all have to live with the fact that we may be a very vocal minority. Many of the things we want as purists may not come to pass for a very long time. For instance, how long have we cried for an alternate music track on many of our favorite DVDs? And how long have we prayed that the sound effects editors and mixers have an understanding of the music so as not to make a small grenade explosion take over a couple of very important notes? Well, I for one have not given up on this quest, but until we get the general public to see how much better it is to listen to a great score without the dialogue and sound effects, but leave the visuals onscreen, or get the same listening experience on CD as we do in the theater, we may have to learn how to program our CD players to get what we want.

But my beef with soundtrack order goes beyond Mr. Williams. Two of my favorite scores are put in such an order as to make the listening experience better, and are definitely NOT in chronological order. They are Jerry Goldsmith's "The Omen" and Elliot Goldenthal's "Interview With the Vampire." Both CDs arrange the music so as to give the listener some ebbs and tides in the music. After a big musical moment, such as in "The Omen's" "The Demise of Mrs. Baylock," there is a very quiet and flowing cue, "Don't Let him Kill Me," that is suspenseful at the end but nevertheless lets you catch your breath. Goldenthal did the same not only for "Vampire," but for other CDs of his as well. I always have to program my CD player if I want to hear it in order, but most of the time I let go and listen to it like the composer wants me to listen to it.

While I cannot guess the motives for Mr. Williams' CD arrangements these days, I can say that I am quite certain that he does know his fan base and that maybe a slight intervention to make sure he is still on the right track may be necessary.

From: Thomas P. Douglas <tspcds@swbell.net>

Subject: Hey they all do it!!!!!

I remember way back in 1975 watching Steven Spielbergs Jaws, and listening to John Williams excellent score. But when I purchased the LP and I went home to play it on my record player, I noticed sometime different about the soundtrack, it sounded oddly strange to me. At first I could not put my finger on it, but one late night while listening to Jaws score, it came to me, it was not the same in the film, the original soundtrack LP and the movie score were like night and day. It even had a different texture and sound to it. I was pissed, cuz I wanted what I saw and heard in the movie house. That score was COMPLETE, the LP was incomplete, and so this is where my battle begins.

John Williams, John Barry, and Jerry Goldsmith all do it. What do these great composers do??? Well this is what they do. When they are scoring their movies on a soundstage, that score is the complete score, ( the score that their fans want) but when it is time to prepare for the LP, CD we are left with just a 30-50 minute rehash, rearrange score. I have always felt cheated when these composers released a LP of 30 minutes of a score. But way back when the introduction of CD's came into play, we could get a better quality and more of a quanity of movie music. But NO!!!! It never happen, John Williams has always never, even if he is the producer of his soundtrack, given one complete score. Not One. The River, Empire of the Sun, Hook, Jaws, and how about those Indiana Jones Movies. Mr. Williams hear me, Your scores are also telling me, your fans, a story.

When you leave out a cue, or rename a cue, or rehash a cue you destroy the story telling. Hey Mr.Williams your fans as well as Barry, Goldsmiths and whosoever the composer will buy those complete scores, besides trying to hunt on the net, those bootlegs.

I do understand with LP's that the space was the issue, so what is the issue of CD's????? I believe that you can hold 80 minutes of information. On your smaller films i.e. Jaws, The River, and The Towering Inferno, why not release the COMPLETE SCORES, the way it is represented in the film. When the complete score of Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released last year, by those wonderful guys Nick Redman and Michael Matessino, John Williams cues were placed in the order how it was used in the film. This complete soundtrack was excellent, compared to the dreadful anemic Arista release in 1977. The Complete Close Encounters even had a better sound, and the way Redman and Matessino placed the cues on the cd, the music story was COMPLETE.

Mr. Williams, and other composers why do you let your fans down. Now even the digital age, you still have not got it!!! All I am asking you great composers to do is, Give us fans the complete score that you wrote for the film. Not a rehash, rescore, rearrange, out of place cues!!!!!! No More Please.

Now here is my list of scores that need to COMPLETE

The River, Empire of the Sun, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Dances with Wolves, Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Schindler's List, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace, and if you fans con think of anyother score that needs to be on this list, please add to it.

But I think the only two guys in moviemusicland that gets it, are Nick Redman, and Michael Matessino, I turn to you guys to get it RIGHT. Because John Williams and John Barry, and Jerry Goldsmith seem to have no Clue how their fans feel.

From: "MARK LENEKER" <mtodd8@hotmail.com>

It seems to me that Williams and other composers who produce score albums in an effort to cater to the mass audience simultaneously weaken acceptance of the film score form they are trying to widen. This is not say that albums made up of 30+ :30 cues works, but by altering and editing viable scores into some sort of "tone poem" of the movie, with no anchor in chronology, the mainstream are not even given the opportunity to experience the form and decide for themselves. As I said, many scores wouldn't work this way, and many soundtrack labels couldn't afford all the music anyway, but in the case of a fully paid for and available score (like The Phantom Menace)the lack of a complete score seems to hint at something Microsoft-like in attitude (Ah-hah! Let's release this initial "flawed" album and then bilk them for v.2 down the road, Bwah-hah-hah)! With some franchises this applies to not only OST albums, but regular and SE editions of the films in most merchandising areas(video, LD, DVD, toys, etc).

Conspiracy paranoia aside it would be interesting to see a few brave composers release score albums completely on their initial run and see what effect it might have. At worst, collector's will be happy and the public will remain basically inert with perhaps a few eyes opened. But in an industry with such low sales, any number of new interest would be welcomed.

One last question for the technologists: in this era of nearly magical editing and sequencing isn't it possible to shape a decent (and by that I mean one with sufficiently long cues) score as purely as possible without butchering it?

From: dggilb@franklincovey.com, Donny Gilbert

Josh Gizelt's letter was nicely done. I agree with the majority of his points.

The thing that has to be remembered is the fact that Williams sets up these tracks for a dramatic approach to presenting the music, i.e., highs and lows. I can agree with that fact, but at the omission of some superior music is still beyond me. Or maybe we just aren't giving Williams enough credit knowing what wasn't included in the score and then an eventual re-release that included the rest of the music. Why is this music showing up in the Star Wars video games? Who knows?

To say there are people who would appreciate less Jar-Jar music kind of defeats the purpose of having a soundtrack in chronological order with all the bells and whistles included. You take it as the music is written, leave it out when you get home to listen. Personally, I trust Williams choices than most of the peoples choices I read on the FSM websight.

I have a problem with Josh's "dramatic development" statement. Everyone must remember that 99% of soundtrack releases are going to be contained on 1 CD. You have to set it up in such a way that the music lives separate from the movie, or else you are going to a have a very haggard, choppy "dramatic development" and a lot of the highs and lows are going to be left out anyway. It is only when you get a "complete" or "expanded" version of the soundtrack that you can get away with a chronological approach. If you had 2 hours of music and had to edit it down to 70 minutes for a CD release, what music would you choose? I can guarantee with the Phantom Menace, a lot of different tracks would be chosen. Hell, I would choose a bunch of different tracks, but you have to fit what you choose onto 1 CD! And of the tracks you did choose, would you stick them in chronological order in order to satisfy your sense of drama. Imagine now trying to release this CD to a mass audience. Josh points to these facts, but the only person who can truly program music for a CD release is Williams himself. He didn't do a bad job, he didn't do a great job either. I don't know why he picked certain tracks or why they are "mislabeled", but they are his decisions, live with it until something better comes out, and at this point, I think it is inevitable.

From: "Gunnar Grah" <G.Grah@gmx.net>

Josh has my full support. The way Williams' music is presented on his albums is often unfortunate. And there's another thing that appeared during the last few years which I find quite annoying: the "reprise". If I'm correct, it all started with Schindler's List. In that case, the reprise of the film's theme at the end of the CD was wonderful, as it was a different take at the music, without the solo violin. But after that, the reprise was very often identical to the cue at the beginning of the CD, as far as I can tell (although the running time was always a little bit different...). And I found that those CD's are much more listenable if you just skip the Main Title at the beginning. Thus, the music builds up and evolves all its different themes to reach a great conclusion in the Main Theme/End Titles/"Reprise" at the end of the CD.

And now, as promised, MY opinion, like I'm some college professor telling what I actually think of the dealth penalty after we studied case law for a semester:

I am SHOCKED at how quickly many of you are to slam John Williams because he has always (for whatever reason) produced incomplete soundtrack albums with annoying edits and cues out of film order. Would all of you step over your mothers for a bite to eat or what?

I'll concede a couple of things: now that I have things like the 2CD set of Superman I don't finding myself going back to the old, incomplete version... the album of The Phantom Menace really isn't the best assortment of music from that picture... and yeah, I have been disappointed by many albums where my favorite 30 seconds of music was omitted just because the composer didn't like the way it was played.

Still, I am shocked at the sheer selfishness displayed in most of the letters above and yesterday. Here's John Williams, the single most beloved film composer ever, whose work has brought such joy to so many of us, and the vast majority of you are like, "Yeah, his album sequences suck! Get him out of here!"

Folks, film music is NOT classical music, where obviously you would not want to put the movements out of order, or snip things here and there (which incidentally many classical composers do in revising works). It is meant to be heard as an adjunct to a narrative and a visual experience and as such is not NECESSARILY best presented in its original sequence or in complete form. Trust me because I have actually sat there with complete film scores trying to make them into enjoyable CDs -- and by and large with the FSM releases we do put them into complete, chronological form -- and sometimes it's impossible. With Monte Walsh it was simply impossible to use the complete thing. You'd kill yourself if you heard the same 20-second harmonica cue five times in a row. Fortunately the people with enough taste to buy Monte Walsh did not rake me over the coals.

Something else people should realize is that when most soundtrack albums are assembled, it is all fresh in the composer's mind. The work is NEW and there is no "set in stone" chronological order. There is no "film" even. He just wrote a bunch of music, a lot of which probably got changed around during recording and dubbing. Now, he's trying to make the best stand-alone listening experience, within certain restrictions. When you write a research term paper, or a report at work, do you use every single word or paragraph you might have typed, or do you edit the final thing into the best presentation you can?

Again, I'm all for the need to represent important historical works in "archival" form -- that's what we do with our FSM classics releases. But you have to give the composers working today the latitude to make something relevant to the here and now. How does anyone know what is going to be historically important and what isn't?

Anyway, many of Williams's albums are great. Jane Eyre is a masterful half hour. The original Star Wars 2LP set was a huge pop hit in part because it had four sides of really enjoyable music that took you into the world of the movie without slavishly clinging to the specific beats. When I was 13 years old I used to sit on the school bus with a walkman and listen to tapes of all of these great albums: Star Trek I and II, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, etc. Sometimes I would add right off the movie a cue not on the album, sound effects and all, but that was all part of the fun.

And that's what upsets me the most about the above letters: they're not FUN. You guys seem really angry, and that's a turn off. Maybe I'm confusing frustration borne out of passion with actual hostility... and maybe I'm looking back at things with rose-colored glasses... but it's not this big a deal! In the olden days, we used to be damn grateful there was a soundtrack album at all, and that it was only part of the score was a given. But we loved it. I miss the love, baby! Maybe back then we'd write letters to each other (no email at the time!) and gripe about our favorite missing cues like sports fans complaining about an underachieving team, but I can't remember it ever being this pervasive and this hostile.

So there! Now you can all attack ME for saying this. Which I hope you don't. Because I do love all this stuff.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com