Some years ago I interviewed the British director Edgar Wright about his favourite soundtrack albums. I mentioned that, in the age before videos, I had owned and learned by heart the spoken-word-and-song soundtrack for the Magic Roundabout feature film Dougal and the Blue Cat. Wright reminded me that, in the 80s, there had been a tie-in Storybook album for Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, with Michael Jackson narrating the film and breaking down in tears when ET appears to die. The record also included John Williams’s score, which, as Wright noted, “told the story better than any narrator ever could”.
Now streaming on Disney+ is a new documentary, Music By John Williams, in which the French-American film-maker Laurent Bouzereau (creator of umpteen behind-the-scenes movie docs) interviews the American composer, who has defined the face of modern orchestral movie music. Williams’s recollections, from his earliest days as a hard-practising pianist (he has a background in jazz) to his blockbuster collaborations with film-makers such as Spielberg and George Lucas, are as clear and concise as his earworm theme tunes for Superman (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Star Wars (1977) – the last of which spawned a double-LP soundtrack that became the biggest selling symphonic album of all time.
