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When John Williams visited the Battlestar Galactica recording sessions...


Jay

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Found this on the Intrada board, in the thread about Volume 1 of their Battlestar Galactica releases:

http://www.intrada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3930

First some random poster said:

As long as we're trivia-ing

George Lucas and John Williams visited the recording sessions to see if the music wasn't a rip-off from Star Wars. Williams decided it wasn't, complimented Stu -- and left.

Then Stu Philips himself popped into the thread and said this:

To clarify the above statement posted by johnbijl... John Williams and Lionel Newman visited one of the BSG sessions. George Lucas DID NOT.

SP

To all of you who have posted here, yes... this is Stu Phillips saying Hi. And I thank you for your interest in the music of BSG.

Please do not hold John Williams at fault for visiting the BSG session. It was not his idea to do so. He was asked (ordered?) by the legal department of Fox to do this. John is too nice a person to have done this on his own. That is not his style. He is one of the nicest men I have met in this crazy business of music.

SP

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I remember the uproar when Galactica premiered. I've seen worse ripoffs, Starcrash anyone?

Plus outside of the music, Galactica wasn't that good. I think part of the problem, the lawsuit, was that John Dykstra and several ILM members worked on it after a falling out with Lucas on Star Wars.

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Yeah, I think it all got a bit blown out of proportion. Lucas said he didn't want any part of Fox's plagiarism lawsuit, but was unhappy that Dykstra and crew took all the techniques and equipment developed for SW and used it on BSG.

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Stu Philips did a cracking job on the BSG theme, and while it captures the epic sound which SW is famous for; BSG sounds absolutely nothing like the Williams' piece. BSG is a great piece of music in its own right.

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Holdridge's 'The Beastmaster' and Jarre's 'Ghost' however do sound like BSG.

I have a big soft spot for the show, but it certainly wasn't very good outside of the music. Adama's Theme was brilliant. It's a shame McCreary couldn't do anything near as good.

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Stu Phillips told this story also on an interview that appeared on an old FSM print magazine issue--he also said that he felt honoured when Williams performed the BSG theme in several concerts and recordings with the Boston Pops.

Also, Phillips collaborated with JW on some arranging on Gidget Goes to Rome.

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As for the lawsuit, it was mainly about former ILM employees doing a similar kind of thing to SW using an equipment developed for this film. Additionally, Lucas thought of doing a TV show based on SW and he said BSG already "spoiled the market" with what he saw as a lesser product.

Karol

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That's interesting, Karol. And it makes sense. The TV project Lucas was going to do became the novel of Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Author Alan Dean Foster revealed that it was originally written with limited sets in mind, as a television budget would confine their storytelling. As it was, Splinter became a published work only. Maybe if Galactica hadn't happened, Empire Strikes Back would've been delayed, or different than we know it, as resources would have been allocated to Star Wars on TV.

I'm not at home where I can look, but I believe the story of Williams' and Newman's visit to the recordings was published in the liner notes to the 25th Anniversary edition of the BSG Soundtrack

The Galactica OST was one of my first as a kid, on 8 Track, along with Star Wars. So it is a large portion of my DNA. I adore the score, and I think it has stood the test of time. I watched the first 3 seasons of the new show, but then got kinda bored with it. Upon listening to the music, I found nothing from McCreary that made me want to pursue a listen any further outside the show.

As for the original Battlestar Galactica, to this day I am able to be completely absorbed by its charm. It has the amazing duality of being a program about destruction and holocaust, yet it has a friendly, loving feel to it. It's a show about hope, family, and humor filled with cool robots, amazing spaceships, hot women, bizarre aliens, delightful villains, and heroes to root for. What's not to like? Now, I can completely agree that many of the scripts are crap, and there are some real howlers later in the season. But when I put on Galactica, I am able to be 6 years old again.

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I'm not at home where I can look, but I believe the story of Williams' and Newman's visit to the recordings was published in the liner notes to the 25th Anniversary edition of the BSG Soundtrack

It is in the liner notes for the new Intrada release.

I love the music. Loved the show when it first came out (I was in high school then) and find it to be totally unwatchable now.

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Reading this thread makes me absolutely mad!!! What the fucking hell right do Williams and Lucas have to turn up at another's music session and declare that the music sounds nothing like Star Wars???!!! This a blatant abuse of privelege, and should NEVER have happened. At the very least, they should have waited (like everyone else!!!!!!!) to hear the music played with the visuals. I knew Lucas was greedy and jealous, but this... What a c**t.

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I'm not at home where I can look, but I believe the story of Williams' and Newman's visit to the recordings was published in the liner notes to the 25th Anniversary edition of the BSG Soundtrack

It is in the liner notes for the new Intrada release.

It is also in the liner notes from the 2003 release. I knew I'd heard the story before from someplace.

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I have the Out Of This World CD.

It was one of the first 10 CDs I ever owned. It also features the painfully slow rendition of the Star Trek TMP theme.

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Same here on both counts. That TMP theme is awful. Painful is accurate. Do you recall if your disc is encoded so that the Battlestar track cues up a fraction of a second too late, cutting off the very start? It always irritated me.

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By the way, that Out of This World version of Battlestar Galactica is a direct result of Williams' visit to the recording sessions.

Stu Phillips:

Happily, John felt that I did not intentionally "lift" any of his music from the film. In 1983 John asked me to arrange a customized Galactica suite specifically for him and the Boston Pops to record.
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Dude. It's slow, but it's almost like the Nemesis rendition.

The Nemesis version is much faster.

The only part that Williams plays at a decent tempo is Ilia's theme.

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That's interesting, Karol. And it makes sense. The TV project Lucas was going to do became the novel of Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Author Alan Dean Foster revealed that it was originally written with limited sets in mind, as a television budget would confine their storytelling. As it was, Splinter became a published work only. Maybe if Galactica hadn't happened, Empire Strikes Back would've been delayed, or different than we know it, as resources would have been allocated to Star Wars on TV.

That's interesting but doesn't seem quite right. Do you have a source or a link? The reason that I ask is that Splinter of the Minds Eye was published in March of 78 and Battlestar Galactica came out later that year in September. That seems to discount the idea that BSG ruined Star Wars tv for Lucas so he turned Splinter into a book.

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I am only guessing BSG may have influenced the decision to abandon Splinter as a TV project. It may be possible that Lucas knew of BSG well before it premiered, and perhaps before Splinter was published. But yeah, it's only a guess.

Here is an interview with Alan Dean Foster, who talks about the origins of Splinter as a television project. (Scroll towards the end for the interview.) I haven't listened to it in a while, so check it out and see if Foster mentions how the decision to make it a novel came about.

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  • 1 year later...

Found this on the Intrada board, in the thread about Volume 1 of their Battlestar Galactica releases:

http://www.intrada.n....php?f=4&t=3930

First some random poster said:

As long as we're trivia-ing

George Lucas and John Williams visited the recording sessions to see if the music wasn't a rip-off from Star Wars. Williams decided it wasn't, complimented Stu -- and left.

Then Stu Philips himself popped into the thread and said this:

To clarify the above statement posted by johnbijl... John Williams and Lionel Newman visited one of the BSG sessions. George Lucas DID NOT.

SP

To all of you who have posted here, yes... this is Stu Phillips saying Hi. And I thank you for your interest in the music of BSG.

Please do not hold John Williams at fault for visiting the BSG session. It was not his idea to do so. He was asked (ordered?) by the legal department of Fox to do this. John is too nice a person to have done this on his own. That is not his style. He is one of the nicest men I have met in this crazy business of music.

SP

For the record, I don't like being called 'some random poster' :-D

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