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John Williams to be in “If These Walls Could Sing” Abbey Road Disney+ Documentary, December 16th


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On 20/12/2022 at 4:18 PM, Giftheck said:

 

Funny, I made an edit that sounded exactly like this on the day the documentary dropped, but I deleted it a few days ago because I assumed it was completely inaccurate. :pat:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Guys

just watched this on Disney+ and was nice to see a generous amount of time given to JW recording there. I’d also never seen the footage of them recording the End Credits of Episode III before as well as the Battle of the Heros piece.

The documentary is not without its floors however, the major one being that Goldfinger (song and score) was never recorded at Abbey Road despite Jimmy Page’s recollection of playing on it there & a graphic which is actually 4 years out.

How many other mistakes are in there regarding accuracy of the recording of JW scores (or anything else for that matter), who knows? Anyway…

 

Wishing you all a safe & prosperous new year

 

 

FF7FBA7C-20AA-4C5E-B120-D518FC4F2D4A.jpeg

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6 minutes ago, Giftheck said:

Seeing all this makes me wonder just how much footage was actually recorded of those sessions, it would certainly be a treat to see that, but that's just a fool's dream, I suppose :P

 

According to those Pablo Hidalgo Post Notes blogs I found a week or two ago, the Hyperspace Webcam feature on starwars.com was taken to Abbey Road for the recording sessions of ROTS. While that wasn't taking video it would've taken a picture once every 20 seconds to go on starwars.com, and I'd imagine that most of those pictures still exist somewhere in the Lucasfilm archives. Sadly I've never found a still active independent archive of any of those pictures, most people who did repost them at the time did so on picture sites that don't exist anymore

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7 hours ago, Brando said:

I seriously hope Spielberg plans on making a documentary [...]

"Johnny (The Maestro)"

 

Kidding aside: We caught that Tornatore documentary at the movie theatre, and it would indeed be wonderful to have a similar treatment of Williams' œuvre/life for the movies and the concert hall...

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Had a quick skim - it's ok. I suppose the 5 minute with Williams is nice to see once, but I feel that to get the most from it you have to have a wider appreciation of mainstream music recorded there, which I don't really have.

 

Personally, my interest would be more in seeing SS's personal recordings of sessions, and seeing JW's interactions and discussions with filmmakers over changes and revisions. I get the impression that many here would love a polished talking head styled documentary to go on a Blu ray and sit proudly on their shelf, but I don't think that adds anything to our knowledge of his process.

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6 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

Personally, my interest would be more in seeing SS's personal recordings of sessions, and seeing JW's interactions and discussions with filmmakers over changes and revisions. I get the impression that many here would love a polished talking head styled documentary to go on a Blu ray and sit proudly on their shelf, but I don't think that adds anything to our knowledge of his process.

I would like both. Think of the 90’s-00’s making of documentary’s. Lots of sitting there and talking, but plenty of on set stuff as well. Recording session/booth talks would be great. If they did a documentary like this, I would also hope, on the discussion of Superman, we might find out what specifically made JW walk out of Superman 2. That’d be an interesting tidbit.

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Had to watch this to see what all the fuss was about. It was so-so. Terribly by-the-numbers; from a documentary point of view, not that interesting. But I suppose it caught the big tentpoles of the studio's history.

 

Funny, though, all these years I thought the first STAR WARS was recorded in Abbey Road as well, so was confused when they went straight for RAIDERS in the docu. Had to doublecheck my Arista box to find out it was recorded in Denham, LOL!

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51 minutes ago, Thor said:

Funny, though, all these years I thought the first STAR WARS was recorded in Abbey Road as well, so was confused when they went straight for RAIDERS in the docu.

 

They are not very precise about which Star Wars were recorded there, but us, the fans, we know that Raiders was recorded in 1981, so it excludes A New Hope and Empire (even if some sources says that some late sessions of Empire have been recorded to Abbey in january 1980, but we don't know for sure which sessions were used in the final mixes, if they were used... I can imagine the sound engineer in LA saying: we can't use the Abbey Roads touch-up sessions for the mixes, they sound too different than those of the Anvil Studios... anyway...).

 

But in the documentary, they do show some footage from A New Hope, just to add to the confusion.

 

These are the little defaults of those documentaries...

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58 minutes ago, Bespin said:

 

They are not very precise about which Star Wars were recorded there, but us, the fans, we know that Raiders was recorded in 1981, so it excludes A New Hope and Empire (even if some sources says that some late sessions of Empire have been recorded to Abbey in january 1980, but we don't know for sure which sessions were used in the final mixes, if they were used... I can imagine the sound engineer in LA saying: we can't use the Abbey Roads touch-up sessions for the mixes, they sound too different than those of the Anvil Studios... anyway...).

 

But in the documentary, they do show some footage from A New Hope, just to add to the confusion.

 

These are the little defaults of those documentaries...

 

The trailers made it seem very much that Star Wars was part of the Abbey Road legend in 1977. Because "Return of the Jedi!" doesn't have the same ooomph. I don't remember why but ten years ago I was looking up what Star Wars movies were recorded there so I knew Star Wars wasn't there. But I missed that Raiders was at Abbey Road.

 

Nobody is going to comment that Williams referred to Raiders as "that silly little march?" I mean, it's not heretical or anything and he certainly didn't kill my childhood. But it was an interesting remark.

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7 hours ago, Tallguy said:

 

Nobody is going to comment that Williams referred to Raiders as "that silly little march?" I mean, it's not heretical or anything and he certainly didn't kill my childhood. But it was an interesting remark.

He is often quite self-effacing about his music.

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22 hours ago, Tallguy said:

Nobody is going to comment that Williams referred to Raiders as "that silly little march?" I mean, it's not heretical or anything and he certainly didn't kill my childhood. But it was an interesting remark.

Actually looking at it from a pure musical side, it is a silly little march.

Question rather is, why he, besides all his great music, keeps performing it at each and every of his concerts. 

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  • 10 months later...

Note the caption says this photo was taken at Abbey Road. I assumed John's segments were filmed in LA? Is that backdrop identifiable as somewhere at Abbey Road?

 

Hard to believe JW visited London just to record an interview, unless it was done en route to/from one of his Europe concerts.

 

image.png

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16 hours ago, crumbs said:

Note the caption says this photo was taken at Abbey Road. I assumed John's segments were filmed in LA? Is that backdrop identifiable as somewhere at Abbey Road?

 

Hard to believe JW visited London just to record an interview, unless it was done en route to/from one of his Europe concerts.

 

image.png

Good point. 

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But this explicitly refers to an interview at Abbey Road Studios. So JW has already been back in London since 2018?

 

 John Williams, an American composer, conductor and pianist during an interview at Abbey Road Studios. (credit:  Mary McCartney)

John Williams, an American composer, conductor and pianist during an interview at Abbey Road Studios. (credit: Mary McCartney)

 

If These Walls Could Sing Review - Mary McCartney Celebrates Her Childhood in this Definitive Look at Abbey Road Studios — Austin B Media

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48 minutes ago, crumbs said:

That's a fantastic photo.

 

And how totally fascinating if JW did indeed go back to Abbey Road just for an interview. When did he sneak that in?!

Maybe that time he canceled his LSO concert was to do this instead.  "Hey, John, you will get to hang out with Ringo if you do this instead of the concert.  Don't worry, we'll tell them the dog ate your scores...or maybe that you got sick or something."  

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Maybe Ringo rang him up in LA: "Johnny-Baby, you're a rich man. Why don't we come together, the two of us, flying - I need you to help me count how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. With a little help from my friends, we can come in through the bathroom window." And Williams replied: "I dig it."

 

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On 27/11/2023 at 2:07 PM, crumbs said:

And how totally fascinating if JW did indeed go back to Abbey Road just for an interview. When did he sneak that in?!

 

This may have happened on the way to or fro Vienna II, March 2022?

 

Do we know exactly where he was interviewed by Classic FM?

 

John Williams at 90: A Classic FM Exclusive

 

 

 

 

 

 

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