The Most UnWilliams like Score/Piece?

[Mr. Gitz 85]

As we all know JW has a particular “sound” even when he changes up styles or aesthetics, Williams is Williams. 
 

But I’m wondering what some here consider his most…UnWilliams like work. What does that mean? Something that if you hadn’t seen his name, you’d never guess he composed it. 
 

For me there is no particular score that comes to mind but there is a piece of music and I wonder if some of you haven’t guessed it already. 
 

It’s from Hook. One of his greatest scores contains one of his…oddest pieces. It sounds like 1990s Sitcom music. 
 

It’s “Banning Back Home”. It sounds more like Randy Edelman than John Williams. 
 

 

[Groovygoth666 670]

Hhhmn that's a tough question.

 

Agree with you on Banning Back Home, both the Film Version and especially the Extended one on the Ultimate Edition. 

 

I wouldn’t say it's UnWilliams but if you were to exclude Crimebusters theme the rest of Heartbeeps always felt like one of Williams most unique scores. Or it at least stands out as being quite different from what he was composing at the time and I can't really think of anything before or since that I would say comes close to it. 

[Edmilson 7,466]

That's a nice idea for a thread.

 

Here are my contributions:

 

Williams doing his own version of Zimmer's Gladiator:

 

 

This was quite unlike for him as well:

 

 

And this part from TLJ (1:45 to end), I dunno, it felt a little epic trailer music-y and thus maybe somewhat unrefined for John Williams. Kinda like he, on his early 80s, was trying to keep up with the current trends and appeal to fanboys who love listening to epic trailer music on YouTube.

 

 

[Falstaft 2,132]

Cool thread!

 

I think Banning Back Home is a good choice. I think it was mentioned recently in another thread, but the inspiration was Dave Grusin "Mountain Dance," maybe with a little "New Hampshire Hornpipe" thrown in there too. "Padme's Ruminations" too, and the Tan Dun-esque percussion from "Chase Through Coruscant" probably deserves a shout out too. I hear what you're saying @Edmilson with Lesson One, though the string line is not so far from this bit from The Patriot:

 

 

There's ActionString(TM) stuff of his elsewhere in post-2000s scores. But where a RCP-type composer might just lay it down as a static ostinato, it almost immediately becomes a complex polyphonic texture in Williams's hands. Just look what happens to his little Zimmer-esque ostinati after one or two measures in BFG for instance:

 

It's hard for me to think of a cue from Williams in the past 35 years or so that genuinely feels "UnWilliams." Maybe some of the gyuto monk chanting in Seven Years in Tibet? Some of that thumping suspense music from Munich?

 

[artguy360 1,843]

There are definitely individual cues that are un-Williams-like in general sound. A couple of the source-music-like cues from Memoirs of a Geisha come to mind.

[King Mark 3,631]

I dunno Fablemans kind of sounds unWilliams.   The main theme is like Alan Silvestri in Contact mode

[Jay 37,370]

2 hours ago, Mr. Gitz said:

It’s “Banning Back Home”. It sounds more like Randy Edelman than John Williams.

 

Dave Grusin!

 

 

[Tom 4,666]

22 minutes ago, King Mark said:

I dunno Fablemans kind of sounds unWilliams.   The main theme is like Alan Silvestri in Contact mode

I think the end credit rendition of The Fablemans theme could not be more Williams.  

[Datameister 2,044]

"Training Montage", anyone?

[Faleel 5,359]

5 minutes ago, Datameister said:

"Training Montage", anyone?

It exists in that wierd place where it totally feels like Williams, yet kind of feels very unlike honestly

[Datameister 2,044]

2 hours ago, Presto said:

It exists in that wierd place where it totally feels like Williams, yet kind of feels very unlike honestly

The planing triads and jazzy chords in the middle are pretty JW, but it's still a big outlier for me.

 

In a very different vein, Images is certainly unique. The Williams-isms are there, but not very conspicuously.

 

For me, Banning Back Home is just JW doing a great Grusin impression, much like Aunt Marge's Waltz is just JW doing a great Rossini impression.

[Mr. Gitz 85]

5 hours ago, Edmilson said:

That's a nice idea for a thread.

 

Here are my contributions:

 

Williams doing his own version of Zimmer's Gladiator:

 

 

This was quite unlike for him as well:

 

 

And this part from TLJ (1:45 to end), I dunno, it felt a little epic trailer music-y and thus maybe somewhat unrefined for John Williams. Kinda like he, on his early 80s, was trying to keep up with the current trends and appeal to fanboys who love listening to epic trailer music on YouTube.

 

 

 

Whoa you totally picked 2 of the 3 cues I initially thought of. I couldn’t remember the names of them though(and I wanted to leave room for others) but Padme’s Rumination is veeery UnWilliams. But I like it. Not only is it UnWilliams but it’s so UnStar Wars. I still remembering hearing it for the first time, convinced George Lucas wouldn’t use it. But damn if it isn’t one of my favourite moments in the film(Yes I admit I’m one of those weirdos who really enjoys the prequels)

 

 

JFK is also a score I was thinking of. And that cue is exactly the one that came to mind. 

3 hours ago, Jay said:

 

Dave Grusin!

 

 

Holy smokes. That is so close to “Banning Back Home” it borders on the P word. Yikes. 
 

Instead of the P word I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and use the “I” word. “Inspired”

[artguy360 1,843]

So many of the instances I can think of and the examples in this thread occur when JW is closely following a temp track.

[GerateWohl 4,371]

Heartbeeps is for me the most un-Williams like score overall.

[Thor 7,517]

Yes, definitely Grusin for "Banning Back Home". Dig the track, though.

 

There are so many examples to choose from. I always felt the techno bit in A.I. ("Bad Moon Rising"?) was Williams stretching towards new territories, but was then bummed to learn it was his son Joseph. There's "Training Montage" from SPACE CAMP, which sounds like Vince di Cola crossed with Williams, but still unmistakable Williams in the orchestral backdrop. Same as HEARTBEEPS -- the drum kit variations aren't able to hide a very Williams-sounding sound underneath.

 

Bits of MUNICH, WAR OF THE WORLDS and SLEEPERS, for example, display Williams attempting more modern trends in film music (deep and dark ostinati, sometimes with rock ensembles or electronics), but in his own way. Tracks like "The Football Game" or "Attack on the Olympic Village", for example. Some bits are clearly recognizable as him, other bits not so much.

 

But plenty of other things, like Williams approximating Hayes-like funk in "New Shooter" and "Neptune's Bar" in CINDERELLA LIBERTY. The 60s pop songs, like "A Guide for the Married Man", "Not With My Wife You Don't" or "Penelope". In fact, I have a whole playlist called "John Williams - Pop" displaying this material from throughout the decades.

 

Some of the most abstract concert works (like the flute concerto) sound fairly far removed from what we normally associate with his tonal film work, except in cases where he DID tap into that in film, like IMAGES, "Barry's Abduction" from CE3K or the sand people music in STAR WARS.

 

There's I PASSED FOR WHITE, which sounds more like Raksin than Williams. The two musical songs in "The Jenny Tannen Story", which sound like they come from a 30s Broadway musical. Many other things in 60s TV too, like the abstract electronic textures in "The Jail", which could rather come from the hands of Jerry Goldsmith, or other 60s TV luminaries like Robert Drasnin and Richard LaSalle or Richard Shores or whoever.

 

Finally, there are the times where Williams clearly taps into straight pastiche territory. If I didn't know that "Exultate Justi" was an original JW composition, I would have guessed Haydn or Händel or whoever. In fact, my dad, who's a classical buff, couldn't believe it was Williams when I first played him this cue on the car stereo years ago. He thought it was an original classical composition.

 

Those are for starters!

[GerateWohl 4,371]

By the way, I find it interesting, that Williams, really the creative master of rhythm when it comes to orchestral music, seems to fall back into the most conventional, almost boring rhythm patterns, when it comes to pop music.

Seems like he is very disciplined, when it comes to "genre conventions", but he doesn't seem very interested in the variety of possibilities in the pop or techno area.

[Thor 7,517]

True. None of his pop music is very good or original, but it's very much of the era, so I've always been impressed by his ability to catch the zeitgeist now and then. More in the first half of his career than the second, but still. For jazz and blues, it's a different story -- he's more on top of that, whatever jazz/blues variation we're speaking about (even gospel, like he explored so wonderfully in ROSEWOOD).

[GerateWohl 4,371]

13 minutes ago, Thor said:

For jazz and blues, it's a different story -- he's more on top of that, whatever jazz/blues variation we're speaking about (even gospel, like he explored so wonderfully in ROSEWOOD)

That's right. But jazz genres and espeicially blues have particularly some quite clear genre conventions. And surely he feels very much at home there.

 

But I also love how Williams adapts blues for example in compositions like his pieces for solo cello or partly in his "Conversations" for piano.

[Thor 7,517]

30 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

But I also love how Williams adapts blues for example in compositions like his pieces for solo cello or partly in his "Conversations" for piano.

 

Yes, and jazz, in particular, is so infused in his body from an early age, there are those who claim even later, large-scale orchestral efforts like STAR WARS have many jazz phrases going on (and no, I'm not just talking about "Cantina Band", but the proper dramatic music).

[Tallguy 3,401]

2 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Heartbeeps is for me the most un-Williams like score overall.

 

Except imagine Heartbeeps played by a traditional orchestra. It's Williams up to the neck.

[ConorPower 148]

1 hour ago, Thor said:

(even gospel, like he explored so wonderfully in ROSEWOOD).

 

I find those Rosewood spirituals very UnWilliamsy! I suppose it might be hard to pin down what makes his vocal music sound like Williams – given that their isn't too much of it. But 'Look Down, Lord' and 'Freedom Train' are so unlike any of his other vocal work (for film) that they always astound me; maybe that's because he wrote the lyrics too (another rarity in a rarity)?

[GerateWohl 4,371]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

 

Except imagine Heartbeeps played by a traditional orchestra. It's Williams up to the neck.

I try to imagine Heartbeeps as rarely as possible.

[Datameister 2,044]

5 hours ago, Mr. Gitz said:

Holy smokes. That is so close to “Banning Back Home” it borders on the P word. Yikes. 

 

Instead of the P word I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and use the “I” word. “Inspired”

 

Another P word comes to mind: pastiche. Or an H: homage. I suppose the lines between all of these are kinda blurry.

 

In any case, considering JW worked with Dave Grusin at least once (The Long Goodbye), I wouldn't be surprised if there was a conversation with him. But that's pure speculation on my part.

[Edmilson 7,466]

5 hours ago, Mr. Gitz said:

Whoa you totally picked 2 of the 3 cues I initially thought of. I couldn’t remember the names of them though(and I wanted to leave room for others) but Padme’s Rumination is veeery UnWilliams. But I like it. Not only is it UnWilliams but it’s so UnStar Wars. I still remembering hearing it for the first time, convinced George Lucas wouldn’t use it. But damn if it isn’t one of my favourite moments in the film(Yes I admit I’m one of those weirdos who really enjoys the prequels)

 

Yeah, it's a great cue that works so great with the movie precisely of how Un-Williams and Un-Star Wars it is. It gets you off guard and it's such an "alien" thing to the Star Wars musical universe that you notice: this is not an ordinary moment, it's a crucial moment for the whole saga. And not a very nice one judging by how dark and eerie it is.

[Loert 2,515]

 

 

[Tom 4,666]

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

43 minutes ago, Loert said:

 

Exactly this. Banning Back Home is just Williams digging into his jazz routes in a different/differently temp-tracked way than usual. But this is Powaqqatsi on steroids.

[King Mark 3,631]

On 04/01/2024 at 10:55 PM, Tom said:

I think the end credit rendition of The Fablemans theme could not be more Williams.  

yeah except that track

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

For me, JFK "the conspirators" is pure williams... as my favorite score is Jurassic Park...

 

What about the wailing woman in Munich? More prominent than the ROTS attempt in the same year...

 

Oh, and the stepping stones from KOTCS sound like a Giacchino composition....

[igger6 894]

Wow, that temp track-itis on “Banning” is BAD. Just license the cue as a needle-drop, Spielberg! Why make the greatest composer of his generation put on a chimp suit and squeal when you can just buy a real chimp?