How did you get into it?

[Gamecube 0]

This may have been asked before, so forgive me, i'm new.

Now I dout that most of you just suddenly had a spark in your head and decided to get Williams CD's. I want to know how you got interested in John Williams music or soundtracks. Heres my story:

When I was 3 years old I used to watch movies constantly. One of those movies was Star Wars: A New Hope. Once I was older I stoped watching these movies and forgot about them. Then TPM came out and I decided to watch ANH again. A few of the songs caught my attention. The first was the Main Theme and the other was the Death Star Attack stuff. So I decided to get the CD. Before you know it i'm have all the Star Wars CD's. WIilliams was so good that I got Jaws, E.T., Home Alone, and the rest.

So how did it happen for you?

[CruciformSword 2]

Let's see.....

I've always been a big fan of the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies. So a couple of summers ago, I kept watching the movies over and over again. I found that I really liked the music in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and asked for the cd for my birthday. Since the time that i got it, I've been collecting John Williams cds ever since.

-Jason

[Steven Awalt 0]

I got into Williams, as many, through getting the original double record album from Star Wars. Of course, I was an obsessive child with all the figures, and between them and Williams' music, you could reimagine the movie in the confines of your bedroom. Remember, this is right before VCRs were around. Wonderful memories thinking of these times. Great topic!

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

I played a JW marching band show (Raiders, Far and Away, JP, ET) and loved it, so I got JW's Greatest Hits 1969-1999. Then I started getting scores that I liked from the Greatest Hits, and the rest is history.

Ray Barnsbury

[Harry Potter 0]

I played the Jurassic Park theme on piano, and after that, he clicked, and I craved more, much more. So, I collected everything I could find, and I still do!

~Harry

[Lurker 5]

My dad raised me on classical music and he bought me the occasional soundtrack. I got Goldsmith's first Star Trek score when I was 3 years old and immediately took to it (though at the time "Klingon Battle" scared the hell out of me, and I would walk out of the room as it played). Then I started to get albums by John Williams (the score to Raiders being my first Williams album I think). Not much else to tell.

Neil

[Guest]

As is probably the case for a great many people, my affection for John Williams scores originated from a love of the original Star Wars trilogy. My first Williams CD (and one of my first CDs period) was the 1997 Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back by RCA Victor and it has remained my favourite musical score ever since. The rest of the Star Wars CDs followed, along with a love and appreciation of film music in general. However there's just something about a John Williams score that is almost infinitely superior to anything else. There is consistently such complexity and subtlety combined with energy and emotion such that I feel there is intrinsic value in practically anything he writes. Still in awe at how he does it... :wow:

CYPHER

[David Vincent 8]

In 1993, I saw Jurassic Park and I fell in love with this movie.

I knew everything in the film, the dialogues...

Then I bought the soundtrack. On the cover, Steven Spielberg has written it was their 18th year of collaboration with John Williams and then I realized that John Williams scored every soundtrack I was able to remember, like E.T., Jaws, CE3K and Indiana Jones.

I realized only in 1995 that John also composed the Star Wars trilogy soundtracks and then, I began to collect.

[Morlock 11]

I always loved the impirial march, so I got a CD called 'Star Wars and more' which is basicaly a pile of sci-fi scores.

It had 4-5 Star Wars tracks, JP theme, Superman theme, plus Alan Silvestri's Back to the future and a few of Goldsmiths Star trek tracks.

Then last year I was looking on Amazon.com and found the 'John Williams Greatest hits 1969-1999' and ordered it. I fell in love with it, and since than it's been growing every day.

Just for the record- the first Soundtrack I've ever bought was 'The Rock', which is still among my favorites.

[Big John 3]

I always loved the music from Star Wars. When HBO was new (and stood for "Hey, Beastmaster's On! ) they played SW often enough that it was easy to watch and re-watch and re-re-watch it. Years later, I went to a wedding where they played The Throne Room as the recessional, and I loved it! It took me a while to realize it, but many of the other bombastic and energetic film scores - all those recognizeable themes - that I really like happened to be from the same composer. After I made the connections, I decided to use the Superman March as the introduction music at my own wedding reception. Since then, I've tried to just grab as much as I can!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Ok, let me tell this story AGAIN.

Back in the 70's I was driving down the back roads in Arkansas, when I saw this blinding light. I was young and stupid, so I decided to stop and investigate. These strange beings were about and I was blinded by their high intensity lights. Stunned I was easily captured. I must have blacked out but when I woke up I couldn't see my captures, but I could hear them. One of them said, Your shore hava perty mouth, and another said squeal like a pig, what thats the wrong memory!

Ok I woke up and I was inside a space ship. I was able to escape from the grays and I got home. That weekend I went to the movies to see CE3K and I realized that Roy Neary and I were the same guy. I because obsessed with the film and the soundtrack. After lots of psychoanalysis and aversion therapy, I'm feeling much better now, but I still loved the CE3K soundtrack so I hunted everything down by this John Williams guy.

Joe, still watching the sky.

[Morn 8]

Hehe, you remind me of Chrusher :twisted:

[AHerrera83 0]

Joe, you forgot to mention where they put the prod...

[JoeinAR 1,949]

:cry2: :wow: :oops:

years of therapy down the drain.

thanks.

[Gamecube 0]

I thought you got therapy because you were obsessed with CE3K

[bruckhorn 105]

It's funny, but while I remember holding up a couple of microphones to the TV to record the main title from Superman when it was aired on ABC in the late seventies, I didn't get into orchestral music (and soundtracks specifically) until 1985.

It's been fifteen years since I got my first CD player and I can tell you what the first three CDs were that I bought. One of them was the original RSO version of Return of the Jedi. The store is no longer there, but its name was Licorice Pizza.

"That was so long ago, I forget." Bogart as Rick in Casablanca when asked where he was the previous evening. When asked what his plans were that night, he replied, "I never plan plan that far ahead."

bruckhorn

[Harry Potter 0]

What were the other two by chance?

~Harry

[stewdog1 50]

Like most, Star Wars was the one that propelled me into soundtracks. I think that my first ever Williams disk was the 4 disc anthology set for Star Wars. I believe I got that when it first came out.

Then shortly after that I started to collect all the Star Trek soundtracks. At the time, being in high school, I was only able to get one per month. So it took me about 6 months to get all the Star Trek soundtracks, which was up to Generations at that point.

[Ren 75]

well, I remember watching the Star Wars Trilogy and loving the music. I had a couple sound tracks in my head and hummed them all the time. I loved the music in home alone and hummed that too. I started noticeing how many soundtracks i was humming. . .terminator, terminator 2, Star Trek, then JP. We played that in High School and I loved it (bari sax!) then I also remembered Schindler's List too. . .just bits and pieces of soundtracks and JW until college then it hit!!!!!

I didn't really buy any soundtracks until then.

[Guest]

I've listened to Star Wars music all my life. I've got pictures of road trips and I'd be in my carseat, with headphones on. Now...I know I was too young in those pictures to have liked the Beach Boys, so it must've been ANH on cassette (the same stuff on the 2-LP). Yep...it was on My First Sony, this little red kids tape player. Of course I only listened to it because it was Star Wars. To give you an idea of how crazy I was about it, we even got the soundtrack to CE3K because it was so similar to Star Wars (with the spaceships and aliens and all--to a toddler like me, those were some BIG similarities!).

It probably wasn't until around '94 or so that I really started liking it, when my parents got me Jurassic Park on cassette for Christmas. This kind of drove the stakes into the ground, from where I'd gathered them by buying Empire and Return of the Jedi over the years. I guess for the next couple of years after that, I bought the soundtracks just to say, "Hey! I know what part of the movie this was played in!" And I'd hit the playback button in my mind and watch the scene as I listened to the music. I couldn't have picked a worse score to do this with than Goldeneye. I was pretty bored with it. Then somewhere in there I got the Star Wars Anthology for Christmas '96 (since the LP-conversion cassette was starting to de-reel and become impossible to play). The funny part is that I got the anthology just about a month before ANHSE would be on the shelves. So...my folks let me get that too. By now, I was hooked onto this kind of music. The same '96 Christmas, I also got First Contact on CD since the movie just came out--I thought it would be too cool to have an updated version of the TMP theme on CD, since I didn't have ST5 and my TMP cassette went the way of the ANH cassette. Not long after all the SEs were out and purchased, I bought the ancient versions of Superman and Close Encounters (Warner and Varese). I was a Williams-junkie then. I hadn't seen either movie for a while, but when I listened to both of them, I just drifted away.... I listened to "Chasing Rockets" over and over again. I loved (still do) the part from 1:12 to about 1:30--it scores the part where Superman stands up and flies out of Lex Luthor's lair and up and over the Metropolis skyline to go chase the rockets. That whole crescendo was just too cool. I listened to the music from then on because I liked it! When I listened to Superman for the first time, it was like that one Simpsons episode where Homer gives Barney a can of beer for the first time while he was studying for the SAT. I was Barney--and still am. Film scores are the beer to my Barney (back in the day before he sobered up)...

[Dr. Jones 0]

When I was 5 years old I saw Return of the Jedi (The other parts one year later). And I noticed the piece "Into the Trap" first. I watched that movies 40times. I also watched Hook and loved the "Hook-march". I tried to play it on the Piano (one year before I had piano lessons).

1997 the Star Wars Special Editions were playing and the complete Soundtracks were released. I buyed the TESB soundtrack and from that moment on I loved John Williams`music.

Once again: Please don`t mind my bad English

Jaws: Chrissie`s Death