I DON’T LIKE to be the bearer of bad news, but John Williams – cinematic maestro, born in 1932 – is getting kind of old. It’s coming.  

This is not a worthy, pre-emptive obituary celebrating the work of a great. This is a self-centred worry-piece about how on earth I’m meant to enjoy film/my life in the way I have thus far when John…retires. How will I cope with the imminent musical withdrawal?

It’s not just me who has the (air quotes) changing of the guard on their mind. Disney+ have just released a documentary exploring how damn good Williams is, thus publicly acknowledging that there’s likely to be a cessation of output in the not-too-distant future.

According to film producer Kathleen Kennedy, ‘It’s no exaggeration to say that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time.’ In the name of research, I listened (even more than I usually do) to John’s film scores and attempted to make a shortlist of the best. This might be controversial, but for my money, it’s Home Alone, Hook, Jurassic Park, Amistad, the first three Harry Potter movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Sugarland Express, Indiana Jones and the…oh sure, it sounds like I’m just listing scores he wrote rather than narrowing them to my favourites, but have you ever tried to pick the tastiest Tim Tam in the packet?

Even when you remove from the equation the passage of time, my fading youth and the fact that the whole world seems a bit shit right now, the films I grew up watching are redolent of the Classic Movie Experience because they had such bloody good soundtracks. John Williams is the soaring Hook music, where the innocence of childhood is recaptured; the bittersweet triumph of sending ET home, even though the earthlings will miss him; the estimated 8,500 Jewish people descended from those Oskar Schindler saved. He’s the reason I recently wore a Jurassic Park T-shirt to a barbeque, where I was meeting new people and trying to impress them. He’s created a soundtrack to our lives beyond compare.

When the world is being all shitty, I want Williams. Badly. I need the emotional grammar he gives me. I need the narrative to be Mickey Mousing its way into my heart. When I have a deadline and have had too little sleep, when I have a deadline for a piece about John Williams’ music on too little sleep (how meta am I?), it’s John I reach for.

JOHN WILLIAMS’ ROUTE to being the most wonderful (a technical, musicological term) film composer in history is almost as unlikely as him causing a rebirth of the symphonic film score (which he also did at a time when contemporary music soundtracks were all the rage). He started life as a regular (excellent, obviously) musician and played the piano on West Side Story. (Yes, I had to fact-check that because it sounds like some glorious piece of apocrypha.) He met Spielberg in 1972, which, dear reader, is a whole twelve years before I was born: I have never inhabited a world where Williams wasn’t creating things that made me feel all the feels. He’s now the second most Oscar-nominated person ever (Walt Disney being number one), and has made more than twenty films with Spielberg (quite the recommendation).

But that’s not really what interests me. How can I be expected to manage when he isn’t pulling things like ‘Rey’s Theme’ out the bag in his bloody eighties? When the score of Jurassic Park reaches the good and loud bit (advanced music terminology), what the crescendo is actually intoning is ‘I’m a dinosaur, I’m a dinosaur, I’m a diiiiiinosaaaauuur.’ The brass at the beginning of Star Wars – I mean, come on! With just a few notes I can feel excited, thrilled, scared, sad, melancholy, soaringly happy and optimistic – I could go on. Frankly, I didn’t even know I came with those as factory settings, let alone being able to activate them with a few bars of music. Williams tells me what to feel and when, and which films ought to take up nostalgic space in my underdeveloped emotional centre. Having my own children overwhelmed the emotional levees that being British/dead inside had so carefully constructed – and these days, I credit John with making me love my children just a little bit more when I’m listening to his scores.

Am I being manipulated by the maestro? Yes. Do I care? No. When my life feels a little bit less than epic/perky/pleasant, John’s music motivates me; it stirs me; it plants an encouraging boot squarely up my backside to make me get on with things and feel happy in the process. I listen to film music in the way some people drink whisky or acquire suspect prescriptions for Valium. Yes, the nostalgia makes me feel all nice and, call me sentimental, but I need that sometimes. Film music serves as a shortcut to the emotional state I’d rather be in – the one I experienced when I watched the film.

In this world where sentiment is sneered at, emotion considered a childish weakness that obstructs one’s hustle/building your brand, the man who makes us feel is the one whose contribution is peerless. So, John, please don’t retire, because I don’t think anyone else can make millions of people ‘have something in their eyes’ the way you do.

WHAT IF HE wants to retire, though? Despite all of my squawking that a different elderly American white man should not be at the helm anymore, I seriously fear that JW might be considering retirement. John, if you’re reading this, the Queen of Great Britain worked up until two days before her death…just saying. When the doddery Biden leaves his post, I’ll heave a sigh of relief (until I remember that the tangerine tyrant is succeeding him. Sob!). When John does, it’ll be raging tears and snotty, ugly crying from me. I’ll be so upset I’ll have to listen to his music to soothe myself.

And there’s something else I need to mention – just how chuffing nice he is. As familiar as we all are with the adage about meeting your heroes, I’d back myself that he’s an exception. If you’ve ever watched an interview with him, not only is he emotionally intelligent, humble, articulate and super patient with questions he must have heard thousands of times, he’s unerringly nice. I’m not unerringly nice to my own offspring – he really is an absolute wonder. If I’d created what John has, my ego would pose a health hazard to anyone I spoke to.

When asked about his legacy, and what he would hope for it, John, in an interview for Variety, like a bloody legend, replied: ‘We all want to be remembered as somebody who did well, tried to improve the world we found… If I could be remembered as someone who did his job well, and remembered as a good, solid musician, I would rest very happily.’

A few tinkles on a piano (E.T.) from John and my eyes prick with tears – how is that even possible? I’d say, John, that it’s truly a job well done.

Image credit: WikiMedia Commons