The Legacy of John Williams

How might one celebrate the 94th birthday of John Williams?

My wife and I started a funny little tradition on his birthday last year: we made the same lunch he always eats. In the process of writing my book I learned that John eats the same exact thing for lunch, every single day. Music editor Ken Wannberg was the first person who told me about it—a man who worked at John’s side for four decades, starting in the 1960s—and Ramiro Belgardt, Wannberg’s successor who has worked at John’s side for the past 25 years, confirmed that nothing has changed.

Are you ready for it?

Every single day, John Williams eats a turkey sandwich on Roman Meal wheat bread, dressed with a little mayonnaise and bread and butter pickles, with a side of Ruffles potato chips and, to drink, a Diet Sunkist orange soda.

They used to joke with John about it, Belgardt told me: “But I understand it. Everything about his life is very regular—from what he wears, to when he wakes up, to what he does at 3 o’clock and goes to the golf course. It’s so regimented. And even to the thing where he says, ‘I can’t listen to music’—it’s because his mind is always on the next thing. He doesn’t want to hear a lot of music. He doesn’t want to hear a lot of talking. He doesn’t want the noise. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s going to wear in the morning. He doesn’t want to think about what’s for lunch.

“There’s a very orderly process in his life, which allows the brain to do what it needs to do. There is zero spontaneity.”

A few things have changed, of course, with John’s advancing age and health complications. But for the majority of his working life, John has had a prescribed regimen: arrive at the office by 10am, sip coffee while looking at the piano, start composing around 10:05, write until 4pm except for a lunch break from 1 to 2. And when 4 o’clock rolls around, he heads to the golf course and plays eight holes. “We would go to the ninth hole and have a drink,” Wannberg told me. “Vodka on the rocks—Stoli.”

Many inspiring leaders have worn the same outfit every day, from Steve Jobs to Barack Obama. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” Obama said while he was in office. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing, because I have too many other decisions to make.”

When I asked John about all of this—specifically mentioning the daily sandwich—he laughed.

“I think it’s a habitual thing,” he explained, “that allows my body to work in a certain rhythm, in a certain way. It’s something that’s evolved over time, of course. I used to begin to write in the morning at about 9 o’clock and I wouldn’t put the pencil down till 6, with a break for lunch and so on. I don’t do that anymore. I write in the morning; in the afternoon I confess maybe a little nap, or some reading, a walk, then come home and some more reading, dinner, a little drink with it. That’s the way it’s been the last 10 years or so. But I just think that in my work it’s best to have a feeling that… I want to use the expression ‘chained to the piano’ [laughs]. But the problems won’t work themselves out unless we work them out—which takes some time.”

John has often likened himself to a journalist (in the sense of having tight deadlines and needing to write quickly), or a sculptor, or carpenter… or monk. He considers himself an ordinary laborer, one who mostly works in solitude. We all know that he is anything but ordinary—that he is a true artist, touched by God. But he emphasized to me that, even if there is some divine spark in his music, he only got to it through sheer repetitive process.

“Inspiration’s a weird thing,” he said one day. “People in your profession always ask about it. It’s always in the background: ‘How did you get the idea for this?’ or ‘Where did this come from?’ And it’s impossible, I think, for any of us to answer that very accurately. But one answer that seems to me to be applicable is that, anything that I may have done that’s any good at all certainly comes as a result of the process of getting to it. Rather than having a ‘eureka’ come to me, like the beginning of the Fifth Symphony or whatever it might be.”

“For me,” he said, “it’s been a working life.”

Now, I’m not about to start eating the same turkey sandwich every day; I need variety in my diet too much for that. (Also, my wife and I did substitute tastier pickles than bread and butter—and let it be said that regular Sunkist is much better then Diet.) But there’s a lesson here that I think any of us can benefit from. By eliminating certain quotidian decisions, and by establishing a daily rhythm and routine, we can focus on the process of whatever it is we’re hoping to excel at. (For me, that’s writing.)

What can we learn from John Williams’ everyday turkey sandwich? We learn that greatness might be attained if we stop procrastinating and distracting ourselves with inessential activity, that excellence is only possible if we order our lives to focus on the essential project at hand. Eating the same sandwich every day won’t inevitably lead to the score for Jaws… but it might be a good start.

So today, I’m raising a turkey sandwich to John Williams—a man who continues to inspire me to strive harder and aim higher with the talents I’ve been given. Happy birthday, Maestro.