The Legacy of John Williams

---

Table Of Contents

• Film Details
• Music Credits
• Essential Discography
• Awards and Nominations
• In Williams’ Words
• Quotes and Commentary
• Videos
• Bibliography and References

---

Film Details

Year: 1974
Studio: 20th Century Fox/Warner Bros.
Director: John Guillermin
Producer: Irwin Allen
Writer: Stirling Silliphant, based upon the novels “The Tower” by Richard Martin Stern and “The Glass Inferno” by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson
Main Cast: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner
Genre: Disaster – Action – Drama

For synopsis and full cast and crew credits, visit the IMDb page

---

Music Credits

Music Composed and Conducted by John Williams

Music Editor: Len Engel
Scoring Mixer: Ted Keep
Orchestra Contractor: Meyer Rubin
Concertmaster: Israel Baker
Orchestrators: Herbert W. Spencer, Al Woodbury
Recorded at 20th Century Fox Scoring Stage, Century City, California
Recording Dates: October 22, 23, 25, 31, November 4, 7 and 11, 1974

---

Essential Discography

Original Soundtrack Album and Expanded Reissues

---

Selected Re-recordings

---

Awards and Nominations

Academy Awards
Nomination: Best Original Dramatic Score

---

In Williams’ Words

“As far as thematic writing was concerned, my best shot in Inferno was the helicopter opening scenes. I was able to get the producer, Irwin Allen, to keep the opening clear of sound and the motor of the helicopter low. So the music stood out.” ¹

“The Towering Inferno was another turning point: up until then, I had never been offered a spectacular five-minute overture belonging exclusively to image and music. For a long time, people would say to me: “Ah, so you’re the composer of The Towering Inferno…””²

---

Quotes and Commentary

With The Towering Inferno, John Williams established the prototype for many of his blockbuster scores that would follow. The major thematic elements of Williams’ score revolve around material from his dynamic main title and a pair of love themes: one for Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) and Susan Franklin (Faye Dunaway). the other for Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones) and Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire). Both of these romantic melodies are introduced as easy-listening source music in the film’s opening reels, but by the end titles they have been transformed into grand orchestral statements, typical of Williams’ ability to create musical material that lends itself to diverse stylistic treatments. […]
In addition to the main title and dual love themes, Williams’ varied score runs the gamut from lounge music to avant-garde experimentalism, incorporating a series of water chimes and four Peking gongs in passages reminiscent of the atonal moments of the composer’s landmark score to Robert Altman’s Images (1972).
It is interesting to compare Williams’ Inferno score with his music for Earthquake, released one month prior: Earthquake is very much about 1974 Los Angeles, and its score both in the pop-music source cues and in the dramatic instrumental episodes never lets the listener forget this. Inferno is less beholden to a specific time and place and its orchestral score would not be inappropriate had the film been made a decade earlier or 25 years later. Indeed, as Charles Champlin noted in his review of the film for the Los Angeles Times, “John Williams’ music is very potent stuff, ominous and urgent, fully underlining everything we watch, in a return to an earlier-day Hollywood regard for music’s role in heightening drama.”
– Jeff Eldridge

---

While Irwin Allen’s early memos had indicated some kind of musical theme for the fire itself, Williams largely avoided this approach. His Towering Inferno score would not be a proto-Jaws or sport anything like a menacing “fire motif.” Instead, Williams composed a central theme for the human characters at the center of the drama, one that could be treated heroically or in subdued fashion to support the film’s firefighter heroes or reflect on its victims. Williams then spun this material off into two different love themes and adapted a song melody for a third relationship in the film.
The movie opens with a fast-paced, bravura sequence of a helicopter spiriting the architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) across the northern California coastline and into San Francisco, finally to enter the 138-story Glass Tower from its rooftop, where glad-handing but fatally tight-fisted Jim Duncan (William Holden), whose company has overseen the Tower’s shoddy construction, waits for him.
The five-minute, dialogue-free opening aerial sequence afforded Williams the perfect opportunity to bring his score to the forefront and create a high-energy, bustling piece of big-city music, evoking both urban energy and the thrill of flight. Beginning with a slow, building pulse of strings, Williams’ Main Title introduces the first four notes of his principal theme, and quickly develops the melody into a busy, accompanying rhythm, bustling alongside statements of the fully expressed primary melody.
Williams breaks up his charging rhythms with glossy, lyrical moments for strings that suggest the storys romantic elements; his rhythmic-pulse fanfare statements sound from brass as the helicopter charges down the coastline. At 2:21 Williams introduces a new, nimble rhythmic idea, again spinning off the opening notes of his primary theme—one that thrillingly vaults upward in its final notes, suggesting the dizzying heights of the Glass Tower. Taking a canon-like approach, Williams overlaps this complex idea on top of itself as the piece races forward, moving the material from strings to increasingly powerful brass arrangements, pausing only for an elegiac moment as the film’s dedication to firefighters appears. ³
– Jeff Bond

---

Videos

Opening Credits from The Towering Inferno (1974) | Warner Bros. / 20th Century Fox

“Trapped Lovers” scene from The Towering Inferno (1974) | Warner Bros. / 20th Century Fox

---

Brett Mitchell plays his original piano solo arrangement of “Waking Up” from John Williams’ The Towering Inferno

---

Bibliography and References

. Bond, Jeff / Eldridge, Jeff / Kendall, Lukas – Liner notes for The Towering Inferno – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD Reissue, Film Score Monthly, Vol.4 No.3 , 2001
. Bond, Jeff / Matessino, Mike – “A Towering Achievement,” liner notes for The Towering Inferno – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Remastered Edition, La-La Land Records, 2019
. Dyer, Richard – “Where Is John Williams Coming From?,” The Boston Globe, June 29 1980
. Higham, Charles – “You May Not Leave the Movie House Singing Their Songs, but …,” The New York Times, May 25  1975

Legacy of John Williams Additional Resources

. Soundtrack Spotlight podcast with Mike Matessino on The Disaster Movie Soundtrack Collection

---

Footnotes

1. Quoted in Eldridge, liner notes for The Towering Inferno – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD, Film Score Monthly, 2001 ↩︎
2. Interview by Stephane Lerouge, The Legend of John Williams boxset, Universal Music France/Ecoutez le cinema, 2024 ↩︎
3. Bond, excerpt from the liner notes for The Towering Inferno – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Remastered Edition, 2019 ↩︎

<- Back to Filmography page