If forced to choose a favorite piece from, not just A New Hope, but all of the Star Wars films, it would be difficult to not choose “Luke’s Theme.” This didn’t originally feature on the soundtrack. One thing that didn’t need to be touched one bit, however, is the score. The scene is one of the major reasons George went back to “fix” the original trilogy once his company ILM had mastered computer graphics special effects works. Close your eyes and imagine what sort of music a gin-soaked dive bar on the far reaches of the universe would feature and what do you hear? Not the synthy disco-tinged music that underscored many futuristic visions of 70s filmmaking, but instead the uptempo, jazzy tune Williams composed for A New Hope called simply called “Cantina Band,” a natural choice for the former jazz pianist turned film composer.Īpparently, Williams wrote the song after Lucas told him to “imagine several creatures in a future century finding some 30s Benny Goodman swing band music in a time capsule or under a rock someplace… how they might attempt to interpret it.” Speaking of disco, music producer Meco became obsessed with Star Wars and proposed the idea of doing a disco version of the film’s score to Casablanca Records, resulting in “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” a disco mash-up cover of the two tracks, which appeared on the collection Mercury Inspired By Star Wars And Other Galactic Funk and went platinum.Įmploying the same exercise as before and watching the cantina scene sans music, this bit of film history is reduced to what appears to be a rollicking Halloween party. One of the true strokes of unexpected genius is Williams’ choice for the famous galactic bar scene. Listen to the best of John Williams on Apple Music and Spotify.
STAR WARS BACKGROUND SCENERY MOVIE
Then he handed that cut of the film over to Williams – who won the job thanks to the recommendation of Steven Spielberg after Williams delivered the most iconic horror score since Psycho for his fish movie Jaws – and said: “That. Lucas originally cut his film, then entitled just Star Wars, only to be renamed later as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, culling the works of such musical masters as Beethoven, Bach and Tchaikovsky, among others. And you begin with the most daunting task a filmmaker ever laid upon the shoulders of a composer: “Give me a body of work comparable with the greatest masterpieces of symphonic history.”
He’s the creative well that all things Star Wars springs from, and will continue to spring from for many years. Where to begin when talking about the most influential score in film history? Not necessarily with the long and storied career that John Williams enjoyed before Star Wars.
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