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1. Main Title and First Victim
2. The Empty Raft
3. The Pier Incident
4. The Shark Cage Fugue
5. Shark Attack
6. Ben Gardner’s Boat
7. Montage
8. Father and Son
9. Into the Estuary
10. Out to sea
11. Man Against Beast
12. Quint’s Tale
13. Brody Panics
14. Barrel Off Starboard
15. The Great Shark Chase
16. Three Barrels Under
17. Between Attacks
18. The Shark Approaches
19. Blown To Bits
20. Jaws End titles
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
Nothing at present.
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ABOUT THE FILM
Nothing at present.
COMPOSER'S NOTES
Though it has been 25 years since the release of Jaws, it still seems the perfect movie today. The film was Steven Spielberg’s first mega success, and the first film to hit the $100 million mark at the box office. Jaws was the ideal marriage between film director and composer. What John Williams had accomplished was unparalleled: the music was not only a companion to Steven Spielberg’s striking, shocking visuals, it was a character in itself. Not since Bernard Herrmann’s music to Alfred Hitchcock’s shower murder in Psycho had film music been so memorable.
Making Jaws was an adventure, not least because of “Bruce”, the mechanical shark (affectionately named after Steven’s lawyer). “Bruce” never really worked, and, at a time when effective computer animation didn’t exist, Steven had to find a way to keep the shark alive for the audience when the mechanical monster simply sank to the bottom of the ocean. So Steven turned to his composer, John Williams, to give the shark a signature — a theme that would characterise it in the scenes where Steven did not want the audience to see the shark or when he could not show it. The rest, of course, is film-music history.
Five years ago, I produced a special 20th anniversary laserdisc of Jaws, and had the opportunity to interview everyone involved with the film. In my search for materials to illustrate the documentary, I discovered the music from the original recording sessions. I already knew that a large portion of the score had not been used for the original album (which ran roughly 34 minutes), but in listening to the tapes, I began to hear sections of the score that had not been included in the film. From that point on, I made it a mission to get a new CD produced featuring the complete score, as originally recorded by John Williams for Steven Spielberg, and to collaborate with Shawn Murphy, as we had previously worked on E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
It is a great pleasure to be presenting this new soundtrack of Jaws, in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary. It was conceived in complete collaboration with Steven Spielberg and John Williams, and it would never have been realised without their enthusiasm, support and approval.
John Williams wanted this CD to be experienced almost as a suite, and rather than recreating the film’s storyline with the score, he made some wonderful and exciting editing decisions and carefully rearranged the cues to allow for a much richer, harmonious and original orchestral narrative. He also retitled some of the cues to reflect better the scenes for which they were composed — even if the music was not featured in the final version of the film.
So here it is, the Academy Award® winning score of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws by John Williams, like you’ve never heard it before — complete and uncut for the first time, an experience that should make your own jaw drop!
Laurent Bouzereau
John Williams and I had worked together on my first feature film The Sugarland Express. I had chosen John for that particular film because I was a huge fan of the music he had composed for The Reivers and The Cowboys — I thought the soundtracks to both films were just exceptional. In fact, I wrote a screenplay while listening to The Reivers, because I found the score so inspirational. I had always wanted to be in business with John Williams, and when he said “yes” to The Sugarland Express, we became friends. Obviously, I wanted him to do every picture I made, and Jaws came second.
When I first showed Jaws to John, I remember he said: “This is like a pirate movie! I think we need pirate music for this, because there’s something primal about it — but it’s also fun and entertaining!”
At one point, John previewed the main theme for Jaws on the piano. I expected to hear something weird yet still melodic. But what he played instead, with two fingers on the lower keys, was dun, dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun. At first I began to laugh, and I thought “John has a great sense of humour!” But he was serious — that was the theme for Jaws. So he played it again and again, and suddenly it seemed right. Sometimes the best ideas are the most simple ones and John had found a signature for the entire score.
Part of the genius of John Williams is not just that he is the greatest composer of film music since Max Steiner, but it is also how he “spots” music — how he places it in a movie. The art of film composition is the placement of that composition. For instance, in the case of Jaws, John did not want the music to celebrate a red herring — he wanted it to signal only the actual arrival of the shark.
To this day, I think that his score was clearly responsible for half the success of the film.
Steven Spielberg
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Main Title and First Victim