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The Towering Inferno
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Composed and Conducted by:
Orchestrated by:
Herbert Spencer Al Woodbury
Song and Lyrics by:
Al Kasha Joel Hirschhorn
Song Performed by:
Maureen McGovern
Album Produced by:
Lukas Kendall Nick Redman
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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Film Score Monthly
(April, 2001)
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Limited release of 3,000 copies, available originally through only
soundtrack specialty outlets. It sold out almost immediately and has been a top
collectible since.
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AWARDS
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The Williams score and Kasha/Hirschhorn song "We May Never Love Like This Again"
were both nominated for Academy Awards, the latter winning. That song was also nominated for
a Golden Globe.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you want only the best of John Williams' Silver Age
endeavors for blockbuster disaster flicks.
Avoid it... if 22 minutes of classic Williams action and melodrama
can't compensate for both the rarity of the album and the dated sound of
the contemporary 1970's elements of the score.
BUY IT
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The Towering Inferno: (John Williams) In the early
to mid-1970's, disaster films were at their peak of success. With
Hollywood long suffering from a preference for smaller character films
and B-rate action flicks, the mega-blockbusters were ready for a return.
Irwin Allen, the "Master of Disaster," had just exploded onto the scene
by providing the world with The Poseidon Adventure two years
earlier, a film which stunned Hollywood with its smash box office
success. In The Towering Inferno in 1974, the genre of realistic
disaster films would reach a climax not to be touched again until the
late 1990's. With two studios, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers,
preparing two films based on very similar stories, the pair of studios
made the unprecedented move of combining their resources for The
Towering Inferno. The resulting production of epic proportions led
to a monumental cast (led by Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway,
and William Holden), incredible special effects, and stunning
cinematography and editing (both of which garnered Academy Award wins
for the film). The movie will also be remembered for producing one of
the most awkward screen moments of all time, with Fred Astaire and O.J.
Simpson sharing the same frame at its conclusion. Even many decades
later, The Towering Inferno is an awesome film, a guilty pleasure
at the least and a classic at its best. It is therefore appropriate that
quickly rising composer John Williams scored the film. The budding
maestro had worked with Allen several times in the past, reaching all
the way back to the "Lost in Space," "The Time Tunnel," and "Land of the
Giants" television scores, and including, of course, The Poseidon
Adventure. Aside from Allen's projects, Williams would become the
"Master of Disaster Scores" by also composing for the subsequent
Earthquake and Black Sunday. Even when he had all of these
disaster scores under his belt, though, it is The Towering
Inferno that stands tall as Williams' greatest score for the
genre.
Williams was already in a position to pull some weight
with the studio and director as of 1974, and it was his idea to showcase
the score so prominently during the opening helicopter sequence. A
highlight of the film, the first five minutes of the score, consisting
of one of Williams' best adventure themes of all time, marches across
the soundscape almost unimpeded, leading to the magnificent initial view
of the massive tower standing at the heart of San Francisco. While the
entire film would pass before the theme would receive another lengthy
performance of heightened bravado, the inclusion of this landmark title
theme is alone usually worth the cost of the score for many Williams
collectors. The final two cues, dealing with the aftermath of the fire
in "Finale" and "An Architect's Dream," showcase some great shots of the
charred and mangled tower, and Williams' score once again swells to
magnificence. A brilliant subtheme of triumph highlights the "Let There
Be Light" fanfare and introduces the opening of the building with one of
the better statements of brass by Williams. The lengthy film launches
quickly into the action, not dabbling around in an excess of character
development before the fire ignites. In fact, most of the significant
character scenes are interspersed throughout the stressful trials of the
ordeal, which is one of the greater points of the film (also of positive
note is the fact that Allen isn't afraid of killing off major,
sympathetic characters). Williams handles the mass of suspense and
dramatic material in the middle of the film with creative percussive
rhythms, highlighted by the very first ignition of the fire. A tapping
effect is used to mimic the sound effect of a short circuit ignition,
and in an age before synthesizers could accurately produce a "zapping"
effect, this technique by Williams is as accomplished as it could be for
the time. Manipulation of fragments of the title theme, and especially
the opening, rising figure, is well integrated into dissonant sequences
that extend the drama into not only the tragic realm, but one of terror
as well.
During the early cues that do accompany character
development, Williams also extends his talents in providing casual pop
rhythms to place the film in its contemporary time frame. What's most
interesting about these contemporary cues is that they haven't aged as
badly as one might expect for early 70's pop style, allowing the score
to hold a more timeless personality. The Maureen McGovern song ("We May
Never Love Like This Again") was the highlight of the music for the film
in 1974, gaining songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn an Academy
Award win and catapulted the album's success much in the same way "The
Morning After" did for The Poseidon Adventure. Williams once
again incorporates the song into his own material, translating it into
one of the two love themes for the film. The other one (which, like the
previous theme, is sadly doomed as the story progresses) is equally
strong, evoking some powerfully emotional moments in the middle sequence
of the film and score. A lengthy performance of this idea in "An
Architect's Dream" is extremely attractive, and Williams collectors will
even hear a distinct foreshadowing of the theme for Presumed
Innocent in the melodramatic tones of that cue (especially at the
1:05 mark). A mournful horn solo at 1:55 into "Finale" is a glimpse of
what fans would hear for the "Force" theme in Star Wars. For the
majority of such collectors, the action and suspense material, along
with the bold thematic statements, will provide about 22 minutes of
outstanding material (spread between five tracks, including the lengthy
"Planting the Charges") absent of any of the pop tones of the era.
Always high on the list of top ten most requested scores during the
1990's, The Towering Inferno was never properly released on CD
until April of 2001. The LP record that existed for The Towering
Inferno still stood on many film music collectors' shelves,
twenty-seven years after its initial release. The reason for the lengthy
delay in the transferring of this score to CD undoubtedly rests in the
duality of the studio ownership of everything related to the film.
The Film Score Monthly label made this projects a top
priority, one that logically also resulted from their superior
presentation of The Poseidon Adventure as one of their earliest
entries in the "Silver Age Classics" series that would eventually last
longer than a decade. The release of The Towering Inferno was a
shot in the arm of that series in 2001, selling out quickly and once
again proving the label's top status for collectors. Album producers
Lukas Kendall and Nick Redman managed to acquire nearly the entire score
for presentation on this album, and although a few incidental cues were
lost due to damage, their CD contains twice the amount of music heard on
the original LP. So complete is the album that a section of bonus tracks
is offered at the end, including the original LP's re-recording of the
song (the film version is presented as well). With "The Morning After"
from The Poseidon Adventure ironically playing as background
source music in a conversational scene in The Towering Inferno,
the instrumental recording from that moment is provided, too. Finally, a
few of the more damaged cues are appended for completists. But the first
twenty-two tracks have been meticulously arranged in their film
sequence, and the album reaches an astonishing 75 minutes in length when
tallied with the bonus material. The sound quality is as to be expected
for the early 70's (slightly tinny and muted, especially in the pop
sections), but Silver Age fans aren't typically bothered by the results
of older recording technologies. The packaging of the album is nothing
short of spectacular, explaining the complexities of the film's
production and providing a cue by cue analysis (along with intriguing
concept art and a fascinating, if not spooky, picture of the entire
major cast enthusiastically walking arm in arm down the studio lot).
Overall, this is the The Towering Inferno album that Williams
fans had been dreaming about for decades, and it remains by far the
crowning achievement of Film Score Monthly's growing enterprise of
"Silver Age Classics" albums. Since almost immediately selling out,
FSM's 3,000 pressed copies of The Towering Inferno have
understandably become a top collectible. ***** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.8
(in 75 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.67
(in 349,938 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Total Time: 75:31
1. Main Title (5:01)
2. Something for Susan (2:42)
3. Lisolette and Harlee (2:35)
4. The Flame Ignites (1:01)
5. More for Susan (1:55)
6. Harlee Dressing (1:37)
7. Let There Be Light (0:37)
8. Alone at Last (0:51)
9. We May Never Love Like This Again (Film Version)*/** (2:04)
10. The First Victims (3:24)
11. Not a Cigarette (1:18)
12. Trapped Lovers (4:44)
13. Doug's Fall/Piggy Back Ride (2:18)
14. Lisolette's Descent (3:07)
15. Down the Pipes/The Door Opens (2:59)
16. Couples (3:38)
17. Short Goodbyes (2:26)
18. Helicopter Rescue (3:07)
19. Passing the Word (1:12)
20. Planting the Charges (9:04)
21. Finale (3:57)
22. An Architect's Dream (3:28)
Bonus Material:
23. We May Never Love Like This Again (Album Version)*/** (2:13)
24. The Morning After (Instrumental)* (2:07)
25. Susan and Doug (Album Track) (2:33)
26. Departmental Pride and the Cat (Damaged) (1:03)
27. Helicopter Explosion (Damaged) (2:34)
28. Waking Up (Damaged) (2:39)
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* written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn
** performed by Maureen McGovern
The insert contains lengthy notes about the movie, score, and composer by Jeff
Eldridge and Lukas Kendall, as well as concept art and shots from the production. The
album track "Helicopter Explosion (Damaged)" is different from the LP track of a
similar name; here, the track features the actual music for the helicopter explosion,
while the LP track was for other scenes. That LP music is not damaged and has been
redistributed into the "Helicopter Rescue" and "The First Victims" tracks on
the CD album. The tracks "Trapped Lovers" and "Finale" have more music than
previously heard on the LP.
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