Obsession

It can be a problem, but did my obsessive personality actually make the John Williams book dream come true?

I don’t remember when I first realized I had an obsessive personality, but I know I was still living at home. I went through a severe Michael Jackson phase—yes, haha, I know; let he who is without a cringey phase cast the first rhinestone. I didn’t just love his music; I tried dressing like him (wearing one glove and once even curling my front locks) and learning his moves from the “Beat It” and “Smooth Criminal” videos. I read everything I could find about him online (this was ca. 2000), which of course revealed lots of unsavory accusations and rumors—but my obsession made me become an expert at defending Michael Jackson against every possible sling and arrow, which I did in casual conversations and school papers alike.

Let’s set aside the problematic nature of that particular fixation, but just to say it was one of several “phases” I went through—and continue to go through—where the lip of my psyche gets snagged on the baited hook of a musical artist, or filmmaker, or TV series, or maybe a maligned former president, and I am like a fish to their net for weeks, months, or sometimes years.

Many of my phases were just that. Fleeting seasons. Sometimes I’ll step away from them for long stretches of time, come back for a hit of nostalgia—maybe I’ll put one of my old favorite band’s catalog on shuffle for a joyride in the cool California evening—then move on. Some of them, I’ve never had the itch to look back.

John Williams is different. As previously stated, I fell in love with his music via the Jurassic Park soundtrack when I was nine, and I began amassing his other soundtrack albums and diving into what was already an enormous ocean of music. I started with the scores I already knew—Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Hook. I loved listening to these partial but smartly curated programs from his masterful cinematic symphonies. As I got older, I expanded to collecting scores for films I hadn’t yet seen, and I also sought out the films themselves and was often (though not always) impressed; the three Oliver Stone films, in particular, captivated me, and Stone is to blame for my Richard Nixon obsession. (As with MJ, we shan’t get into that here.)

Nothing but respect for MY movie president

1997 was an awesome time to be a tween John Williams nerd; the Star Wars “Special Editions” played at the Park Meadows Mall theater, and I got to experience what a previous generation did two decades earlier—to sit in a dark, butter-soaked temple and have the binary sunset of Tatooine and the swamps of Dagobah and the spiritual battle inside Palpatine’s throne room overwhelm my senses on a gigantic screen, with John’s heroic operas piercing my soul in glorious THX surround sound. We also got expanded soundtrack albums, a foretaste of the film score completist utopia to come.

When the Star Wars prequels were about to come around, I remember thinking: I’m a little too grown up for these kids movies. But then we got the CD for The Phantom Menace a couple weeks before the movie opened (which spoiled Qui-Gon’s death BIG TIME), and the enchanting new underwater worlds and pagan showdowns and Grecian-tragic emotion in that score blitzed any notion that I was “over” Star Wars—and I would go on to see Episode I in the theaters ten times. (Boy, this essay sure is turning into one big, embarrassing confession, isn’t it?)

Childhood friend Lauren and me solemnly preparing for opening day of The Phantom Menace outside the faux Chinese Theater in Aurora, Colorado

One of the random John Williams CDs I picked up, no doubt with either allowance money or maybe I was making tips at Starbucks by then, was Stepmom—the Chris Columbus weepy from 1998. I hadn’t seen the film, and I did not immediately cotton to the wintry, impressionistic, guitar-laden score. There were no epic leitmotifs, no heroic narrative. It was too soft, too feminine. At a certain point, I actually gave the CD away. I also gave away my Prisoner of Azkaban CD when I was in college. It was one of those things where, like other CDs I’d bought along the way, I just felt like: Hey, this one doesn’t really do much for me, so I don’t need to hold onto it.¹

And so there was this moment, in the leaving-home years of discarding childhood interests and developing new ones, where I kinda, sorta flirted with the possibility of leaving John Williams behind in the proverbial toy chest, where his soundtracks might have ended up in the garage sale of Tim’s Personality. Many of my favorite bands and singers had come and gone—some never to return. Movies I loved in high school became laughable in my 20s or 30s. Old obsessions became relics, either embarrassing or endearing, some occasionally just a blast of time-traveling fun or an emotional balm in moments where I wanted to take my feelings back to 1984, or 1992, or 2003.

I continued to find new obsessions—George Harrison was a belated one, still ongoing—but through it all, John Williams remained. In 2006, I went on a road trip to Tanglewood with my brothers to see him conduct for the first time. I bought the increasing wave of archival soundtrack albums that came from the specialty record labels; I also sought out rare and even bootleg scores, recording sessions, and other dorky contraband. I was never a collector in the most technical, extreme sense, but I did collect a LOT. I also made connections with people from all over the world through JWFan.com, and swapped CDs with fellow obsessives in far-flung countries.

If I tired of a particular score (I gnawed every last bit of meat off the Star Wars bone when I was young), I would move on to another (The Accidental Tourist! Sleepers!) or go spelunking for a new discovery. There was SO much music to find, to drink up, to obsess over. Not every score of his cast a spell on me, although often it was just a matter of coming back to it later at the right time. As my musical palate expanded into other genres, the pop past, and the vast classical repertoire, I developed new tastes (Kraftwerk, Philip Glass, Wojciech Kilar, the Moody Blues). But nothing ever came close to surpassing the supremacy of John Williams in my ears or my heart. Nothing was more perfect, nothing spoke to me on such an emotional level and along such a vast spectrum of different emotions. The power of his melodies, his orchestration, and his sorcery as a storyteller was the constant in each season of my life; I may have preferred Rosewood, say, to The Witches of Eastwick at different points on the timeline, but the castle at the end of Main Street in Tim-world was still, and always, JOHN WILLIAMS.

As I’ve mentioned, I literally dreamed about meeting him—about sitting in an auditorium and chatting with him (sometimes Spielberg was there too). It literally hurt to wake up and realize it was just a dream. Deep down, I knew it would never happen. But I kept having those dreams…

Thankfully MY “Ronnie” never left with the kids

I know I’m not the only one; there’s literally a whole thread on JWFan.com called “Last Night I dreamed about John Williams...” (I’ve never posted on it, because it feels a little… skeevy?). I also know I’m not the only kid who became obsessed with John’s music and has remained obsessed into adulthood. And I’m not the only enthusiast who turned this interest into an all-consuming hobby or an actual career! I know many people who, like Roy and Gillian in Close Encounters, all heard the same melody, all had the same dream, and all were mysteriously drawn to this magic mountain.

I’m also, categorically, not the only John Williams obsessive who wanted to write a book about him. Several people already have; some in French, some in Spanish, some in Italian (a few of them translated into English). There are great scholars and musicologists who have written about his work; fan sites that have collected extensive bibliographies and discographies and biographical details; and an impressive online project that has amassed well-researched essays as well as an oral history from many of John’s regular session musicians and collaborators.

Many have wanted to write the book about John Williams—the one he would bless, sit down for countless hours of interviews with the author, make calls to his family members and Spielberg to participate in. This was the Holy Grail for a number of us JW archaeologists and adventurers—and it felt just as elusive, just as mythical. We all knew his fixed position on biographical projects. It was a non-starter, a cave full of booby traps and yawning chasms and cups that killed you on the spot if you drank from them.

I was told many different times, and quite definitively: BEWARE. NO TRESPASSING. ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

That warning had scared away many other aspirant biographers. And it wasn’t because there was some scary threat behind it, of physical threat or devastating legal action or psychological persecution. The message was: John doesn’t want this. Which might be the scariest law to break for someone who worships John Williams.

And yet…

Like Henry Jones, Sr., who was obsessed with finding the Grail, or David the robot boy—obsessed with finding the Blue Fairy—or Roy Neary, who maniacally drove through fences and blew past calamitous warnings to get to Devil’s Tower, I was fueled by this obsessive dream… and so found myself entering the terrifying cave, brushing off deadly spiders and pushing past the skeletons of ill-fated explorers who preceded me, ducking poisoned blow darts, and kneeling before the ancient golden treasure, weighing my decoy sandbag… ready to risk my life for this idol I had been obsessed with since I was a little boy.

Am I being melodramatic? I’m definitely mixing metaphors. But this was an adventure, and it was scary—just ask my wife! I was frequently stressed and anxious, sometimes panicked; I doubted myself and my choices; I came very close to giving up. I hate few things in this life more than confrontation and personal conflict, and this expedition put me on a direct path to both. I had to deal with knowing I was causing certain people disappointment and headaches; I had to live with being unliked by certain people, maybe even despised. I had phone calls cut short and proverbial doors slammed in my face. And even though I still had never spoken to John directly about any of this, I had to live with the belief that he was displeased with my ongoing activity.

My idol. My obsession. Displeased with me.

But love makes you do crazy things, and obsession made me keep taking this lunatic leap of faith.

And then, one morning in September 2022, I got an email: “John is wondering if you might be available for a brief off-the-record meeting this Thursday at his studio.”

1. Don’t worry; I bought both back and adore both scores today—especially Stepmom!