Above: what comes up when you Google “Jaws 2 The Menu.”
Composer Harrison Ingemarson has created a charming piano reduction of John Williams’ “The Menu” from Jaws 2 at his YouTube channel:
While I love John Williams’ work from across his magnificent career, there’s a special place in my heart for his late 1970s blockbuster scores.
Probably it’s as simple as those being the films and scores I encountered first, at a young age—and a lot of them were the best, being first, and the most fresh in their storytelling (Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Superman).
I enjoy listening and re-listening to them in part to see if I can pick up the devices that Williams leaned on during that period that sort of went away as times and tastes changed. One of them is absolutely those closely voiced seventh chords for French horns.
They’re all over this piece, right from the top:
I think it also comes from the fact that, in the late 1970s, orchestral “pop” arrangements were a part of the culture: you’d hear them all the time on the radio, on variety shows, in disco tracks, and so forth—it was the pre-MIDI era.
As time went on, and that style became “retro,” Williams moved away from them.
Here’s some more classic 1970s Williams:
To me, it never gets old!