There are at least five artists with this name;

1) John Towner Willi… Read Full Bio ↴There are at least five artists with this name;

1) John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. With a career spanning over six decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history, including those of the Star Wars series, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, the first two Home Alone films, Hook, the first two Jurassic Park films, Schindler's List, and the first three Harry Potter films. He has a very distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration. The classical music critic Marcus Paus argues that Williams' "satisfying way of embodying complex dissonances and avant-garde techniques within a larger tonal framework" makes him "one of the great composers of any century".

Williams has been associated with director Steven Spielberg since 1974, composing music for all but three of his feature films. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, "The Mission" theme used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia, the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, and the incidental music for the first season of Gilligan's Island. Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops's principal conductor from 1980 to 1993, and is currently the orchestra's laureate conductor.

Williams has won 24 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, five Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 51 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney. In 2005, the American Film Institute selected Williams's score to 1977's Star Wars as the greatest American film score of all time. The soundtrack to Star Wars was additionally preserved by the Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. Williams composed the score for eight of the top 20 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office (adjusted for inflation).

John Towner Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in Floral Park, New York, to Esther (née Towner) and Johnny Williams, a jazz percussionist who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet. Williams has said of his lineage, "My father was a Maine man—we were very close. My mother was from Boston. My father's parents ran a department store in Bangor, Maine, and my mother's father was a cabinetmaker. [...] People with those roots are not inclined to be lazy."

Williams married Barbara Ruick, an American actress and singer, in 1956. Together they had three children: Jennifer (b. 1956), Mark Towner Williams (b. 1958), and Joseph (b. 1960), who is the lead singer of Toto. The two remained married until her death in 1974. In 1980, Williams married Samantha Winslow, a photographer.

2) John Christopher Williams is a classical guitar player.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, on 24 April 1941, to an English father (Len Williams) and an Australian-Chinese mother, Williams was taught initially by his father. At the age of twelve he went to Italy to study under "The Maestro," Andrés Segovia. Later, he attended the Royal College of Music in London, studying piano because the school did not have a guitar department at the time. Upon graduation, he was offered the opportunity to create such a department. He seized the opportunity and ran it for the first two years. Williams has maintained links with the College (and with the Northern College in Manchester) ever since.

Williams is best known as a classical guitarist, but has explored many different musical traditions. He has collaborated with Julian Bream and Paco Peña and was a member of the fusion group Sky. He is also a composer and arranger.

Williams has commissioned guitar concertos from composers such as Stephen Dodgson, André Previn, Patrick Gowers, Richard Harvey, and Steve Gray. He has also worked with composers from his native Australia, including Phillip Houghton, Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards (composer), and Nigel Westlake, to produce guitar works that capture the spirit of his homeland.

He enjoyed a worldwide hit single with his recording of Cavatina by Stanley Myers, used as the theme tune to the Oscar-winning film The Deer Hunter (1979). The piece had originally been written for piano, for another film ten years earlier, The Walking Stick (1970) but re-written for guitar and expanded by Myers at Williams' invitation. In 1973, Cleo Laine wrote lyrics and recorded the song "He Was Beautiful" accompanied by John Williams. A year later, it was a top-five UK hit single for Iris Williams (no relation).

At the invitation of producer Martin Lewis he created a highly acclaimed classical-rock fusion duet with celebrated rock guitarist Pete Townshend of Townshend's anthemic "Won't Get Fooled Again" for the 1979 Amnesty International benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball. The duet was featured on the resulting album and the film version of the show – bringing Williams to the broader attention of the rock audience.

The relationship with Lewis led to Williams' classical-rock fusion band Sky being invited to give the first-ever rock concert to be held at Westminster Abbey – a benefit concert for Amnesty that Lewis produced in February 1981.

He is visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

Williams and his artist wife Kathy Panama reside in London and Australia.

3) John Williams

John Williams is internationally regarded as one of the foremost players of Irish music today. With five All-Ireland titles to his credit, John is the only American-born competitor ever to win first place in the "senior concertina" category. His additional talents on flute, button accordion, bodhran, and piano distinguish him as a much sought after multi-instrumentalist in the acoustic scene around the world.

Born and raised on the Southwest Side of Chicago, John spent his summers during college on the Southwest coast of Ireland in his father’s village of Doolin, Co. Clare. Like Chicago, Doolin became a major musical crossroads for John and countless other local and international musicians to meet and exchange music. Gigging every night in the pubs of Doolin and Lisdoonvarna soon led to performances in Galway, Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Paris, Britanny, Zurich, and New York City (bio http://www.johnwilliamsmusic.com/bio.htm).

3) John Williams

A blues/jazz guitarist in Seattle, Washington, whose music is available at Magnatune.com (bio http://magnatune.com/artists/john_williams).

3) John Knowles Williams

An experimental/indie musician. Music is available at sweetnuthin.letsneverdie.net/Music/My_Recordings/ or www.myspace.com/JohnKWilliams.

One Love
John Williams Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do
What I do
Why I must travel to a distant land
Far from the home I love
Once I was happily content to be
As I was
Where I was

Close to the people who were close to
Here in the home I love
Who could see that a man would come who would change the shape of dream
Helpless now I stand with him
Watching older dreams grow dim

O what a melancholy choice this is
Wanting home
Wanting him
Closing my heart to every hope but his
Leaving the home I love
There where my heart has settled long ago
I must go
I must go
Who could image I'd be wandering so
Far from the home I love
Yet

There with my love
I'm home!

Overall Meaning

In John Williams's song One Love, the singer grapples with the pain of having to leave their home in pursuit of a distant land. The lyrics take us on a journey through their thought process as they explain why they are compelled to travel far away from the ones they love. The opening lines, "How can I hope to make you understand, why I do what I do?" suggest that the singer feels misunderstood by their loved one(s), who perhaps cannot fathom why they are leaving.

The words "Once I was happily content to be, as I was, where I was, close to the people who were close to, here in the home I love," paint a picture of a person who was once satisfied with their life and the people around them. However, circumstances have changed, and they now find themselves grappling with the decision to leave everything behind for the sake of a dream. The lines "Watching older dreams grow dim" suggest that this decision has come at a cost - perhaps the singer is giving up a long-cherished dream that is no longer viable in the place they call home.

Lastly, the lyrics reveal the melancholic nature of the choice the singer has to make. They want to stay close to their loved ones but cannot ignore their longing for something more. The lines "Closing my heart to every hope but his, leaving the home I love" reveal the depth of their inner turmoil as they consciously relinquish all other dreams in favor of pursuing the one true love. In the end, the singer comes to a realization that with their love, they can make any place feel like home - "There with my love, I'm home!"

Line by Line Meaning

How can I hope to make you understand
It's difficult for me to convey my motivations to you

Why I do
My actions are driven by reasons you may not comprehend

What I do
I'm doing something specific that is important to me

Why I must travel to a distant land
There are compelling reasons that require me to leave home

Far from the home I love
I'll be physically separated from the place I treasure most

Once I was happily content to be
I previously lived a life that brought me happiness

As I was
I didn't have a desire to change my circumstances

Where I was
My physical location was sufficient

Close to the people who were close to
The relationships I had were meaningful and fulfilling

Here in the home I love
The place where I lived felt like my true home

Who could see that a man would come who would change the shape of dream
No one could have predicted that someone would significantly alter my aspirations

Helpless now I stand with him
I feel powerless while I'm with this person

Watching older dreams grow dim
My previous goals are losing relevance because of my current situation

O what a melancholy choice this is
The decision to leave is full of sadness

Wanting home
I desire to stay in the place that is most familiar

Wanting him
My affection for this person is distracting me from other desires

Closing my heart to every hope but his
I'm ignoring other things I wanted to pursue because of this person

Leaving the home I love
I'm departing from the place that feels like home for me

There where my heart has settled long ago
The place I am leaving has always been dear to me

I must go
It's necessary for me to leave

Who could image I'd be wandering so
It's unexpected that I would be in such a situation

Far from the home I love
I'll be physically separated from the place I treasure most

Yet
Despite everything that's happened