Inside the Jaws theme song creation 50 years ago: Everyones scared of those two notes

They were the two notes of terror heard around the world.They were the two notes of terror heard around the world.But director Steven Spielberg initially laughed off composer John Williams’ “Jaws” theme that would become the signature sound — and sign — of the great white shark’s attack in the summer blockbuster that opened 50 years ago on June 20, 1975.“I expected to hear something kind of weird and melodic, something tonal, but eerie; something of another world, almost like outer space under the water,” said Spielberg in a 2012 Blu-ray featurette on the making of “Jaws.”“And what he played me instead, with two fingers on the lower keys, was ‘dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun.’ And at first, I began to laugh.He had a great sense of humor, and I thought he was putting me on.”But Williams was scaring up the menacing motif that would sink its teeth into moviegoers — and terrify beachgoers — for generations to come in the film classic that would launch his and Spielberg’s careers into historic heights.While Spielberg might have first thought it was a joke, Williams was dead serious about the ominous ostinato of notes E and F played by tuba player Tommy Johnson.“He said, ‘You can’t be serious?’” Williams — who had previously worked with Spielberg on 1974’s “The Sugarland Express” — told Classic FM in 2022 about his chilling riff to “represent our primordial fear.”“I think in Spielberg’s mind … you want something really complicated and layered and, you know, atonal horror music or whatever,” film music historian Tim Greiving — who wrote the upcoming biography “John Williams: A Composer’s Life” — exclusively told The Post.“But John Williams has such a great story instinct that he knew that the simpler, the better, that kind of economy and just, like, pure drive was what this movie needed.

So, yeah, in this way he knew better than Spielberg.”To Greiving, Williams struck just the right note with the �...