Film composer John Williams has been nominated for an astonishing 49 Academy Awards. He’s won five. His second was for Jaws and his third was for the original Star Wars—and bingo! Right there you have arguably the two most recognizable scores in Hollywood history. Williams has since written the music for all the Star Wars sequels and prequels, along with nearly all of Steven Spielberg’s films, the first three Harry Potter pictures, and—a few more titles chosen not quite at random—Superman, The Witches of Eastwick, Home Alone, JFK, and The Book Thief.

I recently spoke to Williams about his in-progress work on his seventh Star Wars score, for the upcoming The Force Awakens—and also about a song he once co-wrote for Frank Sinatra. Click here to read the June Vanity Fair cover story on The Force Awakens and to see Annie Leibovitz’s exclusive portraits of the cast. Below are outtakes from my conversation with Williams.

Bruce Handy: Now that you’re scoring your seventh Star Wars movie, do you find that you approach the series differently in terms of your creative process compared with other films or series you’ve worked on?

John Williams: Very much so. It’s all a continuation of an initial set of ideas. It’s a bit like adding paragraphs to a letter that’s been going on for a number of years. Starting with a completely new film, a story that I don’t know, characters that I haven’t met, my whole approach to writing music is completely different—trying to find an identity, trying to find melodic identifications if that’s needed for the characters, and so on. Which I do here, but here it’s an extension of something that’s been really organic and continually growing. It’s a very, very different process. That’s really the best analogy I can come up with at the moment so I’ll repeat it: it’s like adding paragraphs to a letter rather than beginning the letter again.

That musical backstory, your previous Star Wars scores, is that something you can tap into pretty easily? Or do you, for instance, maybe sit down and re-listen to all the old scores to immerse yourself in that world before you start writing a new one?

I haven’t done that, though I might have been helped by doing that. But I know the material--I think I do. I have my take on it, so to speak; I have my feelings about it. So I haven’t had to consult the old scores. It’s really been a comfortable transition in each case. I’ve used this analogy too, a thousand times: it’s a bit like riding a bike that you haven’t been on since you were ten years old. You do remember. And I’ve had the experience before with the Raiders series and Superman, the Harry Potter series, although the music is somewhat dissimilar. I hope it’s dissimilar. I hope they’re at least, in part, unique to the projects. But going from one to another is not a difficult adjustment, at least not for me.

How has it been different working with J.J. Abrams compared to working with George Lucas?

It’s actually very similar. My meetings with George had to do with spotting the film, selecting areas in which music would be played, and pretty much we agreed on all that. He always left me free to write the music. And J.J.’s done the same thing. We’ve had a few preliminary meetings, and I’ve played him some music at the piano, which he seemed to like very much. His latest instruction to me was, “Just do your thing.” Which is giving me a good sense of freedom, a good free swing at the ball. I don’t know how much you know of him, but he is a delightful person. Enormously bright. I’ve been very impressed with him in meetings with a great variety of people. His generalship is assured and warm and inviting and inclusive. If I can say it, he’s a fabulous young man who’s future is so brilliant and so promising. I don’t know how old he is, but he’s a young man to me. [Abrams is 48; Williams is 83.] He’s enormously impressive.