Music
The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, orchestrated by Herbert W. Spencer and Al Woodbury, and recorded at the 20th Century Fox scoring stage October 31 and November 4, 7 and 11, 1974. The original recording engineer was Ted Keep.
Source music in portions of the film includes instrumental versions of "Again" by Lionel Newman and Dorcas Cochran, "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon, and "The More I See You" by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon.
A snippet of a cue from Williams' score to Cinderella Liberty, entitled "Maggie Shoots Pool", is heard in a scene in which William Holden's character James Duncan converses on the phone with Newman's character Doug Roberts. It is not the recording on the soundtrack album, but a newer arrangement recorded for The Towering Inferno.
One of the most sought-after unreleased music cues from the film is the one in which Williams provides low-key lounge music during a party prior to the announcement of a fire. Michael O'Hallorhan (McQueen) orders Duncan to evacuate the party; the music becomes louder as Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones) and Harlee Claiborne (Astaire) are seen dancing and Duncan lectures son-in-law Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain). Entitled "The Promenade Room" on the conductor's cue sheet, the track features a ragged ending, as Duncan asks the house band to stop playing. Because of this, Film Score Monthly did not add this cue to the expanded soundtrack album.
The Academy Award-winning song "We May Never Love Like This Again" was composed by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, and performed by Maureen McGovern, who appears in a cameo as a lounge singer, and on the score's soundtrack album, which features the film recording, plus the commercially released single version. Additionally, the theme tune is interpolated into the film's underscore by Williams. The song's writers collaborated on "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure, an Oscar-winning song that was also recorded by McGovern, although hers was not the vocal used in that film.
The first release of portions of the score from The Towering Inferno was issued by Warner Bros. Records in early 1975 (Catalog No. BS-2840).
"Main Title" (5:00)
"An Architect's Dream" (3:28)
"Lisolette And Harlee" (2:34)
"Something For Susan" (2:42)
"Trapped Lovers" (4:28)
"We May Never Love Like This Again" – Kasha/Hirschhorn, performed by Maureen McGovern (2:11)
"Susan And Doug" (2:30)
"The Helicopter Explosion" (2:50)
"Planting The Charges – And Finale" (10:17)
A near-complete release was issued on the Film Score Monthly label April 1, 2001, and was produced by Lukas Kendall and Nick Redman. Film Score Monthly's was an almost completely expanded version, remixed from album masters at Warner Bros. archives and the multi-track 35mm magnetic film stems at 20th Century Fox. Placed into chronological order and restoring action cues, it became one of the company's biggest sellers; only 4,000 copies were pressed, and it is now out of print.
Reports that this soundtrack and that of the film Earthquake, also composed by Williams, borrowed cues from each other are inaccurate. The version of "Main Title" on the Film Score Monthly disc is the film version. It differs from the original soundtrack album version. There is a different balance of instruments in two spots, and in particular, the snare drum is more prominent than the album version, which also features additional cymbal work. Although the album was not a re-recording, the original LP tracks were recorded during the same sessions, and several cues were combined. The film version sound was reportedly better than the quarter-inch Warner Bros. two-track album master. Although some minor incidental cues were lost, some sonically "damaged" cues — so called due to a deterioration of the surviving audio elements — are placed at the end of the disc's program time following the track, "An Architect's Dream", which is used over the end credits sequence.
