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UCLA Rocks! The 10 Best Bruin musical acts/artists of all-time

By Mike Regalado

LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 09: Bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performs the national anthem before the game between the Arizona Wildcats and the UCLA Bruins at Pauley Pavilion on January 9, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 09: Bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performs the national anthem before the game between the Arizona Wildcats and the UCLA Bruins at Pauley Pavilion on January 9, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) /
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2. John Williams

UCLA Athletics has the motto, “Champions Made Here”, well that goes beyond the athletic department as the Bruins have champions in many other sectors of the university.

The biggest champion when it comes to film scores is none other than John Williams.

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Unless you have lived under a rock for the last 50 or so years, you know the name, John Williams. Not only was he a student at UCLA and Julliard, he was also the conductor and composer for the U.S. Air Force Band back in the 50’s. But that was just the beginning.

Williams was also a session musician for Henry Mancini. This was before he started composing arrangements for television and film in the early 60’s. Though he was making the rounds in Hollywood at that time, he really started making a name for himself when he began composing scores for director Irwin Allen’s disaster films The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.

These films gave him more notoriety in Hollywood and attention from an up-and-coming director by the name of Steven Spielberg who asked Williams to score his films Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Though these Holywood blockbusters continued to grow his fame, it was nothing compared to what George Lucas had in store for him.

In 1977, Williams was asked by Lucas to score his sci-fi adventure Star Wars. Talk about blasting off into another world.

Since then, Williams has scored movies such as Superman, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, just to name a few.

Essentially Williams is the John Wooden of film scores..