Jim Johnston has said that it would often be a “nightmare” to work with WWE Superstars who could have a significant say over their theme songs.
Johnston worked with WWE for nearly three decades and created the theme songs for ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, and others.
Speaking in an interview on the RRGB podcast, Johnston discussed the problematic parts of his role with WWE.
“It was generally a complete nightmare if talent got big enough to have the clout to say to Vince or Kevin Dunn, the executive producer, that say ‘Hey I want to sit with Jim and talk about music.’
“The general difficulty there was they would want music that they like to listen to in their car or work out to in the gym, and I would be in the position of saying ‘But that’s not your character.’ Do you think that Harrison Ford pushes to have the music he listens to in his car as the score to his next movie? It just doesn’t work like that.”
Johnston added that while many stars who had a say in their themes were difficult, Triple H was easy to work with.
“He had an unusual amount of say in his music. But I would say overall he was, even though he could have been more forward with me, I would say overall he was pretty respectful of my turf and pretty much let me come up with stuff.”
Johnston’s partnership with WWE ended in 2017 and the in-house music team ‘def rebel’ now produces theme songs.
