Jim Johnston recently appeared as a guest on the RRBG podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
During his appearance on the program, the longtime WWE music composer spoke about it being a nightmare to have WWE Superstars involved in the creation of their entrance music, how not being a fan of the product turned out to be an asset for him and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On why it was a nightmare having WWE talent involved in their creating their entrance music: “Honestly, 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, to say, ‘hey, I want to sit with Jim and talk about music.’ The general difficulty there was they would want music that they would listen to in their car or workout to in the gym. Then I would be put 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 in his next movie? It just doesn’t work like that.’”
On how not being a wrestling fan was an asset for him: “I really don’t follow it and interestingly, I’ve never followed it because I’ve never been a wrestling fan. I got involved by sheer happenstance. But, I think that ended up being an incredible asset because I was never a mark kind of person for it. I was always able to approach it from a distance, like scoring a film. I think having that artistic distance is really positive. Because you don’t get lost in it. I felt like I could see the character, but I could equally see how this fanbase sees that character or is hoping to see that character. That often helped me. There’s a direction in all music. Is this piece coming from this guy, is it him saying, ‘this is me?’ Or, is it the crowd looking at this character? I would say Steve Austin is very much, it’s coming from him, ‘this is me.’ He says, basically, ‘f**k you,’ and the music says f**k you. Undertaker is like a shared experience. It’s a soundtrack that’s happening, there’s no sense. I believe, that Undertaker chose his music. Like ‘this is the music I want to be playing.’ This is just an emotional description of what the mood in the room is when he shows up.”
Check out the complete interview at YouTube.com. H/T to Wrestling Inc for transcribing the above quotes.
