Jim Johnston, who wrote WWE’s entrance music for more than three decades, says today’s wrestling themes are “pretty awful because it’s generic,” and that the problem is one reason the business isn’t producing stars at the level of Steve Austin and The Rock.
Johnston made the comments on Ropes & Riffs, a show hosted by entrance theme composer John, who credited Johnston as the reason he does what he does.
Johnston said he rarely spoke to wrestlers before writing for them. Vince McMahon and executive producer Kevin Dunn would send him a description and match footage, and he’d look for something underneath the character.
“It’s a perfect segue to where I think things are now, which I, sorry, is pretty awful because it’s generic. They’re not scores to the people. The music’s not saying anything about the character. You could take this theme and just give it to the next guy, and it would feel the same when he came out. It’s like it’s big music. It’s exciting. There’s lots of sound effects and big drum loops and crazy guitar solos and everything else. But the days of being in the kitchen and the TV’s in the living room and being able to know exactly who’s coming out? That’s not happening.”
“And it’s also I think bad for business because I think that’s why the business is not really creating stars. There are not new Stone Colds and new Rocks. There are guys who are popular, but it’s like a ceiling now. There’s no one breaking through and jumping into Hollywood and the movies anymore.”
He said fans write to him about it. “The themes used to really be tied to this human being, and now it’s music that coincidentally plays when wrestlers walk out to the ring.” He added that he doesn’t watch wrestling now beyond a few minutes while flipping channels, and that the criticism he hears most is that storylines “come out of nowhere and change too fast.”
Wrestlers aren’t the best judges of their own music
Asked whether a wrestler knows their character best, Johnston said no. “Absolutely not. Just like Harrison Ford is not the best person to ask about who should be the score for this movie I’m making.” He said the director and composer need distance from the whole story. “When you’re dealing directly with the performer, it just becomes this sort of shallow thing of when I’m driving in my car, every time this song comes on, I drive faster.”
He said DX was the example of a wrestler accepting music he wouldn’t have chosen. Johnston wasn’t sure the theme would sell to Shawn Michaels or McMahon, calling a long introduction “the kiss of death for entrance themes,” but said Michaels understood it was the right score for the character, not music for his living room.
How it started, and heels without music
Johnston said he got into WWE after meeting McMahon’s art director at a sushi bar. The art director needed music for a cable TV conference video, and Johnston, early in his career, said he could do it. McMahon liked it and asked what else he did.
For years, he said, only babyfaces got entrance music. “That was like an ironclad rule, which I have to say I fought for a long time because my argument was, look in the movies. Oftentimes, the villain has the best music, right? Darth Vader, Jaws.” When heels finally got something, he said, early on it was “toilet flushing and things like that.”
He also said he pushed back on stereotyped themes for wrestlers of different backgrounds, such as defaulting to hip-hop for Black wrestlers, and preferred to write for the character first. “He’s a fierce guy. He’s an incredible wrestler. Oh, he’s also Japanese.”
My Time
Johnston said the idea for Triple H’s “My Time” came from Chyna. The two were talking backstage during a transitional point for both of them. “She was being so kind to him and reassuring him it’s going to work out, and suddenly she said, you know, it’s your time, and I was like, it’s my time. That’s it, my time.”
The distinctive warbling sound in the song, he said, came from him working a synthesizer’s mod wheel “in a really extreme way” to the rhythm of the track, something he said he’d have been too embarrassed to try with anyone else in the room.
Deadlines and new music
The quickest theme he wrote, he said, took about an hour. Raw’s music was sent to the venue by satellite at 6:30 p.m. for the 9 p.m. show, and a character change could come in at 5 p.m. He said bands like Saliva covered existing themes because it put them in front of WWE’s audience immediately, and he praised Downstate for being flexible when he steered them back to the original.
Johnston said he owns the copyright to “nothing” from his WWE work. He said he has two songs he’s been finishing, “We Are the Lucky Ones” and “I Make You Feel Alive,” which he plans to release soon, and that he is working on a new song with Brand New Sin’s Joe Altier.
Click below to watch the entire interview.
