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Former WWE music composer Jim Johnston a music composer who worked as the music producer for WWE from 1985 - 2017 recently did an interview with Chris Van Vliet.
He is the man responsible for the legendary theme songs for Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, Mick Foley, Degeneration X, The Undertaker, Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon, Randy Orton and countless others theme songs.
You can check out the highlights below.
âI think if they havenât already, theyâre not going to. Itâs one of those pesky things where you donât want to be petty about it. But itâs like you guys did fire me, but you want me to come back and put me over by doing the Hall of Fame. Would it be an honor? Sure. But at the same time, it would be uncomfortable. There are people there that I donât want to see and donât want to shake their hand. But itâs not a big aspect of my life now. But one of the positive things after doing WWE for so long is you get to write whatever you want.â
âNo and it always amazed me from a business angle. If I was in that work room, I would say âVince just fired Jim, this is a way we could really stick it to them. Find that guy and get him in here this afternoon.â It doesnât make sense to me.â
âI felt a great responsibility, like part of these guyâs careers and successes were in my hand. The music now in WWE and in AEW, Iâm sorry if this is mean, itâs all really homogenous and really mediocre and it doesnât have anything to do with the characters. And I think thatâs why there are less big stars. I donât think that there are no potential big stars on the rosters hiding there. Before Steve Austin was Steve Austin, he was The Ringmaster and there are lots of stories like that. These people need the right storyline, the right costuming and definitely the right music to lift them up.â
âFor the first 15 years, maybe longer, Vince and I just had a handshake agreement. I wasnât an employee. It wasnât like he didnât want me as an employee or I didnât want to be, itâs just we were fine with the way things were. It wasnât until the company went public, and it was bring on the lawyers. They come in and do risk assessments. They are like this guy can just walk out and work for the NFL tomorrow, that wouldnât be a good thing. So then I got a contract and became an employee. In my admiration for Vince, I think we would have worked until my last day with a handshake and both be perfectly happy.â
âI never really got a whole lot of information. If I could see any video, that helped tremendously. Where I start, I want to know a basic tempo and vibe. If itâs a giant guy, itâs going to be a slower theme. The tempo reflects heâs a big guy. The guys that are smaller, you want to reflect the energy. You start there and I just try to find something that resonates. I just start playing stuff and something will make me go thatâs it.â
âI wrote quite a few things, but they werenât being used because I was being politically squashed. It was âEnd of Daysâ for Baron Corbin. Which was very apropos, if you look at the lyrics, thereâs always something personal to the themes. A lot of the times itâs very personal. Baronâs was purely an epic Iâm bringing end of days on you, itâs very biographical. Also Iâm talking about the end is coming, Iâm bowing out. The big goodbye was my end of days. Thereâs a lot of stuff in there, anger and disappointment. But that happened a lot. I wrote âNo Chance In Hellâ when I was really angry with Vince. It was a literal telling of what I saw, you have no chance against this guy. He doesnât play by the rules.â
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