Jim Johnston Reveals His ‘Complete Nightmare’ In WWE
Jim Johnston was for decades WWE’s master music maker and now he has described what he calls the one “complete nightmare” in doing that job.
Jim Johnston is responsible for some of the most iconic wrestling theme songs of all time. From Steve Austin’s shattered glass to DX’s ‘Are you Ready?’, and various ethereal incarnations of The Undertaker’s legendary gong, Johnston produced those and a whole lot more.
Speaking on the RRGB podcast, Johnston recounted the one major difficulty he had during his time in WWE and it all came down to if talent wanted to be overly involved in their own 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, that ‘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 Triple H became very involved in his music over the years as he rose through the ranks but ultimately left things to the professionals:
“Triple H was very involved because he was a big star, but also even more involved when he became involved with Stephanie and ended up getting married and you know then became really kinda up the corporate ladder. So 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.”