It came as a bit of a surprise late last year when Jim Johnston, who’d been writing music for WWE for 32 years, was released from the company at the end of his contract. Since then, he’s given interviews where he expressed distaste for the work of current WWE music meisters CFO$, commenting that much of their music sounds the same and isn’t individualized to the specific wrestlers who enter to it.
In a new interview with Sports Illustrated, however, he is in very good spirits about his departure from the company, discussing his future plans and interest in scoring movies.
Most interesting to our readers, though, is that he talks in detail about creating Stone Cold Steve Austin’s legendary theme song.
In 1996, Johnston recalls, Stone Cold asked him if he could create a theme with a similar tone to Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls On Parade.” So Johnston listened to that song, watched some Steve Austin videos, and got to work:
I had in my mind that this would be driving and low, but it needed something relentless about it. It needed to capture someone who entered a room and made you think, “God only knows what happens next.” So I started playing driving notes on my guitar – dat dat dat dat dat in a minor key – that implied danger. I thought of a car accident, only because of the horrible sound it makes. Then I went to glass, but the sound of the glass was so thin that I needed to make it bigger so I added the car crash.
Johnston — who isn’t particularly a wrestling fan — also notes that Steve Austin was one of the few performers who ever made a point of seeking him out and thanking him for the theme song:
Steve Austin was comfortable saying thank you, which was a little uncommon. He was always very appreciative of my efforts, and of other producers in WWE who would put together his videos and vignettes, and he went out of his way to thank me. Steve was very pleased with the song, and always told me that it quickly allowed him to get in the right mood and into character.
Of course, Austin had more reason than most to express his gratitude, because what he got was one of the most memorable theme songs in WWE history (although of course Johnston created plenty of other classics as well).
