Jim Johnston Doesn't Like When Wrestlers Use Licensed Music For Their Entrances

Former WWE music producer Jim Johnston was recently a guest on the RRBG podcast, where he spoke about the current wave of wrestlers using licensed music as their entrance themes.

“I feel so sorry for the current crop of talent there because I feel that they're being served so inadequately and so poorly. There are no breakout stars because they’re not putting the right combination of things together to create stars. I’m sure there are stars there. I’m absolutely confident there are. I remind everybody that before Stone Cold Steve Austin broke out and became one of the biggest stars in the game, he was The Ringmaster. He was a pretty low-card player. There’s something about truth, characters have to find an element to their character that’s not a character. It has to be part of who they are. Then, I think the next most important thing is there has to be a piece of music which is a score to that character so every time people hear it, they feel that character. It’s not just thinking about it, they feel that character and what that character is about.

The reason I always thought wrestlers using mainstream music was because I thought it absolutely defeats the purpose because people have different emotional associations with those songs. So, a song comes on that’s, whatever, an AC/DC song, the guy comes out to that, I think it makes him feel all puffy, you know, ‘I got an AC/DC song.’ The problem is that half the fan base is thinking about some association they had; ‘This is the night I had that car accident. This is the first night I kissed my girlfriend.’ So, you’ve effectively taken them out of the story and now they are not thinking about that guy. When Taker’s music plays or Steve’s music plays, people are only thinking about Steve Austin. They’re not thinking about when they kissed their girl, they’re thinking about Steve Austin, what he did last week and I wonder what crazy thing he’s going to do tonight. That’s what you want. It’s not just intellectual focus, it’s emotional focus. Star Wars works because you know Darth Vader is bad and Luke Skywalker is good and you want the force to win. If you don’t care that the force wins, boy, the movie’s dead on arrival.”

Johnston spent 32 years working for WWE, but was ultimately allowed to have his contract expire some time ago.