NWA President Billy Corgan recently spoke with Robbie Fox on his My Mom’s Basement podcast to discuss a wide number of topics, which included Corgan’s issues with current wrestling theme songs, and how he wishes they were more unique. Highlights from the interview are below.
On the lack of entrance music on NWA Powerrr:
Matt Cardona, of all people, he comes at me for not having entrance music on Powerrr, which is kind of funny, you know what I mean? I think there was even one promo where he pulled out his phone and he played his own entrance theme,” Billy said. “It’s not that I don’t like it, I get it. I get how it’s become part of the modern form and I’m not sentimental for a form without it. I’m just not the biggest fan. I was honestly a bigger fan of the way pride if you remember PRIDE, they used to use really weird music for like Fedor and stuff like that, almost like Trip-hop tracks and stuff like that. I would like to see more creativity on the music side and I think that’s where I kind of shirk it. Because, most wrestling themes are very very, from a music point of view, and I’m a snob in music, and I have a right to be there, they tend to be B and C-level music themes. We do some good stuff, but at the end of the day, I would like to see more diversity. But, wrestling fans are used to their jarhead metal riff.
Says he did have brief talks with WWE regarding theme music but it fizzled out:
I did talk to WWE about it at some point that did go nowhere. I can no I think was a mid-level staffer that when they booted it up, it went nowhere. I did some stuff for TNA. But as far as doing a wrestling thing dedicated now? Lately, I’ve been working with Jeff Schroeder, who’s been the guitar player of the Smashing Pumpkins for over 15 years, and Jeff’s done some really cool themes for the NWA. I really like those kinds of almost 80s, Joe Satriani, or something, I don’t know what it is, but it’s kind of cool. So, but I’ve tried to license some 80 songs that I liked, and people just quote astronomical figures. If I told you some of the figures I’ve been quoted for some songs that I’ve asked for behind the scenes, your head would explode. It’s just unbelievable what people want for wrestling themes,” Billy said. “Well, that’s it. We did that with Dokken [Into the Fire], and a lot of people have gotten into that song. I’m glad we used that. But I went on to try to use other stuff and the money people were asking was like, it was almost half our annual budget for one song.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)