Jericho welcomes “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to the show.
Austin informs that he’s always been a huge music fan. He recalls his parents listening to the music of their generation even as they aged, and he couldn’t understand why they didn’t move on to new music as the years passed. Now he finds himself stuck in the 70s, 80s and 90s, listening to bands he enjoyed during that time. He notes that some of his favourite bands from that time include The Scorpions, Boston, Whitesnake and April Wine.
Austin mentions that he’s a fan of multiple musical genres including metal. He’s a huge fan of Iron Maiden, and he’s been listening to Five Finger Death Punch’s new record a lot as of late.
He informs that his father played guitar in an old country band, so he grew up listening to a lot of country music. As a teenager he bought a bass guitar for just over $200, but that was a big financial commitment at that time. He made every payment until he eventually paid it off, but he never really learned how to play it.
Austin notes that he’s a huge KISS fan and he had every one of their albums growing up. Unfortunately, he was never able to see them in concert. At one point they came within an hour of his hometown but he couldn’t convince his father to drive him there.
Jericho mentions that theme music first made an appearance in professional wrestling at the Dallas Sportatorium. Austin can recall the Fabulous Freebirds and the Von Erichs making their entrance to the ring with classic songs such as Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” playing in the background, and the audience would go absolutely insane.
When Austin eventually made his in-ring debut at the Sportatorium he recorded one of his favourite songs at the time and had it played over the loudspeakers as he made his way to the ring. When he finished his match and made his way to the backstage area he encountered the promoter who was furious, noting that only established talents were allowed to have entrance music.
Many years later Austin was working as The Ringmaster in WWE. When his character started to transition to Stone Cold, the old Ringmaster theme didn’t really fit. He had a conversation with Jim Johnston at the time and brought Johnston a tape of Rage Against The Machine’s “Bulls on Parade”. He has no idea how Johnston came up with the other details such as the glass breaking and the siren, but those details made a huge difference in the end. Austin notes that while he might have inspired the music with his suggestion, Johnston struck gold with his final version.
Jericho mentions that he’s had the same theme music since debuting in WWE. At one point he got Zack Wylde to record a modern version of it but Vince McMahon hated it. At another point Jericho brought McMahon an Avenged Sevenfold song but McMahon hated that as well. McMahon told Jericho that his theme music is evergreen, and Jericho agreed with that point.
On the other hand, Jericho admits that it was somewhat liberating to make his entrance to a different song in NJPW recently. He actually used one of Fozzy’s songs, “Judas” for one of those entrances.
Jericho asks Austin who he used to travel with during his wrestling career, and what kind of music they’d listen to. Austin notes that he traveled with several different performers during his career including DDP, Billy and Bart Gunn, Brian Pillman, Raven and more. He notes that they never really listened to music because they’d always be talking about the business. He drove quite frequently and wouldn’t let guys like Mick Foley or DDP drive. If he was driving, he’d have control over the radio.
He adds that he’d always have a notepad with him if he was driving and listening to heavy metal music because some of those lyrics would match up perfectly with the “Stone Cold” character, and sometimes he’d use those lyrics for t-shirt ideas.
Austin says that Triple H’s WrestleMania 17 entrance when Motorhead played his theme live is one of the greatest entrances of all time. He got goosebumps watching that entrance and it made the hair stand up on his arms. Jericho notes that Lemmy was very smart, polite and respectful, and whenever Motorhead played Triple H’s entrance theme live Triple H lost, and that actually bothered Lemmy.
Austin informs that he was approached by MARS Records to pick a list of songs for a compilation cd in 1998 entitled, “Stone Cold Metal”. That album sold nearly 400,000 copies and they all made some money from that. They followed that up with “Stone Cold Country”. Jericho says that goes to show how popular Austin and wrestling in general was back in those days.
That sums up today’s episode of Talk is Jericho. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya next week for another recap!
