Billy Corgan explains why he's not a fan of entrance music and talks past dealings with promotions concerning potentially creating or licensing a song for entrance music.
Billy Corgan, the president of the National Wrestling Alliance is also the frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins. As such, it's only natural that Billy potentially licensing one of the Pumpkins' songs or creating a brand new song for a wrestler’s theme song would be a topic of conversation through the years.
Currently, on NWA Powerrr, they do not use entrance music. Matt Cardona, the current NWA Champion once played his own theme song on his phone in an effort to combat this. Billy spoke about this moment and more with Robbie Fox on My Mom’s Basement.
“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.”
Asked if he has ever been approached to do a theme song, Billy says that he did briefly talk to WWE about something concerning theme music but the talks went nowhere. Billy also says he's been quoted astronomical figures to try to license some 80's songs that he likes for the NWA.
“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.”
The next event for the National Wrestling Alliance is the Crockett Cup taking place across the weekend of March 19. Learn more here.