We are finally here, the first part of The Road to X-Men 97‘. I started my process with this series a month or so back, knowing I needed to put myself up against a long-term project, and what better to do that with than the best Marvel team coming to Disney+ sooner or later. And in good fashion, I’ll intro this series with an exclusive interview with, well, the man who made the intro theme to X-Men: The Animated Series; Ron Wasserman.
Enjoy this interview to your liking, and please look out for more parts coming in the following months.
Full Interview
The Journey to Being a Film/Television Composer
RS: What brought you into composing for film and television?
RW: Why, I started playing piano when I was 3, and I started writing when I was 5, and when I was in bands in my early twenties I was writing songs for them, and learning to engineer and beginning songwriting, I was also working with all these mostly female songwriters around Los Angeles. Then one day a friend called me into Saban to engineer for one of the composers, and I was so poor, I mean it was ridiculous, and and I saw this guy had made like 4 or 500 bucks for an evening of fun writing 3 music queues, and I said, ‘Well, I want to get into this’.
So then I got hired part time to mix the other composers queues, and I started writing stuff. I loved it in that place, I kept submitting to the producers until they kind of broke me up. I finally learned the score and I got a few little queues and a couple of direct to home video things. I don’t remember the night, but in came X-Men and the head of music, Ron Cannon and I sat down. He had kind of a baseline idea and I kind of took it from there, it was 2 weeks of working on it, and literally from that time forward I wasn’t engineering for anybody else, I was just a composer for everything, and then, when Power Rangers hit, it was just anything they needed at any time. I was just there 70 to 80 hours a week just working.
Introduction to ‘X-Men: The Animated Series’
RS: So that leads me to my next question, how did you get started with the X-Men? Did you read any of the comics beforehand? Or have heard of them?
RW: I knew nothing about it, actually. I was never a sci-fi, or a comic book guy, so I went to my friend, who ended up doing and does sound effects for everything at Saban. I said, ‘Tell me everything about X-Men‘, and he kind of filled me in on stuff. So after that the theme was written and it was time to do a chunk of the score, and it was just developing little themes for the characters and scoring the picture animation which is just building just library stuff. It was a ton of work.
The Difficulties of Making Music for ‘The X-Men’
This question was inspired by my friend on twitter, @JLdewd
RS: One thing that I know about watching the original series is, it had to have been difficult and I want to hear your experiences on developing separate themes and an overall theme song for the show, with something with as much variety as The X-men. These are people from different cultures and backgrounds, styles, and personalities, so how did you form these different themes for these characters? And this amalgamation of all of it.
RW: I would see any character, and just make it as heroic or as interesting as possible, but yet subtle enough to where it could be brought back when appropriate. When you see the character it creates a continuity in people’s heads, so it’s just coming up with the stuff. It’s easy figuring it out, but how to use it appropriately is a little bit more difficult, so you know the the show’s all over the map. I was already getting well versed in writing in just about any style. So luckily that came naturally to me very fortunately.
The only drag back then, was everything was to tape, and to load up sounds took forever. Then, if you had to add sounds, it was a very risky proposition. Loading more sounds into a sampler keyboard, using too many, it would always crash, it was just a nightmare. Then when you recorded you have to do 30 second preroll. So let’s say you wanted to do this little 5 second thing, you’ve got to go back 35 seconds, wait, make sure everything is locked, and punch yourself in as you’re playing.
Thoughts on the Homage to His Theme in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’
This was submitted by @neilvagg on twitter
RS: Have you seen Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’?
RW: I have not seen it yet, no. But I have heard about it, and I am so happy that they paid tribute to the the classic song. I’ll have to check it out.
Other Experiences with Marvel Projects
RS: With how big superhero movies are nowadays, and the MCU kickstarting the cinematic universe with all these different franchises tied together, people don’t realize it but X-Men kickstarted the “original” MCU with the shared universe between all of the marvel cartoons. It’s so great that you could be a part of that with your music.
RW: When the show was coming out they were not doing good money-wise, and these cartoons were the things that were keeping them up, kept them afloat alongside selling film rights. The the only thing I’m sad about is Marvel doesn’t really have themes for anything in their films, which is, I guess, cool.
I mean it doesn’t really matter all that much but they kind of went with John Williams and the Star Wars they have nowadays, things change.
I remember when The Avengers, when the animated things started, I had this kick-ass theme for it, just rocking. It was great, but they went with something else. It was a very politically charged situation. I would have loved to see that. I was pretty disappointed because I thought it kicked, but it was other composers making the decisions. They just went ‘Well, why don’t we just do it?’, so they ended up doing their own thing.
And Finally, X-Men 97′?
RS: I have to ask, has there been any contact with Marvel Studios for a return to compose X-Men 97′?
RW: Not a word, not a word. I had got the email of the director or showrunner, and I politely emailed them every 2 weeks for 3 months, nothing. So at this moment I haven’t heard anything, but there’s plenty of time left still. They’re probably still doing animatics and recording dialogue, so maybe around January or February they could hit post-production. I have a couple contacts in Disney, but they said they couldn’t help because it’s Marvel. I would love to come back though.
Some questions in this interview were submitted through twitter and direct messages. Some questions and answers were also edited for clarity of the article.
X-Men: The Animated Series is available to watch on Disney+ right now, check out the trailer for it below!
