James Iovine On Interscope Records Nearly Buying ECW, Licensing WWE Theme Music In Early 2000s

In a recent edition of the Wrestling Inc. Daily, James Iovine, the son of Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine, discussed the company nearly buying ECW, licensing WWE theme music, and much more. Here are some of the highlights:

James Iovine on Interscope Records licensing WWE music during the Attitude Era: “During a period of time, my dad’s label actually had a licensing deal with the WWE, and we licensed a lot of the music,” Jamie noted. “For instance, when Edge did ‘Never Gonna Stop’ by Rob Zombie, we let Interscope license that. When ‘Beautiful People’ was the theme song for SmackDown, we licensed that as well, and ‘Rollin’ for The Undertaker. I wouldn’t take that much credit, but I was there for a lot of it. My old man would bring me in to consult because he didn’t really know much about the current state of the Attitude Era and stuff. He knew the old school stuff. ‘Is this Edge guy cool? The Undertaker, I thought he was dead. He’s riding a motorcycle now?'”

On Interscope Records nearly buying ECW before it went out of business: “There’s also that whole thing where Paul Heyman revealed in an interview, of course, I’ll leave it to him to reveal because we didn’t say much, until he talked about it, that Interscope was one of the lists of people who was interested in buying ECW before it went out of business. I met Paul Heyman the first time, God, I had to have been 15 – 16 years old back when ECW was starting, right after the TNN deal went through, and they were needing money. And my old man was one of the people interested. It didn’t end up happening because it just didn’t seem like it was going to work out, and WWE had a better offer.”