The lead singer of Downstait says the band almost walked away from 'Kingdom'.
Before officially returning to WWE at WrestleMania 38, many fans were curious if Cody Rhodes would bring his signature 'Kingdom' theme song along with him in his return to the company. As it turns out, it almost didn't happen.
In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, Daren Zachary Call, the lead singer of Downstait, revealed that they were ready to walk away from Rhodes' signature song for good after seemingly running into a licensing issue with WWE.
“I don’t wanna give away too much but we were aware that Kingdom was coming and we were a little bit of a legal battle and Cody Rhodes is absolutely the fucking man. We were on the phone with lawyers, agents, and WWE’s lawyers and composers before and we have been with them since 2009 and we all have regular jobs and we just wanted our cut of the pie on this one. We’re not Joan Jett, we’re not Living Colour, but when you use a real song, those artists get paid. This is a song we wrote. We were ready to walk away from Kingdom and say thank you and we were gonna go back to doing our regular jobs."
Call went on to detail a conference call that happened weeks before WrestleMania 38, where Rhodes told WWE that they wouldn't get him if they weren't able to get his beloved theme song as well.
“It was pretty close to it and then we held a silence for a little bit and I said my peace and my heart is in my throat and I’m not ready to give up this song, we’d worked so hard on this song. Cody just basically breaks the silence and goes ‘Well, you don’t get me without Kingdom’ on this conference call and he swore up and down when he started using it that if [he] went back to WWE, [he would] take Kingdom with him. He’s been nothing but truthful with us the whole time, but you never know when it comes to the moment, you never know what’s going to happen. About two weeks before, we had this big make or break moment and he [pulled through].”
Other current WWE stars like Dolph Ziggler and The Miz use theme music that was created by Downstait as well.
Cody Rhodes is set to take on Brock Lesnar at the upcoming Night Of Champions premium live event. Fans can learn more about the event's card by clicking here.
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