Ron Wasserman
Ronald Aaron Wasserman, also known as Aaron Waters and The Mighty Raw, is an American musician who composed the original theme songs for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and X-Men: The Animated Series. He was also a member of the band Fisher.
History
Early career
Wasserman has been fascinated with music since he was three years old, when he started playing the piano. Bands that influenced him as a teenager include Black Sabbath, Genesis and Pink Floyd. Wasserman said, "my musical taste my entire life was so diverse, so I'd be listening to 'Rhapsody in Blue' by George Gershwin one day and learning to play it on the piano, and then I'd switch over to 'War Pigs' from Black Sabbath." His early music bands include Hollywood Headliners Betty Boop & the Beat, formed by SAG actress Lucrecia Sarita Russo. In 1983, the group opened for Felony/Scotti Brothers records at the Florentine Gardens. Felony was fronted by Lucrecia's then-husband, Jeff Spry, who was receiving chart action with the KROQ-FM hit single "The Fanatic". In the mid-1980s, Ron started a rock band with present-day actress, E.G. Daily. In 1989, shortly after the band disbanded, he started working for Saban Entertainment. Wasserman filled in at Saban Entertainment one afternoon and eventually stayed there for six and a half years. Wasserman and Ron Kenan, once V.P. of Saban Entertainment/Music Production, met in the early 80's and played together in the popular new wave pop band, Betty Boop & the Beat.Saban career and ''Mighty Morphin Power Rangers''
During his early days at Saban, Wasserman worked as a music engineer, sometimes contributing background music and co-writing themes for several of their smaller series. Shows Wasserman worked on during this period include King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, Little Shop, Saban's Around the World in Eighty Dreams, Saban's Gulliver's Travels and Video Power. Early on, he received creative notes from Saban that his music was too fast and heavy for children, and they would sometimes not accept the music he submitted because of this. Wasserman said, "you could hear probably throughout the whole office building when I drove in, blasting Black Sabbath, or Nirvana or some death metal out of my car. I had that energy and that angst back then. I got it out in my music." In 1992, Wasserman wrote the theme song for the animated Fox Kids X-Men series and co-composed background music for it, with this being the first hit show he worked on. Wasserman did not know anything about X-Men when he was asked to compose the theme. In a retrospective 2022 article, Wasserman remembered, "it was two weeks of hell putting that song together", adding that "I kept getting notes they wanted more baseline, then more high-hats. It was a real pain in the ass to do all that back then too. It came out really great though, the theme was really catchy and interesting and it was especially interesting when they animated to it." Wasserman also wrote some of the show's background music, with other composers from Saban also working on the background music. For the early episodes, the show's closing credits featured an instrumental heavy rock song from Wasserman, but for later episodes it was replaced by a shortened version of his opening theme.The following year, he composed some of his most recognizable work, which was for the Fox Kids show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. One day, he was presented with the first footage of the show, was told to use the word "Go", and to have it finished by the next day. The people from Saban Entertainment wanted him to use the word "Go" since Haim Saban had success using that lyric in the Inspector Gadget theme song, which was the first hit theme he and writing partner Shuki Levy were credited with. After two and a half hours, the song that resulted was the show's theme song, "Go Go Power Rangers". In 1991, he had previously composed an instrumental heavy metal theme song for a similar Saban project called Metalman. The project never got off the ground, and Wasserman decided to give Mighty Morphin Power Rangers a rock/metal sound since it reminded him of Metalman. In addition to composing the theme song, Wasserman handled the background music, and in 1994 several of his most popular songs and scores from the series were eventually released on a successful concept album entitled Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Album: A Rock Adventure.
His compositions for X: Men: The Animated Series, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and various other Saban productions were credited to Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi, with Wasserman only ever being listed in TV credits as a music producer or music engineer. This was allegedly so the pair could collect music royalties for Wasserman's work. According to Wasserman, he very rarely composed alongside Shuki Levy or Haim Saban on any Saban Entertainment shows. Saban's practice of not crediting musicians in order to gain royalties was revealed in a 1998 article by The Hollywood Reporter. Several past and present composers from Saban were interviewed, although Wasserman was the only one that was willing to be identified by name. Wasserman told The Hollywood Reporter, "they put their names on my work, and most of the time they had absolutely nothing to do with it, as far as creating the work was concerned. Most of the time, I would deliver the score, it would go to mix and air without the 'writers' seeing it or hearing it. That's how it works. It's really that simple." Regarding Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Wasserman said, "for that, I got producer and/or engineer credit. No music by credit. No cue-sheet credit. The credit went to Haim Saban and Shuki Levy. As far as the theme, all Haim did was give it his approval. What Shuki did, I have no idea. I worked on the theme alone; they contributed nothing." He added that, "on the background music, they acted as producers and guided me extensively on the direction." In this article, a representative from Saban still maintained that the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers theme had been co-composed by Haim Saban, and that Wasserman was incorrect in saying that he was the sole composer. Wasserman and all other composers at Saban signed a contract agreeing to give up the rights to their compositions prior to joining the company. In the late 1990s, ten of these composers threatened to launch a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Haim Saban. Wasserman was not among these ten composers.
Another reason Saban did not credit musicians was so that they would be hidden enough as to not get offers to work for higher paying companies. Wasserman was originally going to do the music for the 1995 Power Rangers film, but Saban scrapped this plan at the last minute since it was a union film co-produced by 20th Century Fox, which would mean that Wasserman would have to be listed as the composer, and thus would be more well-known in the industry. Saban instead hired The Crow composer Graeme Revell, who, while credited on the film, didn't actually compose the score, instead secretly getting one of his assistants to do it. Wasserman was informed that he would not be doing the film's music via a representative from 20th Century Fox, and the only explanation given was because Haim Saban said so. The next time Wasserman ran into Haim Saban, he asked Saban why he wasn't doing the film's music, and Saban replied by telling him "you're no John Williams", with Wasserman's response to Saban being that he was "no Walt Disney". He eventually found out that he couldn't do the music because it was a union film and Fox discovered that Haim Saban was planning to credit himself for Wasserman's work. Not getting hired for the film upset Wasserman so much that he wrote a song about it shortly afterwards, called "Cross My Line". Regarding "Cross My Line", Wasserman said in 2013, "Haim and I always got along and I have nothing against him in the world. but that song was basically a 'fuck you, I'm out of here soon, and somewhere down the line you’re going to read all of the projects I’m involved in'".
For Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Album: A Rock Adventure, the music was not credited to Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi, even though Levy and Saban are listed as writers or co-writers of the songs on legal cue sheets. Saban instead credited it to a fictitious artist named Aaron Waters. Wasserman came up with the name "Aaron Waters" because his middle name was Aaron and his surname Wasserman means "water carrier" in German. Saban later attached the additional alias "The Mighty RAW". While the reason behind it is unknown, it is assumed "RAW" is for his initials and "The Mighty" comes from the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers." On Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Album: A Rock Adventure, Waters is listed as the performer of the songs, while Wasserman is separately listed under his real name as the music producer and music engineer. Wasserman was also credited as Aaron Waters on the soundtrack album for the Power Rangers film, which used "Cross My Line" as a bonus track on some editions. "Cross My Line" also briefly appears within the film itself. In the film's credits, the performer of "Cross My Line" is listed as being The Mighty RAW, while Wasserman is separately listed under his real name as the writer of the song, alongside Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi. The original Power Rangers theme was also reworked by an orchestra for the film, and in the film's credits the writers of the theme are listed as Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi, with no mention of Wasserman just like in the TV show's credits.
Wasserman's X-Men theme would later be reworked by The Newton Brothers for X-Men '97. The series was a continuation of X: Men: The Animated Series, which originally ended in 1997. On the closing credits of X-Men '97, Shuki Levy and Haim Saban are still listed as the writers of the theme, with Saban being credited under his real name rather than the Kussa Mahchi alias.