Ron Wasserman: The Music of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

When Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered on August 28th, 1993, the show forever changed the youth all around the globe. Teenagers with attitudes, morphin into color-coded heroes to fight cosmic villains were on every household television and on every toy shelf. But what was the secret formula to Saban’s Japanese-adapted franchise at a subconscious level? Was it the iconic costumes, the amazing martial arts, the message behind each episode? Perhaps. As a kid, you take it all in as one, epic package, but as you grow older you wonder, “Why do I get so pumped every time I rewatch Power Rangers, still to this day?” It’s the music. No other composer has managed to go so hard on a kids show than Ron Wasserman, who explained the reason why Rock was the right match for the soundtrack: “I’d done X-Men[: The Animated Series] a year earlier, and there’s no way it could be another synth theme. These guys were all gonna kick each other’s ass, so you have to use guitars. You have to give it some punch and a lot of energy. There was nothing else to come up with that kind of rhythm.”

Go Go Power Rangers, the show’s unforgettable theme, is to this day one of the all-time iconic music pieces in pop culture. Ron Wasserman recalls its conception, from a sudden call from Saban requesting to deliver the theme within the next day to the beginning of his singing career: “[Saban] asked me to use the word ‘Go’ because they had such success with ‘Go Gadget Go’ [from the Inspector Gadget animated series] in the eighties. Other than that, I didn’t have any paperwork at all, maybe a character picture from the Japanese version. I banged that thing out in two and a half hours … it had to be exactly 59 seconds with a one second ring out, just in case they used it. The next day they called and said, ‘Fox loves it.’ And I said, ‘Who do you think we should get to sing it?’ And they said, ‘No, Fox loves it. It’s done.’ And that started my Power Rangers singing career … I’m not a singer, but I became one. I’m a total rock star when I’m in the studio. My eyes are closed … I can somehow channel this energy into it because it’s sincere, honest. I push everything through my throat, and my sinuses swell up. My vision gets blurry, but it’s a great sound. There was a lot of pain in that. It was kind of a miracle [laughs].” He added, “Composers rarely can write songs and, on the other hand, songwriters rarely score. Luckily I can do both. It worked out great for Saban.”

In the beginning of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the music was mostly instrumental, with the exception of a few vocals–but eventually Wasserman was able to write (and perform) a full album of songs that added new depth to the show’s fight scenes. He revealed, “It was total creative freedom. They just said to start writing songs for it. It kind of caught fire and then more and more songs were written until it became one every couple weeks along with all the scoring work. It all started with Fight and Combat. We had a lot of problems with people blaming that their kids had become violent because of the show and the music. Haim Saban was good friends with the Clintons. So, one day while all of the fundraisers were at his house in Los Angeles, they said, ‘The White House would like you to stop inciting any violence.’ So no more words like ‘fight’ or ‘combat’, no anger, no minor chords, let’s be uplifting and positive–so I still made aggressive songs but with a positive message.” 5-4-1 is a great example, arguably the most hardcore musical piece in the show, included a theme of hope, a call for the heroes–which was directly inspired by the Three Musketeers’ motto, ‘All for one and one for all’ which was adapted for the Power Rangers as ‘Five people for one cause’.

Although Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Album: A Rock Adventure was released in 1994, a true version of the songs without the show’s dialogue (which was used to supposedly soften the tone of the songs) never saw the light of day–until 2012. With Power Rangers Redux, Ron Wasserman completely re-recorded his favorite tracks from the show and finally delivered the true rock adventure every fan has been waiting for since the 90’s. “I wouldn’t be permitted to use any of those original recordings. It’s kind of a weird workaround because you’re allowed to cover any song that’s ever been released on an audio product, so I filled out the paperwork to cover my own songs [laughs], even if I was the writer of them. One night I pulled up a guitar sound and thought, I wonder if I can still sing this. I got through the verse and went, ‘Well, that sounds identical!’ If I could do that, I’ll recut the theme, and if I’m recutting the theme, I might as well do all the songs I liked because they’d never been released without talking over them. A lot of people thought it was just remastered, which I consider a great compliment,” he shared.

After years of projects outside the franchise, Ron Wasserman returned to Power Rangers at the end of 2022 with the 30th anniversary commemorative film, Once & Always–this time approaching the score with modern themes while still keeping the nostalgic, 90’s feel based on Producer Simon Bennett’s direction. He shared, “As soon as I started, it was 1994 again. I was right back in it. They gave me the final cut on December 7th, and right around January 5th I delivered the whole score. I think Simon’s notes took maybe two hours to address, and the network’s notes took under an hour.” He added, “Now as opposed to then, I have access to any kind of sounds very quickly. Technology has improved a lot since I first started on Power Rangers, and it enables you to really perfect those sounds. I would do that first batch of cues and then you break them out in the stems every separate track and then move down to the next one and the next. I think when I finally delivered it, I had about 570 tracks of stuff, not all playing at the same time, but just so they could go through and easily choose.”

Ron Wasserman has left a mark on generations with his Mighty Morphin Power Rangers music, which continues to inspire and excite fans all around the globe. Follow him on Instagram and stay up with his latest projects!

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