Update: Digital version of the poster came out via Slash so we moved this story up.
Around the 8:00 minute mark in this Mickey Rourke interview with David Poland, the actor talks about how he kind of became the de facto music supervisor on the film, persuading Guns N’ Roses and Bruce Springsteen to lend their music to the film and in the case of GNR, he scored a classic track for free!
“When I was boxing I used to come out to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ so when I was behind [the wrestling] ropes [on set], I needed some extra so I said, ‘Put on ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ and take off that shit you’re playing’. So I called up Axl [Rose] about the movie and he gave us the song for free.”
Rourke met Springsteen years ago through Sean Penn and well-aware of his lost in the woods years, Springsteen wasn’t hard to convince. “I wrote Bruce [Springsteen] a long letter, because we go way back. Bruce knew that I lost myself for 13-14 years. So I wrote him this letter about the parallels about Randy The Ram and Mickey and how I’m lucky I’m not Randy and in the middle of the tour he reponded and said when he got a chance he’d read the script.”
Rourke was pretty damn happy with the way Springsteen’s song turned out. “When I heard it, it blew my mind. I’m so proud of the fact that he did that. He don’t need no money, he wouldn’t do it if some studio called him out of the blue, you just can’t buy that.”
Then he took “The Wrestler” director Darren Aronofsky to Giants Stadium to see Springsteen play a show and they met backstage. “Darren asks him, ‘Why did you do this for us?’ And Bruce said, ‘Well, I want Mickey to be back where he used to be. I didn’t notice, but Bruce had an acoustic guitar and he played the song for Darren and fuck… it was like magical.”
Take a listen to Bruce Springsteen’s demo version of the “The Wrestler.”
Download: Bruce Springsteen – “The Wrestler” (rough demo version)