“I just said, ‘Look, Ed, if you want to do this, I’ll set up a guitar for you, and if you don’t like what we do, I’ll just destroy it in front of you’”: Eddie Van Halen and Keanu Reeves nearly ended up on the John Wick soundtrack

It’s no secret that soundtracks can make or break a movie – and in the case of the John Wick franchise, its moody theme, courtesy of composer Tyler Bates, gives life to the movies' thrilling action sequences.

However, it was recently revealed that the soundtrack could have perhaps been elevated even further if a certain guitar hero had ended up being involved...

“At one point, we almost had Eddie Van Halen play on the John Wick theme, toward the end of his life,” Bates divulges in an interview with ScreenRant.

“[It was on John Wick 2 or 3.] He came over to my place. It was really sweet of him to come over, and he hung out for a while, but I got the sense he was not in the mindset that he really wanted to do anything.

“He said he hadn’t played for quite a while. We spoke on the phone a couple of times after he split. I wanted him to touch my guitar, but I didn’t want to say, ‘Will you touch my guitar?’

Bates continues, “Anyway, he called me a number of times and I just said, ‘Look, Ed, you live 10 minutes from me. If you want to do this, I’ll set up a guitar for you, and if you don’t like what we do, I’ll just destroy it in front of you. He really, really appreciated that.’”

And while a musical collaboration didn't transpire, a friendship between the two did bloom. “From that point on, the only times we were talking were about his health battles and stuff. I’m imagining he sensed that I’d been through a few things myself, so it was relatable.”

John Wick Chapter 1-4 Theme Song Mix V2 - YouTube

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Another high-profile collaboration that could have happened? Keanu Reeves. Despite being a dedicated bassist and, more importantly, the face of the franchise, Reeves refused to get involved on the music front, despite Bates approaching him multiple times.

“I asked Keanu, ‘Hey dude. Why don’t you just play bass on the John Wick theme? No-one even has to know, but it would be cool for all of us just to connect that way. We would love it.’ He was like, ‘Tyler, come on, man. You’ve got to do it.’”

His reason? “He didn’t want to just take some pony ride on the score only to have it leak out at some point, and [he] probably knew that he would get all the credit for the score,” Bates tells ScreenRant.

Despite not managing to team up with either Van Halen or Reeves, the composer did recently collaborate with alt-metal juggernauts Evanescence and singer-songwriter K.Flay on the soundtrack to John Wick spin-off, Ballerina – while Jerry Cantrell recorded his own contribution for John Wick 2 entitled A Job to Do.

Meanwhile, in the Eddie Van Halen universe, Sammy Hagar recently talked about his musical dynamic with EVH and why the virtuoso stopped releasing music in the 2000s.