Jim Peterik played the message on his answering machine several times before he believed what he was hearing. “Hey Jim!” said a voice in a thick New York Italian-American accent. “Gimme a call. Sylvester Stallone.”
It was 1981. Stallone was one of the hottest movie stars in America after playing the titular hero in the blockbuster boxing movies Rocky and Rocky II. Peterik was the keyboard player and principal songwriter in Chicago rock band Survivor, whose latest single Poor Man’s Son had just scraped into the US top 40.
Once Peterik had decided that the message from Stallone was legit, he called Survivor’s guitarist Frankie Sullivan.
Peterik recalled in an interview with Classic Rock: “Frankie came straight to my house, and we made that call together.”
Stallone explained to them that he had heard about Survivor from Tony Scotti, the co-founder of the band’s record label Scotti Brothers, to which Stallone’s brother Frank was also signed.
Stallone said that he loved Poor Man’s Son and wanted a similar song for the next instalment of his movie franchise: Rocky III. As Peterik remembered it, Stallone told them: “I want something for the kids, something fresh and modern. Something with a pulse. Can you do it?”
Peterik replied: “Are you kidding? Damn right we can!”
The following day, Peterik and Sullivan received a tape featuring three minutes of action sequences from the movie, with Stallone and co-star Mr. T duking it out in the ring to the sound of Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust.
“It was amazing,” Petered said. “The energy!”
He and Sullivan had to replace the Queen track with something that would match that energy. The answer - a thudding staccato riff - came to Peterik while he was driving.
As he recalled: “I saw the punches in my mind: Bam! Bam, bam, bam! Bam, bam, bam! Bam, bam, BAM!”
The title Eye Of The Tiger was lifted from a phrase repeated in Rocky III by Rocky’s friend and trainer Apollo Creed. “Rocky, you gotta keep the eye of the tiger!”
Stallone informed them that the phrase derived from ancient Chinese.
Peterik explained: “The eye of the tiger is the killer instinct. It’s the will to survive, to exceed your roots, to go beyond what anyone thought you could do.”
With a powerful lead vocal from beret-wearing frontman Dave Bickler, Eye Of The Tiger ended up topping the US chart for six weeks in the summer of 1982, and also hit No.1 in the UK.
It made Survivor a household name throughout the world and remains one of the most popular rock songs of all time. Across the years it has served as the soundtrack to countless boxing matches and other sporting events.
In 1985, Stallone and Survivor teamed up again for Rocky IV. With a new singer, Jimi Jamison, the band delivered another rousing anthem, Burning Heart, which peaked at No.2 in the US.
And as Jim Peterik told Classic Rock, Eye Of The Tiger is the gift that keeps on giving. Recalling a brush with the law in 2010, he revealed: “I got caught speeding, and when the cop stopped me I said, ‘Well, not that this would influence you at all, officer, but I’m the guy who wrote Eye Of The Tiger.’ And God bless him, he let me off with a warning!”
