How Rocky 3 Made "Eye Of The Tiger" A Classic

When it comes to all-time songs from movies, Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” from Rocky 3 undoubtedly deserves consideration for the number 1 spot. Not only did “Eye Of The Tiger” receive Grammy and Oscar nominations but it also took the country by storm, earning Billboard’s #1 spot in 1982. From restaurant jukeboxes to gyms across the country, the pump-up song had everyone from boxers to toddlers getting fired up over “Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet, just a man and his will to survive!”

Both Sylvester Stallone and the boys of Survivor helped create an anthem that showed up in everything from sitcoms to coffee commercials. Here’s the backstory of the inspirational “Eye Of The Tiger.”

A Voicemail From Rocky

Obviously, Stallone had a good grip on music as evidenced by Rocky 1 & 2’s "Gonna Fly Now," which also became a #1 hit in ‘77. While searching for music for the third rendition of Rocky, Tony Scotti, president of Survivor’s label, played songs from Survivor’s previous album “Premonition.”

Stallone liked their sound which led to what had to be an all-time message for Jim Peterik who along with Frankie Sullivan wrote the songs for the band. As Peterik remembered, "Answering machines were still something of a novelty back then and to see that blinking light was a thrill. When I pressed the playback button I heard, "Hey, yo, Jim, that's a nice message you got there. This is Sylvester Stallone.' It was too thick to be really him, but it was him. That's really the way he talks."

A High Bar

Stallone made it clear he wanted to distance himself from the original Rocky hit song and come up with something more fresh and youthful. When the real-life Rocky showed the songwriters what he had in mind, they realized the tall task in front of them…

"When we got the initial rough cut of the movie, the scene that 'Eye Of The Tiger' appears in was cut to 'Another One Bites The Dust' by Queen. Frankie and I are watching this, the punches are being thrown, and we're going, 'Holy crap, this is working like a charm.' We called Stallone and said, 'Why aren't you using that?' He goes, 'Well, we can't get the publishing rights to it.' Frankie and I looked at each other and went, 'Man, this is going to be tough to beat.'

A Montage Masterpiece

To top Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust,” the boys began with “that now-famous dead string guitar riff and started slashing those chords to the punches we saw on the screen.” Then came the lyrics:

"Frankie (Sullivan) came in with the lines, 'Back on the street, doin' time, taking chances.' I loved those lines immediately and suggested, 'Rising up, back on the street, did my time, took my chances' to make it fit with the storyline and to make the rhythm of the words fit the music I was hearing in my head. The next two hours flew by in a flash as we jammed, cassette recorder running nonstop to catch anything good we did for future reference, and at the end of the day, the music was about 80% complete and the lyrics about 30%”.

Rocky Knows What He Wants

As Patrick recalled, “Over the next few days, I worked hard on the lyrics, remembering pieces of movie dialogue like, 'Went the distance,' referring to the central phrase of the first Rocky movie." When they showed it to Stallone, he loved it but added a few crucial notes that helped turn “Eye Of The Tiger” into a classic. For instance, he wanted louder drums and a third verse rather than a repetition of the first.

Musicians rarely want feedback, especially not from an actor. However, the band respected Stallone’s ear. "Stallone has a good ear for a hook. Just listen to his dialogues - he wrote those scripts. He came up with 'Eye Of The Tiger' for that script and those hook phrases like 'I'm going to knock you into tomorrow.' All that stuff is Stallone, he's a genius with dialogue. Songs are nothing more than dialogue set to music as far as I'm concerned."

A Long Shelf Life

While Peterik knew he had a good song on his hands, he had no idea of the incredible staying power of “Eye Of The Tiger.” "People training for boxing matches, that's natural, but in every sport, that song has crept into the motivational aspect of it. I never would have predicted it. It seems obvious now, but we just wrote a song for a movie. The fact that it was huge wasn't a big surprise at the time, but what surprises me is that it's still around. It's still credible, it's still not a joke."

The song went on to star in a seemingly endless run of TV shows, movies, and even commercials. “Eye Of The Tiger’s” appeared in “Family Guy,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “King Of Queens,” “Breaking Bad,” “Modern Family,” “New Girl,” a Starbucks commercial, a frosted flakes commercial, “My Name Is Earl,” and a Gary Busey movie actually called “Eye Of The Tiger.”

Funnily enough, Peterik knew “Eye Of The Tiger'' had really made it when he “went to a Pizza Hut restaurant in some god-forsaken town in America. I was sitting there all alone, eating pizza when the song comes on the jukebox. This little 5-year-old girl jumps up from her seat, hits the dance floor, and starts screaming, 'They're playing my song! They're playing my song!' and starts dancing to the song. I go, 'Now I know we have something.'"