\u201cI want something for the kids,\u201d Stallone said. \u201cSomething fresh and modern, something with a pulse! Can you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
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A breathless Peterik replied: \u201cAre you kidding? Damn right we can!\u201d<\/p>\n
In quick time, Peterik and guitarist Frankie Sullivan wrote a dynamic hard rock song named Eye Of The Tiger.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1982, Eye Of The Tiger topped the US chart for six weeks and also hit No.1 in the UK. It made Survivor a household name throughout the world.<\/p>\n
Survivor – Eye Of The Tiger (Official HD Video) – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Three years later, Stallone called again, telling Peterik: \u201cWe got Rocky IV. You wanna do it again?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer was of course yes.<\/p>\n As Peterik later recalled in an interview with Classic Rock: \u201cWhat do you think we\u2019re gonna say?\u201d<\/p>\n Peterik and Sullivan were no fools. If Stallone wanted Eye Of The Tiger Part II, that was exactly what he\u2019d get.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted that same pulse,\u201d Peterik said. \u201cWe had a formula and we weren\u2019t gonna change it.\u201d<\/p>\n But second time around there was one major difference. The guy who sang Eye Of The Tiger was no longer in Survivor.<\/p>\n The band had toured heavily in the wake of that huge hit, and singer Dave Bickler had subsequently developed nodules in his throat due to a combination of workload and partying.<\/p>\n Matters came to a head after the recording of the follow-up album Caught In The Game. Bickler\u2019s voice had deteriorated so much that the band were unable to tour for that album.<\/p>\n In 1984, following Bickler\u2019s dismissal, Survivor appointed a new singer in Mississippi-born Jimi Jamison, formerly of Target and Cobra.<\/p>\n \u201cVery few bands can survive a lead singer transplant,\u201d Peterik said. \u201cBut Jimi had the most magical voice I\u2019ve ever heard!\u201d<\/p>\n Survivor\u2019s first album with Jamison was 1985\u2019s Vital Signs, which reached No.16 on the Billboard chart and yielded three hit singles. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest AOR albums of all time.<\/p>\n Survivor – I Can’t Hold Back (Official Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n It was also in 1985 that Survivor cut their second Rocky anthem for Stallone.<\/p>\n Peterik recalled: \u201cWe read the movie script, about the Russians and the spy thing and the gorgeous girl, and I said, \u2018This is kind of corny, but it\u2019s gonna be a huge hit.<\/p>\n \u201cI read the script sitting around poolside at a hotel. And then Frankie and I went to my room and we wrote the song on an old Wurlitzer piano.<\/p>\n \u201cI wrote the whole lyric right there, but for the title of the song we were in a quandary. In the beginning it was called The Unmistakable Fire, but that sounded like a rip-off of U2<\/a>\u2019s The Unforgettable Fire.<\/p>\n \u201cWe played the song to Stallone in LA and he loved it, but he too wanted a stronger title. He also loved the sound we put into the track \u2013 the explosion after the words \u2018burning heart\u2019. And so that was our title right there.\u201d<\/p>\n The lyrics in the song were shaped by the movie\u2019s Cold War-era plotline, in which the hero Rocky Balboa fought Russian boxer Ivan Drago. Peterik wrote: \u201cIs it East versus West, or man against man?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery word in that song is chock full of meaning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Released as a single on 21 October 1985, Burning Heart was another monster hit. It reached No.2 in the US and No.1 in both Belgium and Switzerland while also hitting the top 10 throughout Europe.<\/p>\n Survivor – Burning Heart – YouTube
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