Back in 1981, Chicago rock band Survivor were struggling to get a hit, until – out of the blue – a phone call from a big movie star changed everything.
Sylvester Stallone contacted Survivor’s keyboard player Jim Peterik saying he loved the band’s song Poor Man’s Son and wanted something similar for his new boxing movie Rocky III.
“I want something for the kids,” Stallone said. “Something fresh and modern, something with a pulse! Can you do it?”
A breathless Peterik replied: “Are you kidding? Damn right we can!”
In quick time, Peterik and guitarist Frankie Sullivan wrote a dynamic hard rock song named Eye Of The Tiger.
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.