Apart from starring a Hollywood legend like Sylvester Stallone and featuring some of the finest action-packed, adrenaline-inducing fight scenes, the Rocky franchise is also known for having some of the most incredible musical scores. Yet it is the official soundtrack of the third movie. Rocky III’s Eye of the Tiger that towers over all the other songs.
A Grammy-winning, Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA-nominated single, Eye of the Tiger has had an amazing run on countless music charts as well. Not only did it dominate the music scene back in the day but it also made the band Survivor a legend. However, Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik would have never gotten the golden opportunity for Stallone initially though the song did not have balls!
Sylvester Stallone Did Not Want Eye of the Tiger in Rocky 3
Few songs possess the electrifying power of igniting a sudden surge of adrenalin as Rocky III’s Eye of the Tiger. From its iconic guitar riff to the pulsating rhythm, the song from start to finish has an undeniable energy that would certainly awaken the inner fighter among us all.
Yet when Sylvester Stallone first heard the song written by Survivor’s Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, he did not think the song was good enough or ballsy enough to make it to the official Rocky III soundtrack. While talking to Guardian, Survivor member and guitarist Sullivan revealed how after two days of listening to the song, Stallone stated,
“t doesn’t have balls. I don’t care what the hell you do, I want it to kick a**.”
And so Sullivan pushed the faders up a single decibel and had Stallone listen to the demo.
“It was kicking and he loved it. He said: ‘Print it!’ I told him: ‘But that’s the demo!’ Sly said: ‘I don’t give a f**k what it is.”
That is how the chart-topping single eventually made it to the movie, yet as revealed above, it isn’t the original song that is included in the movie but rather its demo.
Rocky III Features the Demo of Eye of the Tiger and Not the Original Song
Sylvester Stallone is known for being impulsive and so when he heard the demo of the revamped song, the actor insisted that Survivor included it in the movie. While talking to American Songwriter, Frankie Sullivan stated,
“The cut that’s on the record and the one that’s in the movie are two different versions. The movie uses the demo. The demo just kicked ass, it had a lot of low end. And I think that’s what Sly liked about it, but if you listen to it, it’s raw too. What came out on the single that you heard on the radio, that’s the [album/radio] version. When you do the demo you just do the best you can, but for some reason with that demo we were thinking, ‘Well, let’s really do it, like we’re really doing it now’. So we did the demo and it went into the movie.”
The producer of both the original, revamped, and demo version, Sullivan, to this day, is eternally grateful for the opportunity and the fame the song brought him and the band.
While Rocky III can be streamed on Amazon Prime, Eye of the Tiger (both the album and movie versions) can be streamed on YouTube.
