href="#ulink_aa3187f9-a030-5d41-9357-cfbe1d2b95d5">1
THE PHONE CALL that shook my world came on an otherwise ordinary day, the way life-altering events usually do.
The ’77 VW Scirocco I had just picked up from a repair shop in Maywood, Illinois, should have had a Sunkist logo on it—that lemon had left me stranded all over the U.S. But now the old junker was finally fixed, and after a long afternoon fielding traffic, I pulled into the driveway of our ranch home on South Stone Avenue in La Grange.
I walked inside and gave way to my everyday ritual. I pressed “play” on my enormous answering machine.
“Jim, give me a call, it’s Alice Anne. What are we getting Mother for her birthday?” Click.
As I casually listened I laid my shoulder bag on the counter, and started shuffling through the mail. Lotsa junk mail as always.
Next: “Jim! Salzman. You gotta hear the new one by Rundgren. It’s sick. Call me.” Click.
I picked up a Les Paul Gibson and started idly picking. I was tired and only half-listening when I pressed the button to retrieve one last call.
“Hey, yo, Jim. That’s a nice message machine you got there. This is Sylvester Stallone. Give me a call. 604…” Click.
Rewind. Click. “Hey, yo, Jim. That’s a nice message machine you got there…”
Rewind. Click. “Hey, yo, Jim. That’s a nice …”
Time froze and I gathered my thoughts. Maybe it was a gag. It’s true that we had formed a new group, Survivor, and that by early 1982 we had established a good reputation with two albums under our belt. We had also toured with the likes of Jefferson Starship, Kansas, and Triumph. But, Stallone? What would he want with me?
Was it even Stallone? Or could it have been Sal, our Italian road manager, doing a dead-on impersonation? I had to find out. But first, I called up Frankie Sullivan, the lead guitarist in Survivor, and told him to come over right away. I explained that I thought I had just gotten a call from Sylvester Stallone!
Frankie came right over and we strategized. We manned two separate phones; I dialed the Los Angeles number and we got a quick response. “Yo!”
“Is this Sylvester Stallone? This is Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan of Survivor.”
“Yeah, but call me Sly,” he answered.
“Okay, Sly,” I stammered.
Speaking in his now trademark Philly accent he told us about a new movie he had just shot. It was the third in the Rocky series, Rocky III. The film was now finished except that they still needed to choose the music.
I hurriedly scrambled to find a piece of paper to write on until my hand landed on the Beatles Songs Easy Piano Series: Volume One songbook that Karen had been playing. I grabbed the thin book, still focused on every word Sly was saying, flipped it over to a mostly blank backside, and started scribbling notes as he spoke. I was jotting words, phrases, and concepts even as we went along. I wrote around another long-forgotten song I was working on called “Take These Memories” and put his phone number down next to the name Syvestor [sic] Stallone!
“Tony Scotti [CEO of Survivor’s label, Scotti Brothers] played me your song, ‘Poor Man’s Son.’” (It was a cut off of our 1981 release Premonition.) “That’s the sound I want for my movie’s title song. It’s raw, it’s street. It’s got energy and it’s got exactly what I need. Do you think you can help me out?”
By this time I felt like I was levitating and looking down at the room from a hundred feet.
“Ummm. Absolutely,” I answered.
Sly added, “I want something for the kids, something with a pulse. I’m going to send you the first three minutes of the movie. That’s the montage. That’s where I need the song.”
He went on to explain that he had tried to obtain the rights to use “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen for that spot, but they had refused to grant him the license. Thank you, Queen! I thought to myself.
“That’s the song you’ll hear on the rough cut I’m going to send you. That’s the one to beat, but I can only send you the first three minutes. The rest is top secret,” Sly intoned.
Click.
I stared at the music book. The thing looked like it had been caught in a brainstorm. Ideas, both random and dictated, spread from top to bottom and side to side. I recently rediscovered this artifact and it immediately took me back to that day. That pivotal moment.
I looked over at Frankie, he was half grinning, half in shock, and we slapped each other five. This was the chance we had been waiting for.
Frankie was a young, unproven guitar hotshot from the industrial town of Franklin Park, Illinois, and I was already a conquering warrior fighting on the frontlines of rock ’n’ roll for fifteen years, looking for my next victory. As band members and individuals we were ready for what might turn out to be our defining moment. We agreed that Rocky Balboa’s story was a lot like ours: Against the odds, a band on a small label tries to fell the giants, Foreigner, Journey, Kansas, and other melodic rock heavyweights.
First “Eye of the Tiger” scribbles and Stallone’s number.
That afternoon I went out and rented a pro Betamax player—a then state-of-the-art video machine that was about the size of a small refrigerator. I hooked it up on the kitchen counter and waited for FedEx. When the tape arrived at my doorstep the next day I called Frankie to come over quick and we wasted no time loading it in.
Here I was, at the ready, my white Les Paul electric guitar casually slung around my neck waiting for lightning to strike. Suddenly, the kitchen was charged with electricity. The Mohawk-headed Mr. T rose up like the commanding threat he would soon become; his dramatic entrance was contrasted by Stallone resting on his laurels doing Master Charge commercials and enjoying the spoils of his success. This quick-cut film montage was accompanied by “Another One Bites the Dust” by one of our favorite bands, Queen.
I rolled my eyes and wondered out loud how we were going to beat that masterstroke of a song. Queen’s smash hit seemed to work so perfectly. We watched it again, this time with the sound off. That’s when I started playing that now familiar, muted, sixteenth-note figure: digga digga digga digga digga digga digga and then started grabbing chords from thin air; C minor, B flat major, C minor. Then C minor, B flat major, C minor, C over G, A flat. Repeat. The slashes seemed to coincide with the punches being thrown. I even put one slash in an unorthodox beat to match a punch. This irregular beat would become the scourge of drummers for all time! Later in my career, when I’d audition a drummer, if he couldn’t grasp this weird measure I knew he was probably not gonna cut it.
At just the right moment, without saying a word, Frankie and I headed for the piano room at the front of the house. This very cozy, yet inspiring room held my small, but growing guitar collection, which hung on the wall. A beautiful Ibach grand piano took up a good portion of the tiny room. (I still have that piano—it’s lucky.)
Frankie switched to guitar and I dashed over to the piano. I hammered out a chord progression that was actually quite R&B inflected. Frankie held down the fort with the rhythm we had established. Now, we had the groove and some of the chords, but then we hit a wall.
What was this movie about? How does it end? What should be the focus of this song? We called up Sly and begged him to send us a rough cut of the entire movie. He reluctantly agreed to do so but only under the condition that we send it back the very next day, overnight delivery.
The entire Rocky III movie arrived by FedEx the next morning. We sat there spellbound