‘Rocky’ Soundtrack Returns To Vinyl For 50th Anniversary
The soundtrack features Bill Conti’s hit ‘Gonna Fly Now.’
In honor of Rocky’s 50th anniversary, the soundtrack of the iconic Sylvester Stallone film is returning to vinyl. The standard weight black vinyl reissue features Bill Conti’s now-classic sports anthem “Gonna Fly Now.”
In addition to “Gonna Fly Now,” the album features compositions including “Going the Distance” and “Philadelphia Morning” alongside “Take You Back (Street Corner Song From ‘Rocky’)” featuring lyrics by Stallone’s younger brother Frank.
Made on a relatively low budget of $1 million USD, Rocky went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1976 and win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film’s tight budget led to the hiring of a then little-known composer, Conti. “Two people before me had turned down this job of writing a film score to a movie that didn’t cost $1m,” he told the BBC. “There was no money for anyone. I embraced the $25,000 package deal. I had to pay for everything involved with the music; the paper, the musicians, the studio costs, the tape and I got what was left.”
Conti’s risk paid off: “Gonna Fly Now,” which famously plays during Rocky’s training montage, was nominated for Best Original Song and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in July of 1977. Conti wrote the song with lyricists Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins, and it was performed by DeEtta West and Nelson Pigford.
The theme was born out of necessity. As he explained to the BBC: “The director John Avildsen said: ‘Bill, I need a minute and a half’s worth of music,’ because it is easier to cut film in a montage if there is a beat… we started patching together three minutes of music in 30-second increments, until we got there. So did I sit down and have the inspiration? Well, not really. It was pieced together to do a training montage.”
