Jim Peterik played the message on his answering machine several times before he believed what he was hearing. “Hey Jim!” said a voice in a thick New York Italian-American accent. “Gimme a call. Sylvester Stallone.”
It was 1981. Stallone was one of the hottest movie stars in America after playing the titular hero in the blockbuster boxing movies Rocky and Rocky II. Peterik was the keyboard player and principal songwriter in Chicago rock band Survivor, whose latest single Poor Man’s Son had just scraped into the US top 40.
