2015 marks the 30th anniversary of Rocky IV‘s release and as a special treat, the film’s composer Vince DiCola was recently interviewed about his work on the Rocky 4 musical score. The soundtrack for this film is considered by many Rocky fans to be second only to Bill Conti’s original score for the series back in 1976 and is a huge departure from the traditional Rocky themes most associated with the series. The inclusion of numbers by James Brown (“Living in America”) and Robert Tepper (“No Easy Way Out”) made Rocky IV a powerful and exciting movie soundtrack for the 1980’s. Interestingly, DiCola was featured as a background singer on Frank Stallone’s version of “Take You Back” which was featured in Rocky III, yet Rocky IV was actually the first film ever scored by DiCola – what an impressive debut!
Rocky 4’s soundtrack was the only sequel in the Rocky series which was not scored by Bill Conti. Watch the video above to see Vince DiCola perform an inspiring keyboard version of his “Training Montage” live at BotCon in 1997.
