True fans though know how iconic his music is. Just listen to his version of Bill Conti's Rocky Theme which he used as a demonstration for Stallone to showcase his abilities for the Rocky IV soundtrack. This version was never released until 2010, when the entire original score was released for the first time on Intrada records.
Stallone decided not to use DiCola's version of the "Gonna Fly Now" theme in Rocky IV, instead using the Training Montage theme that DiCola came up with. I guess Stallone felt he wanted something slightly different for this movie, but it would have been great to have it somewhere in the movie!
Apparently Stallone was so impressed, he hired him immediately, and with Jeremy Lubbock, they both created a synth/orchestral masterpiece that still holds up today. You only have to listen to "Hearts on Fire" and the way it changes into "Up The Mountain" to hear how good he is.
You could say he mastered the art of motion picture soundtracks way before Hans Zimmer went and generically shat on everything in the 90s (Not that Hans Zimmer is bad! But much of 1990s scores and onwards have been very generic).
The last I heard on the scoring front was the one he did for a movie called "Sci Fighter", but other than that, there hasn't been much activity.
Here are some of Vince DiCola's greatest tracks.
Rocky 4 is the greatest score/soundtrack ever. I listen to it every time I work out. until this 25th anniversary release was made, I listened to the music right from the film, as the soundtrack versions were NOWHERE NEAR as good as the versions used in the film. To me the Transformers score is the extended Rocky 4 soundtrack, since it all sounds the same. Either way, yeah it's a shame he never got more work. But I always says quality over quantity.
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