Survivor

Scotti Brothers, 1984

In 1983, just a year after Survivor hit big with Eye Of The Tiger, the band were in deep shit. Singer Dave Bickler, suffering from damaged vocal cords, got through the next album, Caught In The Game, but his exit from Survivor followed quickly. For Bickler it was heartbreaking, for the band a potential career killer. As keyboard player Jim Peterik said: “Very few bands survive a lead singer transplant.”

But what they found in Jimi Jamison was a guy with a one-in-a-million voice. And what Survivor created in Vital Signs, their first album with Jamison, was a comeback hit and the pinnacle of the band’s career.

“Jimi had the most magical voice I’ve ever heard,” Peterik said. Equally, Jamison was gifted some of the greatest songs ever written by Peterik and guitarist Frankie Sullivan: glorious anthems

I Can’t Hold Back and It’s The Singer Not The Song, and the masterful ballad The Search Is Over. Of the latter, Peterik recalled: “To hear Jimi sing the shit out of it, I knew it was a hit.”

Vital Signs was the album on which Survivor reached their creative peak, and Jamison delivered the greatest performance of his life. As Peterik said after the singer’s death in 2014: “Jimi was one of the greats.” PE

Must hear: I Can’t Hold Back