Jim Peterik owned rock radio in the summer of 1982. At the same time the Survivor founder co-wrote the group’s worldwide number one “Eye of the Tiger,” the theme song from the blockbuster Rocky III, he also teamed with .38 Special guitarists Don Barnes and Jeff Carlisi to author a series of hits including “Hold On Loosely” and the Southern rock stalwarts’ first-ever Top Ten entry, “Caught Up in You.”
.38 Special traces its roots back to Sweet Rooster, formed in Jacksonville, Fla. in 1969 by singer Donnie Van Zant — the younger brother of Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant — with guitarist Jeff Carlisi, bassist Ken Lyons and drummer Steve Brookins. Carlisi left the band a year later to study architecture, and with new guitarist Don Barnes, Sweet Rooster continued playing together into 1973. Van Zant, Barnes and Lyons remained in contact after the group split, and in 1974 they decided to give it one more shot, recruiting a second drummer, Jack Grondin, to play alongside Brookins, and bringing back Carlisi to play guitar opposite Barnes. Per .38 Special lore, this expanded lineup got its name the night police descended on their rehearsal space in response to noise complaints from neighbors: when the musicians were unable to exit the premises because of a padlock on the door, one of the cops pulled his weapon, declared “That’s all right. We’ll let this .38 special do the talking,” and shot off the lock.
The newly-christened .38 Special spent the next few years playing one-nighters across the south and midwest before Ronnie Van Zant introduced them to Skynryd’s manager Peter Rudge, who also handled the Who. Rudge landed .38 Special opening gigs for some of the biggest acts of the late 1970s, including KISS, Foghat and Peter Frampton, and in late 1976, the band signed to A&M Records, releasing its self-titled debut LP in May 1977, less than six months before Lynyrd Skynyrd’s chartered Convair CV-240 crashed into a heavily forested swampland outside of Gillsburg, Miss., claiming the lives of Ronnie Van Zant and five others onboard. Barnes later credited Van Zant with convincing .38 Special to diverge from its influences, chief among them Lynyrd Skynyrd itself.
“When you start out, you’re kind of emulating what came before you,” Barnes told the St. Pete Catalyst in 2010. “We were trying to do Skynyrd, or Charlie Daniels or Marshall Tucker. People were saying ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd Junior’ and all that. We were trying to find a sound, a style that was different. Ronnie came to us and said ‘Quit trying to be a clone of what’s already out there.’ And that was just a great big lightbulb. He said ‘Stop doing that, because you’re not going to get anywhere. What made your heart sing?’ We were fans of the British Invasion — more melody, muscle and that kind of thing. Animals and Beatles stuff. So we just re-fashioned it all. We were pretty accomplished guitar players, and we’d been trying to put the kitchen sink in there. So we just stripped it all down.”
“Take Me Back,” Donnie Van Zant’s tribute to his late brother, highlighted .38 Special’s second album, 1978’s Special Delivery, which nodded toward the slicker, arena-ready sound the band embraced in full with its third full-length, 1979’s Rockin’ into the Night, produced by Rodney Mills, who previously engineered sessions for acts including James Brown, the Meters and Joe South. The album’s title cut was penned by Peterik, the former Ides of March frontman famed for writing the band’s 1970 breakout hit “Vehicle,” purportedly the fastest-selling single in Warner Bros. Records history. Peterik originally co-wrote “Rockin’ in the Night” for his newest rock band, Chicago-bred Survivor: “We recorded it with [producer] Ron Nevison, and we just nailed it. We were so excited,” Peterik recalled in 2023 to The Tennessean. “Last minute, Ron Nevison goes, ‘I don’t think that fits the band. We’re not gonna put it on the album.’ We’re going, ‘Really?’ About then, Johnny Kalodner, our A&R man, walked into the studio. He asked for a demo tape of that song for some reason. We didn’t hear much about it, and then all of a sudden, we’re driving down to do our first video, and we hear on the radio, ‘New by .38 Special, a thing called “Rockin’ into the Night.”’”
“Rockin’ into the Night” climbed to number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, .38 Special’s biggest hit to date. Barnes sang lead vocal on the single, and would go on to sing lead on all but one of .38 Special’s chart hits. “It turned out Donnie had more of an earthy voice. It wasn’t so relatable at radio. And I had the more melodic voice that they liked,” Barnes explained to the St. Pete Catalyst. “It didn’t matter who carried the ball, as long as we won as a team.” .38 Special reunited with Rodney Mills for 1981’s Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, highlighted by the lead single, “Hold On Loosely,” co-written by Barnes and Carlisi with Peterik, who managed to move past the “Rockin’ in the Night” debacle to become a key collaborator. “Jeff Carlisi came up with the magic lick,” Peterik told The Tennessean. “He said, ‘It’s kind of a Cars ripoff.’ And then, at the end, it keeps going. That lead goes on forever. It’s so cool.” Barnes, who was struggling with marital issues at the time, asked Peterik his thoughts about titling the song “Hold On Loosely,” and Peterik immediately responded with “… but don’t let go.”
“Hold On Loosely” — the 13th music video ever aired on MTV following the cable network’s 1981 broadcast launch — reached number on the Billboard Rock Tracks chart and number 27 on the Hot 100. Its success brought Barnes and Carlisi back together with Peterik to develop material for the follow-up, 1982’s Special Forces. “When .38 Special came in to write for the next record, I was kind of sneaking around,” Peterik told Songfacts. “Survivor didn’t even know .38 Special was in town. We had to find places to write songs. We couldn’t go to the band house, and at my house, what if one of the guys stopped over? So we went to my mother’s house and wrote in the basement. We were writing ‘Caught Up in You’ in this gloomy room in my mother’s basement all dark and dank, and we’re writing this hit song. I was feeling like the bad kid playing hooky or something.” At roughly the same time, Survivor was recording its third album, Eye of the Tiger; Peterik and bandmate Frankie Sullivan co-wrote the title track at the request of Rocky III’s star, writer and director Sylvester Stallone, who was denied the permission to use Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” as the boxing epic’s theme song.
A&M issued Special Forces on May 4, 1982, less than a month prior to the release of “Eye of the Tiger,” which went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks and spend 15 consecutive weeks in the Top Ten, tied with two other records (Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” and, you guessed it, “Another One Bites the Dust”) for the decade’s longest Top Ten run by a former number one single. “Eye of the Tiger” perched at number five the week of July 7, 1982, the same week “Caught Up in You” climbed to number 10, as high as it would go (although it topped Billboard’s Rock Tracks chart). Peterik seemed to innately understand that Americans wanted urgent guitar riffs, melodramatic vocals and sleek studio craftsmanship to soundtrack their summer, and his fingerprints are all over “Caught Up in You” — if not for the hint of Jacksonville twang still lingering in Barnes’ vocal, you’d never guess record stores filed .38 Special’s albums under “Southern rock.”
.38 Special returned in 1983 with Tour de Force, written without Peterik’s direct involvement; its lead single “If I’d Been the One” reached number 19 in Billboard, but after 1986’s Strength in Numbers, Barnes left the band to mount a solo career, recording an album for A&M, Ride the Storm, that was shelved for close to three decades. .38 Special continued on with new guitarist Danny Chauncey and singer/keyboardist Max Carl, formerly with West Coast R&B group Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. Carl’s first album with .38 Special, Rock & Roll Strategy, largely abandoned the band’s signature sound in favor of keyboard-driven contemporary pop: the single “Second Chance” was their biggest and last Top Ten entry, rising all the way to number six in early 1989. Carl, Carlisi and longtime drummer Grondin all exited .38 Special in the wake of 1991’s Bone Against Steel, which featured three new songs co-written with Peterik, including “The Sound of Your Voice,” a thinly veiled rewrite of Survivor’s “I Can’t Go Back,” which reached number 33 — .38 Special’s final Top 40 hit. Barnes returned to the lineup following Carl’s departure, and while inner-ear nerve damage forced Donnie Van Zant into retirement in 2013, Barnes continues to tour with an all-new .38 Special lineup. Rest assured they play “Rockin’ into the Night,” “Hold On Loosely” and “Caught Up in You” each and every time out.
“It was just a great run of songs,” Peterik told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2014. “I think we created something that wasn’t quite there before, which was the Southern mentality meets the pop mentality — and I don’t think that was really there quite before that.”
Hold On Loosely (KORD-0042)
Caught Up in You (KORD-0043)
