Newt Gingrich Sued For Using Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger' at Rallies

Newt Gingrich addresses a campaign rally in Jacksonville, Florida.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Survivor, the band behind the Grammy-winning Rocky III theme "Eye of the Tiger," are suing Newt Gingrich for using the tune at his recent campaign rallies. The suit, which was filed in Illinois federal court on behalf of Rude Music Inc – a company owned by the song's co-author, Frank Sullivan – claims that the Republican presidential hopeful used the tune without authorization. Sullivan is demanding an injunction to put a stop to Gingrich's use of "Eye of the Tiger" as entrance music.

Just a few days ago, Gingrich was hit with a separate cease and desist notice ordering him to stop using the Heavy's "How You Like Me Now?" on the campaign trail.

Gingrich is hardly the first Republican politician to be sued for using a hit song in a campaign rally. In recent years, Tom Petty and Katrina and the Waves sent Michele Bachmann a cease-and-desist letter last year, David Byrne sued Florida ex-governor Charlie Crist for using the Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere," Don Henley filed papers against California senate candidate Chuck DeVore for using "Boys of Summer" and Jackson Browne filed a suit against John McCain for his use of "Running on Empty." None of these suits ever went to trial, and most were either settled or the politician agreed to drop the song.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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