• AllMyVinyl #143
• Band: Iron Eagle
• Album Title: Iron Eagle Soundtrack
• Release Date: 23 Jul 1986
• Date purchased: Unknown
• Location purchased: Record Cellar, Philadelphia
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website (sorta) | Complete album on Youtube ]

I’ve already written about this concept a couple of times in my vinyl series, but it absolutely is the reason I have this album.  Back in the 80’s there was no Apple Music or streaming or anything like that.  Couldn’t buy just one song.  If you wanted one song, you had to buy the whole album.  That’s absolutely the case here.  I own this vinyl for a single reason.  The Dio song “Hide in the Rainbow”.  Here in 2025, it’s not a thing anymore as it’s turned up on some deluxe edition releases of Dio albums.  But in 1986 when this was new?  The Iron Eagle soundtrack was the only (realistic) way to get a copy of this song.   And in 1986 Dio was at the height of the Dio band powers, so yeah, I went and bought a soundtrack to a movie I didn’t see just to get a single Dio song. Turns out I ended up really liking one other song from this album, but at the time, it was all about “Hide in the Rainbow”.

As I look at the track listing before listening, I recognize two songs and remember them fully (Dio, Queen).  I also see that the band Helix is on here, and while I know a fair amount of Helix songs, this one doesn’t ring a bell.  Likewise I know of King Kobra & Katrina & the Waves, but couldn’t tell you about any of their tracks.  The rest of the stuff is an unknown, so this will be a very high percentage of unknown tracks that I listen to today – or at least that’s the way I’ll expect things to go down.

Most of the albums I bought in the 80’s I’m not sure where I actually got them.  I did get a lot from the old Sam Goody store, as that was my main record store a few miles from my house.  However this one still bears the sales sticker from a place called “Record Cellar”.  That was a record store opened by a guy I used to go to High School with who opened his own record store.  I haven’t lived in Philly since the early 90’s, but the late 80’s he was rockin’ this store.  Heck, the sticker says how much I paid for the album – $4.99.  :)  The place doesn’t seem to exist anymore, as a Google search doesn’t own anything, but hey Barry – if you see this, I still remember the old shop all these decades later.

This was one of the survivors of my vinyl collection in my mom’s basement for 30 years.  Honestly when I unpacked all that, I had forgotten I owned it, but instantly remembered when I saw the Record Cellar sticker on there.  I’m not sure what I’m going to think of most of the tracks here.  Outside of the couple I mentioned above, there’s little memory here.

Queen: One Vision – This is a track that later showed up (or showed up first?) on their album “A Kind of Magic”.  Right now I THINK I got Iron Eagle first, as my memory is that this album is the first place I heard this song.   I remember thinking “This is a killer song, why is it stuck on a soundtrack?”  It was a great discovery at the time.  I was into Queen already, as I loved their prior album (The Works).  This was post Live Aid as well, so hearing this song after that killer Live Aid set they did was a great carry on from there.  It’s my favorite kind of Queen song – faster, hard rock edge, and with that Queen chorus sound, Freddie’s vocals.  This is a great Queen track that I was happy did show up on a proper album so more people could enjoy it.  It also shows off their sense of humor by the way lyrics end.  “Gimme gimme gimme fried chicken!”  It sounds so superior to the following two tracks.

King Cobra: Iron Eagle (Never Say Die) – King Kobra is a band founded by Carmine Appice after he was in Ozzy’s band briefly in the early 80’s.  The current version of the band in 2025 has a lot of guys I know from other places, but the 1986 version that recorded this song I know just one other guy besides Carmine.  That’s Johnny Rod from WASP.  This particular song is indicative of the era it was produced in.  Very keyboardy mid 80’s generic hard rock.  It’s not bad as such, but it’s not terribly memorable.  Mark Free sings on this and he has some range for sure, but there’s little in this that hooks me, although a few of the guitar fills were decent enough.  There’s actually a video for this I’ve embedded below which is tied to the movie plot somewhat.

Eric Martin: These are the Good Times – Another one I had to look up and see what the deal was.  Turns out Martin was a singer for the band Mr. Big.  This song was produced as a solo track, not part of another band.  It’s just “there”.  It has that same mid 80’s keyboard sound that the Cobra track had, although not as much guitar as Cobra.  Generic 80’s rocker.  I mean even the title is that kind of generic rock song – “These are the Good Times”.

Katrina & The Waves: Maniac House – This started off with a nice guitar riff.  I actually kind of like this track.  My memory has this bad as more “pop” than this. Maniac House is definitely driven by the electric guitar – far more than I was expecting.  The beat isn’t terribly awesome, but the guitar work was stellar, and I liked the screaming in the vocals.  We’re not talking thrash screaming here, but for a standard rock song this stuck out.  This came out of nowhere to win me over.  Quite liked this.

George Clinton: Intense -Yeah, I didn’t care for this.  Some odd funk song with a beat that never wavered from start to finish.  Musically did NOTHING for me.

Dio: Hide in the Rainbow – The reason I have this album at all.  This came out in 1986, and was the final thing recorded by the original lineup of Dio. Vivian Campbell was out shortly after this.  As I mentioned before, this wasn’t on any Dio album, it was only available here (until some re-releases decades later).  It’s not the greatest Dio song ever, but was definitely an enjoyable track.  I do like the guitar work, which is a common theme with Vivian Campbell’s version of Dio. The keyboard accent that goes through most of the song is one I like – it’s not as perhaps catchy as say “Rainbow in the Dark”, but still works for me.  I mean Ronald James Padavona is always a win for me.

Helix: It’s Too Late – Another band I loved back in the day.  Oddly, I don’t remember THIS song so much, though.  I know them mostly for stuff like “Heavy Metal Love” and “Rock You”.  This has the same kind of distinctive vocals those do.  That’s Brian Vollmer for ya.  His voice has always worked for me.  This song specifically is kind of pedestrian, though – standard 80’s hard rock.  Nothing awful, but nothing that jumps out as “Oh, I have to listen to that again”.

Adrenalin: Road of the Gypsy – Yeah, I don’t know who these guys were.  Wikipedia tells us this song came from their third and final album, and they broke up shortly after this.  Really low effort stuff.  Forced myself to listen to it for the purposes of saying “I listened to the entire album”, but this did nothing for me.

Urgent: Love Can Make You Cry – This is another short lived band I have no memory of.  Wikipedia says they were only around for three years during this movie happened.  It’s even slower than the Adrenalin song before this – bleargh.  Pass.

Jon Butcher Axis: This Raging Fire – There’s some guitar work in this one I liked, but it’s got that problem a lot of rock from this era had – the overly processed synth sound dominating everything.   Yeah, another pass.

There’s actually a few other songs that were in the movie, but not on this album.  They could have easily replaced the Adrenalin & Urgent songs with a couple of these..  We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister, Proud Mary by Ike & Tina Turner, Gimme Some Lovin by the Spencer Davis Group are the ones that I know of from this group.

I’ve actually never seen the movie, because my memory tells me this was a Top Gun knockoff, and since I didn’t care for Top Gun, I wasn’t gonna care for its knockoffs.  The Queen & Dio songs were the highlights, but I knew that going in.  That didn’t change.  The Katrina & The Waves song was a surprise – I very much enjoyed that.  Despite liking Helix elsewhere, their song here wasn’t a huge deal, and the rest of the album I didn’t care for mostly.  Probably the last time I ever listen to this album in full as the songs I do care for I can get elsewhere, no need to break out this vinyl again.