Vince DiCola
US musician and songwriter
Vincent Louis DiCola is an American composer, keyboardist and arranger. He has composed scores for films such as Staying Alive, Rocky IV and The Transformers: The Movie. DiCola also pioneered the use of sequencers on his soundtrack recording for Rocky IV, one of the first to exploit the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier II's computer's sequencing capabilities.
Life and career
After majoring in percussion in college, DiCola began his professional music career upon moving to California in 1981. One of his early credits as a session musician was his synthesizer performance on Juice Newton's albums Dirty Looks and Old Flame released in 1983 and 1985, respectively. His first major break came when he was chosen to co-write several songs on the Staying Alive soundtrack (1983) with Frank Stallone. Following his work on the Staying Alive project, he was recruited by Sylvester Stallone to write the original score for Rocky IV (1985), followed by scoring The Transformers: The Movie (1986). Since then, he has been active in the capacity of producer, recorded and performed as both a solo artist and member of several bands, and continues to work as a session musician and contributor to film soundtracks as composer and performer.
DiCola counts Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer among his biggest influences in progressive rock music. He also admires film-music composers Thomas Newman, John Powell and Jerry Goldsmith.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q94265. VIAF identifies the subject as 5122349. The Library of Congress control number is n90723532. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vince DiCola” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.