Dutch guitarist Laszlo Buring has turned “Eye of the Tiger,” Survivor’s iconic Rocky III theme, into something that sounds like it could have lived comfortably on a Dire Straits record. The arrangement trades the original’s punchy arena energy for the warm, fingerpicked texture of Mark Knopfler’s playing, drawing on the feel of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” “Communiqué,” and traces of “Sultans of Swing.” It stays unhurried and intimate through most of the track before opening up in a final solo that earns its moment. “It’s not getting any easier, finding songs to give the Dire Straits style treatment,” Buring says, “but I feel like I stumbled upon a nice one. A lot more laid back – except for the final solo – than the original.”


