TRIUMPH vocalist / Drummer Gil Moore - "The Objective Was Just To Get Back With Rik, Reunite, Play A Couple Of Big Shows, And Give People A Chance To Come Out"

September 22, 2010, 14 years ago

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TRIUMPH vocalist / drummer Gil Moore is featured in a new interview with Greg Olma at 69 Faces Of Rock. An excerpt is available below.

QWhy did decide to put out a Greatest Hits Remixed CD now?

Gil Moore: Well, we’ve been listening to the fans make suggestions and kind of push us to come up with some new material, or any kind of material. 'Just give us something from Triumph' for quite a while. We set about to do this a number of years ago. We really wanted to do a package record companies would never release. You've seen all the ones that come in a brown paper bag; kind of the cheapest of everything. No extra features and so on. We went the opposite route. We tried to add bonus features galore or content galore. The audio CD, we remixed the entire CD; we didn’t just remaster it. The DVD, we wide-screened all the videos so they look great on HD. We just did a lot of extra work on it. It took us a long time but we just wanted to say thanks to the best fans in the world, our fans, who stuck with us all these years and that’s what it’s all about."

Q: Is there still anything you want to achieve with Triumph? I know you did the reunion shows but is there still anything going forward that you want to do with Triumph?

Gil Moore: "Really Greg, all I wanted to do was get my friend back. Last night we were doing a whole bunch of press for this record and we were hanging together and every time we’re together, we have a great time. That’s how the band started. It started with three guys that were having a great time. We really enjoy each other’s company. We had Rockline last night and it’s had to stay serious because [we] just start going off on tangents. It’s a lot of fun. That’s really the glue that holds Triumph together; the humor. We had our SPINAL TAP moments from the day we started, like in the rehearsal stage before we played one show. We just kept it going and other than one brief period at the end when the record label was getting kind of intrusive; trying to direct us too much, that was the only time they succeeded in making the band miserable. So really, the objective was just to get back with Rik, reunite, play a couple of big shows, and give people a chance in Europe and over here to come out. We’re really grateful to the people who flew in because tons of them did. We heard the stories after the fact, in some cases we met them in the hotel or they were side show or whatever. We know that a lot of people traveled a long way to see us so beyond those objectives, I don’t know. I’d like to improve the website. I know our website is not the greatest but we are going to put a new one up there this year and the website will have a pile of more content. We’ll do what we did with the Greatest Hits DVD with our website. We’ll try to give our fans what they’ve been asking for and get all this stuff out of the vaults and put it up there. I don’t know about any future plans, we’ll just have to see how it goes other than our future plan is to hang out together. [I’m] not sure about the band. That is up in the air."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

As previously reportetd, Iron City Rocks recently spoke with Triumph guitarist / vocalist Rik Emmett. Topics include his post-Triumph career, his passion for Gibson guitars, the remixed Triumph Greatest Hits and the future of Triumph. Listen to the podcast below:

Rik Emmett

Each month, a new question and answer from Rik Emmett (also STRUNG-OUT TROUBADOURS) is selected from the questions that appear on the Network Members Messageboard at RikEmmett.com. This month's question reads as follows:

Q: Was curious on who your favorite Guitar players were from various decades??

Emmett: "The problem for me is - how to deal with guitarists who keep getting better, decade after decade?

'60's - My own personal inspiration and education began with THE BEATLES. Along came CLAPTON, then HENDRIX, PAGE and BECK.

'70's - Page and Beck. But I had entered into my Blackmore (DEEP PURPLE) period, which lasted from maybe '69 or '70 for a few years at least. During that time, along came the progressive guys - and mostly Steve Howe of YES. But how can I overlook the influence of David Gilmour (PINK FLOYD) and Jan Akkerman (FOCUS)? And my head and heart was opening to the genius of Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt - the entire world of guitar was becoming important to me. SANTANA was a very influential guitarist: but so were Segovia and Julian Bream, as classical players. What aboutP AUL SIMON? How many of his tunes did I learn to play at high school parties? JAMES TAYLOR? But the '70's is also when I eventually started in Triumph - '75 - so the heavy influences there were Page and Blackmore. Yet everything was steeped in the blues-rock that I had encountered through Clapton. But if you were to ask me - what did I consider to be the most important guitar records of the 70's? I would have Beck's Blow by Blow and Wired right up there near the top of the list - maybe Blow by Blow in top spot by a wide margin. When Guitar Player magazine asks, on its recent Jeff Beck cover, is this the greatest guitarist of them all? I would have to say - I think he might be the greatest of the boomer generation, yes. Maybe not the most influential on me personally, for the guitarist I started out as, professionally, but certainly, in my intellectual consideration of this kind of topic, I would probably have to vote for him, as the most important guitarist to affect the industry, after Hendrix [even though, emotionally and contextually, I would still opt for Clapton, Page and Blackmore as the guys that MOVED me more. Plus - the other day, watching the video for Never Say Never - I had completely, totally forgotten about the intro to the tune, 'Prologue: Into The Forever' - which is pure, unadulterated homage to the influence of Jeff Beck. And if you think about things like Epilogue Resolution, or Little Boy Blues - it's pretty obvious that Jeff Beck reigns supreme, eventually, as my biggest single influence, coming out of that decade, and over into the '80's.

'80's - Beck. By the time Triumph was winding down, for me, towards the end of that decade, it seemed that I had lost my enthusiasm for the things that guitar was bringing to the world of 'pop' & rock music. My tastes were starting to run towards more sophisticated players of fusion styles: PAT METHENY, LARRY CARLTON. I would spend more recreational time listening to my old STEELY DAN records, and new acoustic players, than I would to rockers from popularity contests. I was personally leaving 'rock' guitar behind, as it was failing to move me emotionally. You are younger than me, so you were listening to a guy like Jerry Cantrell from ALICE IN CHAINS. I admit - I wasn't even paying any attention to that stuff any more. My bad, I realize - but a human being can only pay attention to, and digest, a certain amount of stuff. My love of Pat Metheny was well-developed by the back end of this decade.

'90's - Metheny. Without a doubt, in my mind, one of the most important guitarists of my generation. I would put him right up there with Beck, for different reasons, but for the same amount of guitar musicianship and virtuosity that appeals to my taste. Intellectually, I would say he is a far superior musician than Jeff Beck, but Beck uses sustain and distortion to capture a singing style of guitar playing that Pat never approaches --- Pat always goes to his guitar synth / trumpet-sounding patch when he wants sustaining, singing, wailing - which is cool, but does not push my pleasure buttons in the same way that Beck's overdriven sounds and tones do. Once a rocker, always a bit of a rocker, I reckon.

2000 to present - JOHN MAYER is a good choice, because he is a well-rounded singer/songwriter/guitarist, which is right up my taste alley. I do enjoy the smooth jazzings of Peter White, and ACOUSTIC ALCHEMY. Tommy Emmanuel should definitely show up in a 'survey' type question like this. While Mayer is probably a much better tunesmith than Tommy, and lives more in the 'pop' and 'rock' world, I would have to say that Tommy is as much a 'monster' of the acoustic guitar as Jeff Beck is as my still-reigning preferred 'monster' of the electric one.

For honorable mention, I would like to toss JOE BONAMASSA's name out there, as a younger guy from a new generation who has the right idea about guitar-playing, a la Eric Clapton, as far as I can tell."


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