With TRIUMPH being inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall Of Fame a few weeks back, Rocknworld’s Morley Seaver caught up with ex-drummer Gil Moore to find out more about their past and future. Here’s an excerpt of the interview:

antiMUSIC: Some people look back on their musical past with pride and others just can’t relate to it any more. Seeing as you haven’t been actively involved in the recording/playing (your own stuff that is) side for a long time, how do you view your catalogue of work at this point?

Gil: "Ah, you know, I just see a long-running movie in my mind of these three guys, that starts in this bowling alley in Mississauga and (laughs) you know, with delusions of grandeur in their minds and all the effort that went into wanting to launch our vision and then seeing the journey through all the nooks and crannies of the United States and the rest of North America. And feeling great about the results. It’s funny, you know. Musically, it’s the little cornerstone things that happen along the way with different songs. I mean the first song being on CHUM-FM (influential radio station in Toronto in the ‘60s and ‘70s) which was 'Street Fighter'. The very first time I ever heard Triumph on the radio, that was a really big thrill."

antiMUSIC: Of course you wrote half the songs but you also split vocals with Rik. Was this the case from the very first practice or how did this go over? I mean vocalists and guitarists are always pretty protective of their territory. Now you’re dealing with a vocalist/guitarist in the same person. I know there were obvious differences with Rik later on with regards to direction, but was splitting the vocals ever a point of contention?

Gil: "No. It was actually the other way around. This kind of you take it. No you take it. We started out, we realized to have a three piece band, to do what we wanted to do theatrically, Rik needed to have a lot of mobility. He needed to be able to get around the stage, because we had a lot of ideas for lighting cues and so on where he was going to need to be a long ways away from …he couldn’t be on a spike in front of a mic in other words. So it was kind of a necessity that I sang and I didn’t really like singing, so it really wasn’t something that I wanted to do. It was something I was kinda forced to do. So we didn’t have…we had ways of dividing up songs and it was just, it was just like kinda water, it just naturally migrated you know. This song goes to you. I’ll do this one and you know there were never any problems that way."

antiMUSIC: You’ve been in this part of the industry for quite a while now. Can you ever foresee the day when you might pick up the sticks again, whether it be for Triumph or another band?

Gil: "I can’t see doing it unless it was to do with Triumph. I played drums ever since I was very young. And you know, it was a great ride with Triumph and the day we walked off stage I just kinda put the sticks away and went okay, that was then, that was that part of my life and I’m so excited every day, you know doing what I’m doing now, I can’t wait to get to work every day and you know, I work with my oldest daughter when she’s not at university, she’s here. She works beside me. So that’s a real thrill to work with her. My feeling when I was with Triumph was always I loved it. I loved every minute of it, but the travel was really taxing because I grew up in a close family and the idea of not being around when my kids were growing up was not appealing to me at all. I wanted to have a family. Be close to them. So it was through Metalworks that I could do that and still stay in the business and still be in contact with everybody that I knew and in the field that I loved but be able to raise a family and be close to them."

You can read the rest of the interview here.