By "Metal" Tim Henderson

I'm sure there's been more exciting musical soap-operas, but the career of TRIUMPH ranks pretty high in Canada as an intense love affair that soured, with the wounds healing over recent years. There's no sense going deep into the gory details - we'll leave that to the flies on the wall. So let us delve into the present, with a new Greatest Hits record (CD/DVD package for the new schoolers appropriately titled Greatest Hits Remixed; complete info here) and lotsa rumors about the band possibly heading back out on the road. BraveWords.com had the privilege of chatting with singer/guitarist Rik Emmett recently about the entire affair and where his head is at regarding the reunion with bassist Mike Levine and drummer/singer Gil Moore.

BraveWords.com: What’s the reasoning behind this new greatest hits package? Why release it now?

Emmett: "Well, in truth, when the whole conversation began about reconciliation and reunion for me, back in the winter and the spring of 2007, this greatest hits package and the remaking of it, the remixing of it, the re-everything of it, it was on the agenda. It was something that Mike and Gil planned to do, and so as part and parcel of the whole process, it was like, 'so Rik, you know, would you help us promote this thing if we were putting it out?' And I said, 'oh sure, yeah, yeah, that’s all part of the deal, yeah, you bet.' Well, it’s taken them a couple of years to finally get it to the market, and I’m honouring my original agreement that I had with the guys, but in truth things have sort of changed over the last couple of years. You go through the process of the Hall of Fame formalities and we actually had like 35 or 40 rehearsals. And then we played a couple of shows, and you know it’s all been a really positive, lovely weight-destroying and life-affirming kind of, you know. I mean I get to kind of reclaim a chunk of my history that, I’d been living in denial of for a couple of decades. For me personally it’s been a great process, and so I think that’s my reason that I’m getting to sort of reclaim a chunk of my own history. I think for Mike and Gil it was more of a business thing, the Triumph brand and everything. They’re the owners of it, and I think that they felt that - and you know I don’t want to necessarily put words in their mouths or anything - but I do think that they felt that the legacy of Triumph had not necessarily been served by the classics package that MCA/Universal rushed out when the band was breaking up. And I think they felt that it hadn’t necessarily done justice to fans, and not even to the heart of what the band is. And the way that Gil and Mike sort of put this package together, I think it’s a much greater sort of legacy kind of package, plus they dedicated it to the late memory of my brother, so there’s things in there that makes me proud and happy."

BraveWords.com: I think you’ve answered my next question: how much of a hand did you have in putting this together with Gil and Mike?

Emmett: "Ah, I didn’t have! I wasn’t hands-on in any sense. It was more a question of, do I approve of it at this stage? Do I approve of it at that stage? It’s like, 'yeah, yeah, yeah, great.' I saw the final artwork and I read the bios that’s going to be part of the things. The only thing I found, they misspelled the word 'gel' (laughs from both). And I kinda go, 'well you know, if I’d have been right in at the planning stages, I would have made sure that I would have changed that, but it seems like such a small detail that. Plus I think it’s in keeping in the character in the band and the band’s history, in any case, that there should be some kind of spelling mistake/typo, because on the first Triumph album they misspelled Rik. Rick became Rik. And I go, 'well, I think there should be a spelling mistake, that’s keeping with the history.'"

BraveWords.com: Well, it also keeps this whole Triumph legacy in one nifty audio/video package, for fans new and old.

Emmett: "Yeah, I think so, and isn’t that the way of the world now, that you can just sort of compress it and get it all into one package? If we could have turned it into a sound byte, I guess that’s what would have happened."

BraveWords.com: I must say about watching these videos again; growing up in southern Ontario in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Triumph were a staple to all the weekly hard rock/metal video shows. I'm sure you benefited from the whole CanCon (which forces broadcasters to air a percentage of Canadian content) laws, but with every album, there was a matching set of attractive visuals.

Emmett: "Well, thanks. I mean I don’t think that was purely a Canadian thing, because when MTV started up - and we’re talking maybe ’80, ’81 - and it was in its infancy, they were desperate for stuff. Like, they just didn’t have enough stuff and Triumph was fortunate enough to have video, and I think that was maybe Levine’s vision. We were signed to RCA at the time and at the time RCA was, they were all hot to trot to try and promote the newfangled gadget they had called video cassette recording machines. And so I think Levine and maybe the national promo guy of RCA had cooked up the idea of, 'well, stick one of those machines in every single record store in America and put a Triumph video in there. But of course you’ll need to make a Triumph video, have to spend some money in order to shoot some performance stuff on the band.' And we went to a sound-stage in Kleinburg and we shot 'Lay It On The Line' and 'American Girls' and there was one other song, I think 'Hold On.' And so, you know, we had videos and there were very few bands at the time that actually had videos of songs. So MTV went, 'oh, we’ll play those,' and so it was like, 'hey, who’s that guy in the jump-suit with the strap falling off his shoulder.' All of a sudden we became darlings of this new cable television station, so that helped us initially in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Long Island, Washington, all that East Coast stuff where MTV was getting started. And, um, yeah, that’s a little chunk of history for you there."

BraveWords.com: But correct me if I’m wrong, there had to have been some kind of a budget, because Triumph were one of those rare bands from Canada that struck gold early on in their career. Both 'Hold On' and 'Lay It On The Line were hits in 1979. In comparison, RUSH had a slow climb, but Triumph benefited from radio play in the US it seems.

Emmett: "Everything was predicated on radio airplay back in the day. And there were different levels of bands. Like, you know, you mentioned Rush. There were bands that got a lot of success as touring acts, because they were getting a lot of airplay on FM radio stations and it was album-oriented radio. But it wasn’t the same thing as if you had a hit song that crossed over, that made it onto hit radio and contemporary hit radio. I think that’s how they defined it, CHR. So you have bands like, PINK FLOYD, and they were a monster band. LED ZEPPELIN. These were monster bands from the sort of first wave of, your original classic rock bands. And Triumph was in the second sort of age of rock, and we were hoping that we’d get there. And we had some with 'Lay It On The Line' in ’79, I think. We did an edit version of that song and it did cross over, and we did get some hit radio airplay on that as well. So that did establish the band on a level that maybe Rush had not enjoyed, or Pink Floyd had not enjoyed. But by that time, you had bands like STYX and FOREIGNER and JOURNEY is the one I kind of like to go, 'all right, those were the guys that just seemed to hit home run after home run after home run.' They had an FM radio kind of integrity or quality, but their songs were such that they could cross right on over to hit radio, and they would just be selling multi-platinum. And Triumph never really ever got into that league. We never moved into that rarified air of the quintuple platinum releases. But I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that to my perception there were levels and then there were levels."

BraveWords.com: This greatest hits package has got to keep stirring up more rumours about the band going back out on the road or even recording new material. Do you feel that vibe?

Emmett: "Well, yeah, of course. And I used to live in denial of all those things and now I kind of go, 'well, you know, if it happens then I’ll embrace it.' But I think the person that is right now the one that needs convincing is Gil. Like he’s the one that has his Metalworks (Studios in Mississauga)businesses. And there’s a lot of it - there’s a school and a studio and a production company, and it requires his hands-on presence. He’s got a young family at home and I think he’s loathe to go out on the road and leave that behind for too long. And none of us are getting any younger, but in his case when you’re a drummer that sings half the stuff, that’s a real physical challenge to ask a guy that’s, you know, nudgin’ 60. To have to try and wrap not just his head but his body around it. Like that’s a real commitment that he’d have to make. And part and parcel of the whole Triumph reunion thing is that nobody is really trying to cram anything down anybody’s throat. If he doesn’t want to do it, I’m not gonna force him. And it has to feel good and right and natural, and having said all that. I think like we’re gonna have some meetings with LiveNation in June and we’ll see what gets put on the table, and I do think that there’s a kind of a Godfather quality to some of this stuff that if offers that can’t be refused get dropped in front of somebody. If that golden carrot is golden enough (he laughs) then I think it becomes a rather compelling factor, but we’re also at that point where it’s not really ever about just the money anymore. The planets have to align in a certain way for these things to happen. I think that there has been a lot of planet aligning that’s happened in the last couple of years, so that’s why I don’t discount it. I think it’s as likely as anything else that touring might occur. I don’t know about an album. Like, truthfully the record business just doesn’t seem to be anywhere near what it used to be, and the whole idea of having to become some sort of internet schiller (sic) of downloads, where you make point zero zero zero one three cents per (laughs) internet radio airplay. I’m not as motivated to make new music as I am to say go out and play a concert where somebody goes, 'yeah, you play the concert, we pay you this much money.' You go, 'oh, now that seems reasonable.' And the whole idea of selling records now, I really think the digital age has kind of blown the guts right out of that thing and I’m not sure whether or not it makes any sense for anybody. I mean, maybe it makes sense for METRIC and BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, but it sure doesn’t seem to make sense for somebody who’s in a rock band who’s in their fifties."

BraveWords.com: Which is a shame, but I must bring up the point: Gene Simmons swore against a new KISS record for ages until they signed the deal with Wal-Mart and now we’ve got Sonic Boom. So maybe there's potential, a lucrative proposition for you guys to actually create something. It’s a shame to throw something out there and not get paid for it and see the numbers just dwindle to nothing. It would be a hit to the ego I’m sure, too.

Emmett: "Well, I’m past the point where my ego is (laughs) it doesn’t enter into the equation anymore because I think when you’re a twenty year-old and you’ve got something to prove, and you’re trying to get yourself a pot to piss in. I think that’s when ego is a card that’s on the table and it’s part of the mix. But you know, when you get to this point it’s not so much about egos, it’s just about what makes sense. Now the whole idea of a retail affiliation with one retailer in order to be able to, like yeah, I mean I suppose it can make sense on that level, but I don’t know. I mean I just think that the making of a record - the whole idea of writing songs, the amount of time and energy you put into writing the song and then going into the studio and trying to capture it just so then next thing you’re mastering it. I honestly don’t think the world has any real idea of how long and arduous that process is where you’re and no one’s giving you a pay-cheque. No one’s writing you any cheques for going through this process. And then you get to the very end of it and so you’ve amassed all this time and energy and debt in order to get there, and now you put it out and somebody starts file-sharing it in the next nanosecond, and so now there’s just no way you’re ever going to make your money back. And in the projects that I have done outside of Triumph - the TRIFECTA guitar trio thing that I just did with Pavlo and Oscar Lopez, and my own albums with my own label, and the AIRTIME album I did with Mike Shotton (VON GROOVE) I had to be extremely careful about how much money was being spent to make those records in the first place. Given the way the numbers look when records come out and what you sell, in order to kind of make the money back, make a little bit of a profit but nothing to write home about, but then of course it justifies you on a whole other level. Now when you go out and tour, well you’re a recording act and so the money you can make for that gig, etc., etc. And then you’re at the gig and so you’re making sales at the gig. When I was out on the trio tour, we were playing in Alberta as part of the tour, and we actually made it onto the Soundscan chart that week on sales we were making off the stage, like live merchandise sales. We made it onto the Soundscan chart in Canada, and so you look at something like that, and you go, 'whoa. Like record sales must be pretty soft for something like that to happen.' And in truth, you know, that’s the state of the biz."

BraveWords.com: I just want to go back for a moment here with the Sweden Rock Festival in June 2008 and the build-up. And there seemed to be momentum, but the momentum kind of fell back a little bit after the show. Any truth to that theory?

Emmett: "Oh, yeah, but you know, I don’t see that as being inconsistent with Triumph’s history. One of the frustrations that I had when I was in the band was that it just seemed to take such a long time for things to go from gestation period to finally reaching the public. And that was a constant frustration that I had, and eventually it was such that I was going, 'guys, like, I just can’t operate in this environment. I need to have some freedom so that I can do some of the things that I want to try and do outside of this business model that just seems to take forever.' It just sort of seems typical that the greatest hits package would take over two years (laughs) to find its way through the Triumph machine, the rock and roll machine as it were. Yeah, so when we played those shows I think that - again, I don’t want to necessarily be sticking into Mike’s mouth or give them motives that they might not necessarily say, 'well that’s not what I was thinking' - but I do think that there was a real emotional kind of impetus there or a momentum that you’re describing that was because they wanted Rik back as a friend and Rik really wanted Gil and Mike back as friends, so that was something that drove that and fuelled it. And then once that had kind of sort of paid itself off, like, 'hey, we’re back together again, we can phone each other, we can go and hang out and have a drink of scotch together' and, you know, we’d been on stage and played some shows together. I think then there was a real sense of relief and then everybody kind of just fell back into being middle-aged guys again. We're kind of going, 'well you know, we took care of that, so well if something else comes along we’ll see, then we’ll take it in stride.' And in truth this ties back into something we were talking about earlier, that there are so many other kinds of distractions that exist especially for Gil that I think it just becomes a real difficult thing for him to deal with anything in a hurry. It’d have to, sort of, all have due diligence and blah, blah, blah. So I think (sighs) momentum can sometimes be overrated in any case. I think it’s great if it’s a football team and you’re driving for a touchdown, you know. You need momentum. For a bunch of old fart guys that are just kind of putting out a greatest hits package (laughs) ... I mean, I suppose we live in a marketing world, there’s no question about that, and I think that probably from a marketing point of view it would be great to try and create a campaign that had momentum and it was driving this toward some sort of commercial... I don’t really feel that, emotionally I don’t feel that anywhere near as much as emotionally I felt this thing about, 'yeah, I’d really like to be able to just be friends with Mike and Gil again.' So I hate to make it sound like, I’m an old guy sitting in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere, and I don’t really give a shit about whether or not I’ve got a bullet on the hit parade, but I don’t really give a shit about whether or not I’ve got a bullet on the hit parade."

BraveWords.com: Do you think time has been kind to Triumph?

Emmett: "I think it has, and I’m really grateful for that. That I think back in the day when Triumph was kind of happening and we did have commercial success and momentum and all these things that we’re talking about, you also end up having a whole bunch of people that just they can’t, they can’t wait to figure out a way to hate you, or to say something nasty about you, or to try and knock you down. And I do think that there’s a very almost Canadian thing about 'how dare you be so bold with all your giant lasers and giant show and your stupid striped spandex pants and your MTV hair?' And 'how dare you be so blatantly ambitious and commercial? Don’t you know that this is the country of NEIL YOUNG folk songs and GORDON LIGHTFOOT, understated elegance?' 'How dare you not be modest and humble and not have a sense of humour about yourself, and not wear your mittens in winter'. Like, that’s a very Canadian kind of thing. And on one level I understand it and I like it. I do think that modesty and humility are, they’re good qualities, they’re the attitudinal kind of qualities for people to have (laughs). 'The meek shall inherit the earth' kind of thing. And I think, um, Canadians really as a whole nationally, we kind of buy into that stuff. And Triumph, the very nature of it, it wasn’t predicated in that way. It was a live theatre experience with a whole bunch of production, and that was really its biggest calling card. And so there were a lot of people that just dismissed us as, you know, 'all sizzle, no steak' kind of thing back in the day. But the nice thing about time is that I think now people realize, 'you know what, there were some pretty good songs part and parcel of that, and gee these records' - the big thing, I think the Juno Hall of Fame Award, I think really the impetus behind that and the reason that we got that award and that honour, was because they looked at the band and said, 'geez, these guys were self-managed and yes they had a major label deal and they were signed in the States, but in truth they functioned like an independent band, they were like the first of the indie bands and look at how successful they were. They were as successful as any other kind of Canadian act, except they managed themselves and they booked themselves and they put their own productions together, and they produced their own records, and holy shit, you know, they were indie long before indie was something that we all decided was really cool.' And I think time has been the thing that gave that perspective to what the band was, and I’m grateful for that. The other thing, too, is I think that whole Canadian humility thing - and I hate to sound like I’m psychoanalysing everything - but psychologically I think when you’re a survivor, if you’ve actually made it so long, like reviewers that hated my guts in 1978 and ’79, and said I didn’t have an original lick in my body. Here it is 2010 and I can still put out records and sell ‘em and do pretty good and, I mean I played on an instrumental album last year that got nominated for a Juno. So, hmm, how is it if I didn’t have an original lick in my body that I’ve managed to have a career for thirty years and have done all right. Like, I think some people end up having to eat their own humble pie realizing, 'uh, I guess there was something there that I really didn’t give credit to in the first place.' So I think the Canadian mentality is such that they do admire a survivor, they really think that’s a cool thing. 'Well, he made it this far. I guess I’ll have to begrudgingly give him his due.'

BraveWords.com: Going back to the Sweden Rock show, I found it a bit of a let-down that this big second coming occurred in the light.

Emmett: "Yeah, well, there’s not much you can do about those summertime shows that are in the regions of the earth where the sun stays out all day and all night. Well, let me try and put it to you in this way: even though that was Triumph’s calling card, I think if you look back now over the history of the band, some of the best moments that occurred historically for the band were ones where it was like, 'guys, we don’t need the big production. Let’s just get on out there and play our songs. Let’s just play. Let’s just be a three-piece band that just gets out there and plays our asses off.' And when we did the US Festival, that was daylight. And when we did a lot of shows where we opened big stadium shows for Journey, and I think that would have been about ’82, ’83. And we were on a big bill with ZZ TOP and some of those kinds of shows. The headliner was the one that got to go on when it got dark, but if you were one of the opening acts, you were playing in the dusk, the twilight as it were. I thought that the band - and you know, maybe Gil and I would sit down and we’d be having an argument about this - but I think the band always had a bit of an insecurity that it was afraid to step out from under that and, as you say, the mystique and the values of a production that could do all of these amazing things with light. I’ve never been afraid to sit down with an acoustic guitar and just do what I do. I think that that’s a kind of a value that if the band had been more a reflection of my sort of take on what the band was, there would have been a lot more performances in daylight and a lot more sort of ... we wouldn’t have had as much insecurity about production values. Like I would have said, 'I don’t care, let’s do it.' Whereas the other guys wanted to go, like, 'nope, we don’t do that, we won’t do that.' So, I don’t know, I think that in the final analysis somebody sits down with a piece of music and they’re listening to it. They’re driving in their car, they’re listening to the radio, whatever. In the end, I think it boils down to a song, whether or not a song is delivering emotionally, whether or not people get it. So I’ve always felt myself that I am principally and primarily a songwriter. That’s what I am at heart. And you can write a little folk song, and you can arrange it in a certain way, you can blow it up so that it becomes some sort of an arena anthem. But in truth they’re really just kinda simple little folk songs that you could sit down with an acoustic song and you could bang it out, and it could work. Mike McCarty, the guy that used to run EMI’s publishing and I once did a national song-posium tour thing where it was all about song-writing and he was on the panel with me. And one of his cool little things that he would do was say to people, 'yeah, yeah, I know you like to all shit on NICKELBACK,' but he says, 'when you’re a guy that’s in the song business and you hear something like this' - and he would play an original demo of Nickelback’s first big song, 'down to the bottom of every bottle' - and it was like two voices and one acoustic guitar. And the song’s killer. Like, it’s a great, great song, done in that naked fashion. And he called it the campfire test. And he goes, 'good songs, they pass a campfire test every time.' And it’s true, you know. And I think Triumph was afraid of campfire testing, and I never had a fear of it. I loved that challenge. "

BraveWords.com: One last question about unreleased material - is there anything in the vaults?

Emmett: "Not that I’m aware of. Triumph was a kind of band that it’s work ethic, we would, because we had our own studio, we’d kind of get in there and we’d be doing, you know, shitty little demos but they weren’t so shitty because, even though it was our own studio, so they sounded pretty good, and you’d really get to judge whether or not you were onto something. And if we weren’t onto something, we just left it behind and moved on. And so by the time we were finishing up an album - and of course that stuff that I told you earlier about a process that seemed to just take forever to get to any kind of conclusion, and maybe that’s just an aspect of democracy, right, maybe it just kind of moves really slow. So and you know, it would have gone a lot faster if it had been a benevolent dictatorship, whatever. We would be writing songs and they’d get to a certain point and we’d say, 'yeah, this one definitely shows promise, okay we’ll continue on and we’ll be doing overdubs and mixing and mastering that.' The other stuff would just totally die on the vine, it would never move forward. So the answer to your question is, as far as I know there’s nothin’ but who knows."