Special Report by Martin Popoff

Picture by Jacki Short

Earlier today, Triumph was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame, as a career accolade handed out during a swank set up at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York Hotel, the highlight of Canadian Music Week. This week in fact marks the first time Gil Moore and Mike Levine had gotten together with guitarist Rik Emmett in 17 years. Already calls are on from a myriad of industry heavyweights for the band to mount a triumphant reunion tour. On that question however, the band was quite reticent, figuring getting the relationship through this week intact was the first priority – a happy likelihood, given the hours of reminiscing the guys have gone through in the last few days.

BW&BK spoke to the band an hour before the radio awards/induction ceremony was to begin, first asking the guys what, in fact, made Triumph a 10,000,000-record selling success, during their ten year heyday, beginning with the 1976 self-titled debut and ending with a lawsuit-fired meltdown in the late ‘80s.

“I think we brought a level of songwriting to hard rock that maybe it didn't have before,” reflects Emmett. “And that may be a Canadian kind of thing. A lot of those songs worked if you just sat down with an acoustic guitar and played them. You know, obviously, the Triumph thing, when we Triumph-ized the material, it turned into, ‘How will this work in an arena?’ So it sort of became larger than life when it went through the production phase. But at the heart, they were good songs, and that was part of the process. So that might be something.”

Adds Mike, “As well, I think like the bands that were around before us, April Wine for example and Rush, we took the touring aspect of our career very, very seriously. And that's how we established a fanbase to start with, just being on the road and playing. So I think, our work ethic was something that we can hold up as something as an example.”

“And Gil had this thing about production,” interjects Rik. “So I think we had production standards that set a pretty high bar for other people. I think other acts saw us, even when we were playing bars… but by the time we were touring the States, we had production that was sort of second to none. We had more lights in the air, we have more flashpots, we have more specials effects, more lasers, more anything. So we had committed on the production level. And it may be more of a Canadian sensibility to say pooh-pooh to that. We don't like that sort of thing. We like it when it's honest and has integrity and is just simple and it's punk. Like whatever. And we always said, well, that's not our idea of fun.”

“And you could never translate that across the border,” points out Mike. “They would never buy into it. We could've spent our entire career touring Canada, and we would have been burnt out and our career would've been a year and a half old and that would be it. So that was from day one. I mean, that's when we decided that we were going to have a great show and be a great band and just be headliners, and that's the way it is. Although early on, we didn’t really think about it, per se.”

“But we had all the junk,” recalls Rik. “We had the lights and the PA… one time we played in Pittsburgh, and The Babys opened for us. Oh man, John Waite did not like the fact that we had all these tracer strips; they were like chaser bulbs, all over, like in Las Vegas. He didn’t like that one bit. He kept kicking them off and breaking them. And then a huge fight ensued, between crews. And in the newspaper next day it said, 'Triumph spanks Babys.’ Yeah, we always had the stuff, so we couldn't be an opening act, because we couldn't really see ourselves play without all our stuff.”

So things didn’t always go according to plan. “How many hours have you got?” laughs Rik, asked about pyro misfirings and the like. “Oh god, I mean in the early days when we first started out playing high schools, a flash was would go off, and if the mix of the powder wasn't just right - and of course, often it wasn't - there was a little more concussion than there should be, and we would knock ceiling tiles out of the gym. Etobicoke, Scarborough… they weren't going to let us into any more high schools. We had to become a concert act, because we were slowly but surely getting banned out of every place. Do you remember the night, Richmond Hill, what is the name of that club?”

Mike: “Geronimo’s.”

Rik: “Geronimo's! We had a propane torch, and it went off, and the sprinkler heads… you know, if they sense too much heat, the wax melts, forget about it, they all go. And the water that was in the pipes has all this black crap from sitting waiting for these things to go off over several years. And this place had nice couches and rugs, and there was black on everything. And before you know, there's three or four inches of water all over the room.”

Mike: “The place was packed, and it was the first song, I think, wasn't it? First or second song. So we’re sitting in the dressing room going, ‘We’re not going to get paid now. This is a disaster area.’ And Ernie Miller, the guy who owned the club, we’re in the dressing room and we're phoning the agent, I think Ralph did, and he's going, ‘Oh shit, I don't know, but it's okay, I'll talk to Ernie.’ So Ernie comes in with a bottle of scotch, and some glasses and says ‘Congratulations, this is the best night this club has ever had.’ He was in love with it, the fact that he was going to make the newspapers and all that. And he paid us.”

Rik begins to get suspicious of Mike’s version of events… “We did have to go back. You make it sound like you guys didn't turn that one. You spun him pretty good. He came in and he was ready to kill somebody. But you were the guys that got a bottle and said ‘Sit down, let me explain it to you!' That's the story that I always tell. I always tell that you guys spun him. You said, ‘No, no, buddy. You're going to be out on the front of the newspapers and… we’re coming back. We'll be back in a month.’

“I've heard Mike's version of the story so many times,” chuckles Gil, “I don't know what the real story is anymore!”

Rik: “We'll ask Ernie Miller.”

Mike: “We'll ask Ralph, because Ralph was on the phone.”

Rik: “I think we spun him, man. And we went to play. That is true though; we got paid. That is a miracle. I always tell that story, because I always want to impress people with your acumen, your ability to take the worst situation…”

Mike: “What about the girl’s sweater though?”

Rik: “Yes, there were some dry cleaning bills (laughs).”

Mike: “And it wasn't good enough that her sweater got cleaned. There were some damages.”

Gil: “Oh yeah, we got this really nasty letter from one girl. And she said that she got her shirt dirty or sweater dirty, or whatever it was, from the sprinkler. And what were we going to do about it? So Susan, so who was sort of our office manager at the time she said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, what do you think? Send her a fan club application.’ So she got the fan club application in the mail. The letter comes back, you know, ‘I don't think you understand. I'm not interested in the fan club. I'm interested in compensation for my dry cleaning bill, and I want a new sweater etc.’ And Susan says to me, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And I said, ‘Send her another fan club application.’ (all laughing). She sends another fan club application. Third letter comes in, really mad now, uppercase, her father's a lawyer, ‘I'm going to talk to my lawyer’ and whatever. And Susan says, ‘What should I do?’ I say, ‘We've been through this twice.’ So it's now a routine… ‘Send her another fan club application.’ And I think we went back… I think we sent her about four or five fan club applications. So we gave her the impression that we were just a conveyor belt at the other end. Ingoing and outgoing. It didn't matter what the letter said.”

Rik: “We never paid for dry cleaning?”

Gil: “No, we were scoundrels.”

Rik: “I think we played for dry cleaning.”

Gil: “I think we paid her back with humour. We taught someone who is humourless to have a sense of humour. That's worth the price of dry cleaning.”

Rik: “That's going to look good in print!”

Gil: “Would you trade your sense of humour for a dry cleaning bill? Come on, think about it. She got a good deal.”

Rik: “She got her dry cleaning paid for.”