Triumph's Gil Moore Talks New Rock Documentary
The Canadian power trio now has a worthy video document of the band's rise to power and successful career in rock.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me today in this issue of Michael’s Record Collection. This is one of those issues I have been just busting at the seams to bring you. Before I get to that, I want to just remind you that you can support independent writing and podcasting for as little as $2 per month at the MRC Patreon page. Come on, you lose more than that in your couch cushions every month. Go on and look, you’ll see. You can learn about upcoming interviews in advance, submit questions for the artists, and much more, depending on your level of support.
OK, let’s get to this issue, for which I interviewed Gil Moore from Triumph.
When I’m not listening to music, one of my favorite ways to spend some free time is watching documentary films about bands or artists that I find interesting. It’s always cool to learn where people came from, how they got started, how they met the other musicians they work with, and all the other details of how such great music got made. So, when I learned that legendary Canadian power trio Triumph had a new documentary coming out, I had to find a way to watch it immediately.
I managed to reach Triumph’s representation and request an interview with the band, with the specific intent of talking to one of the three musicians — Gil Moore (drums, co-lead vocals), Rik Emmett (guitars, co-lead vocals), or Mike Levine (bass) — about multiple ongoing newsworthy items. Despite the fact that Triumph is retired as an act and hasn’t released a new album since 1992, it’s a surprisingly busy time for the group.
Triumph was recently inducted into the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame. Just weeks ago, the band also released a new 40th anniversary box set for its beloved Allied Forces album. And in September, the band’s new documentary, Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.
After screening the film (twice), I was able to connect with Moore, who spoke to me from the driver’s seat of his vehicle. I thought that was a bit unusual until he explained that he likes to take those kinds of calls in that location because of the sound system. The drummer’s hearing has been damaged by years of banging the skins in front of a wall of amplifiers that delivered the sound of his heavy rock band to its legions of adoring fans. He wears hearing aids and seems to get by quite easily. Had he not told me, I’d have never known.
As a band, Triumph fits in that nebulous gray area between hard rock and heavy metal. I never quite considered them heavy metal myself, due to their significant blues influence, occasional forays into progressive rock, and Emmett’s periodic dips into the classical-style acoustic guitar music pool. But Triumph did play at the famous and historic 1983 US Festival on heavy metal day and had a lyric about blasting heavy metal in the song “What’s Another Day of Rock and Roll” on its 1976 self-titled debut album (which was later re-released under the name In the Beginning). So, who am I to split hairs on the band’s genre?
“That was a real honor for us,” Moore said of the induction into the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame. “There were a lot of great names in there and we were happy to be alongside them and honored. Mike and I were bluesmen, and many of the bands that are considered heavy metal — you know, if you look at Led Zeppelin maybe, or the Yardbirds, as anchors in the genre — they all fed off the same blues artists. You know, the Howlin’ Wolfs of this world, and so on.”
Moore said he was the catalyst behind the band’s new documentary, which isn’t surprising, because he and Levine seemingly have always had a clear vision of where Triumph’s direction should go. Levine managed the band early on and somehow got the group a record advance even before they’d found a guitarist. If something needed to be done, they likely thought of it themselves, and then found a way to do it themselves in a way that best served Triumph. They once built themselves a control desk and then went on to just go ahead and build a recording studio around it — which became Metalworks Studios.
When asked about the origin of Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine, Moore took ownership of the initial idea.
“I just had an idea based around the fact that I'd collected a lot of Triumph archives and had piles of video,” he said. “And it was just kind of a dumb notion, like, ‘you know what, this stuff is just going to all turn to dust if we don't do something with it.’
“So, I approached a buddy of mine at NBC Universal, Ron Suter, and I asked him if Universal would put money into it, and he immediately said yes. And he triggered a whole slew of investors like Bell Media and Rogers Media, and Slate Music, and so on. They just kind of all got behind us and then, at the very end, Live Nation stepped up when they heard about it, and they put money into it. So, Banger (Films) had lots of financial support to do what they wanted to do.”
The documentary doesn’t go all the way back to the births of the three members of Triumph the way some do. Rather, it starts at the conception of the band, including a bit of background on Moore and Levine, and how they got together, and then recruited Emmett to join them. Some of those early scenes are illustrated with humorous animation behind the voices of the musicians telling their stories. This was a creative device used by directors Sam Dunn and Marc Ricciardelli to fill in spots where there was no video or photography to tell the story and to break up simply having the musicians talking on camera for longer periods of time.
Moore said he wasn’t too sure about the idea of the animation and only got to see placeholders until the band saw the screening in Toronto.
“Initially, all the rough cuts we saw, there would be no animation. There'd be a black slide that said ‘animation here.’ So, we got used to watching the movie with these black slides that said ‘animation here’ and not seeing the animation,” he explained. “I'm not so sure what Rick's feelings were. Mike and I were questioning it and we were like, ‘I don't know about this,’ but it's because we were really never shown anything. And then, when we finally were at the Toronto International Film Festival, and we were there for the screening and we saw the complete movie with all the animation, all of a sudden we kind of had the ‘aha’ experience, and we realized that this was a good call.”
The story, with screenplay written by Ralph Chapman, mainly follows a linear story of the band’s early days, rise to popularity, stardom, Emmett’s eventual departure from the group — and the album with Phil X on guitar that followed — and the reconciliation of the original trio. However, a unique aspect of the documentary is that it also spotlights some of the band’s “superfans” in the lead-up to a fan tour of Metalworks Studios and the surprise mini-gig that those lucky few got to witness. Banger Films selected 150 of those Triumph superfans through a contest in which they had to explain why they deserved to go on the Metalworks tour.
The seed of the fan event was planted when a Triumph fan wrote to Moore to ask if a group of the band’s hardcore fans could come up and tour Metalworks. That fan turned out to be related to Chapman. The coincidental twist of fate led to the inclusion of the fan event and several fan interviews as part of the documentary film.
“This is a one-in-10-million shot. She wrote me a letter, asking me if a bunch of Triumph fans could come up, mainly from the United States, but some from other parts of the world, just to tour Metalworks Studios,” Moore said. “They just kind of wanted to come to the mothership and hang out. So, in the process of telling her yes, I would let that happen, I mentioned it to the film directors and Ralph, the writer, and the next thing we knew, we found out that Nancy was Ralph's cousin. And they liked the idea so much, they said ‘let's make it part of the film.’”
Without getting too spoilery, the film includes some wonderful scenes of Moore going through a treasure trove of memorabilia that he stored away over the years, the three members of the band rehearsing, and fans showing off their impressive collections of Triumph swag. Moore, Levine, and Emmett share extensive candid thoughts in their interviews and it’s a surprisingly emotional watch. The fan event gives the film a natural conclusion as the band caps its illustrious career and ends on an extremely positive note.
The film isn’t widely available outside of Canada yet, but fans south of the Great White North shouldn’t have to wait long to see it. They may have to be patient a little while longer, although the upside is that could also mean a theatrical release.
“Right now it's strictly at the film festival stage, so I know that they're in negotiations right now with a film festival in the United States. I don't think I'm at liberty to say which one,” Moore said. “And in Canada, the distribution is on Bell Media, which is the CTV national network. I don't know what the equivalent would be in America — one of the big (networks), you know, ABC or CBS or something like that, is carrying it in Canada. And so that's on free TV, and then they have Crave streaming, which again would be sort of the equivalent of Netflix up here.
“I think they're going to hold it back, because they're waiting to get a simultaneous release in at least North America, if not worldwide, and I know they're in negotiations with several of the streamers, in America. And also, I know they're talking about potentially cinema exposition. I know there's some issues regarding COVID and so on, so, some of those processes are a little hobbled at the moment, but it should be widely available in the United States, is the ultimate end result, which I would expect we're talking first quarter next year.”
While Triumph fans in the U.S. wait for their opportunity to see the new documentary, they can enjoy a new 40th anniversary deluxe edition of the band’s incredible 1981 release, Allied Forces. The band was named the Canadian ambassadors of Record Store Day and commemorated the occasion with a box set full of goodies, re-issued by Round Hill Records. The set included a vinyl picture disc copy of the original Allied Forces album, a two-disc vinyl set of the band’s remastered live concert in Cleveland in 1981, and a 7-inch single. It also includes previously unreleased versions of “Allied Forces” and “Magic Power” recorded live in Ottawa in 1982.
Other goodies in the set include an 11-x-17-inch Maple Leaf Gardens poster (an exclusive in Canada, sorry), a 24-page booklet with rare photos and an essay on Allied Forces, and a 40th anniversary Allied Forces retro tour book, poster, and tour pass. It also has three hand-drawn cartoons and copies of the handwritten lyrics to “Magic Power,” “Allied Forces,” and “fight the Good Fight.”
”I’ve got to credit a guy named Andy Curran (of the band Coney Hatch). He's a Torontonian…a very good musician in his own right, worked with the guys in Rush quite a bit before working with us,” Moore said. “And he came up with the design of the entire package and did, I think, a spectacular job. He was hired by our label to do the work, but Andy has been a longtime friend of mine here in Toronto — he's a great bass player, by the way. And boy, I think he did a smokin’ job on that box.
“So, we just let him loose in the archives of Metalworks and go, ‘here's all this stuff.’ There's piles of it, but it’s almost like a landfill site. There's so much stuff — like, where do you start? — whereas he was able to just walk over and see something and go ‘oh my god, look at this, I'm gonna use this,’ and to me it was insignificant, but to him it was a goldmine. And now, when I see the entire box set, I go, ‘okay, I get it.’”
Unfortunately, fans may have a bit of trouble finding that box set at this point because copies of it flew off the shelves. However, there are some things coming up that should ease the pain of having to buy it on eBay for exorbitant prices. Moore said the band is working on a concept to bring the band back in a “mixed reality” setting, and there’s a new Triumph tribute album in the works.
“Our buddy Mike Clink, who’s one of the great record producers in the world — I guess he's most famous for all his work with Guns N’ Roses, because he did just about all of the records — is producing a Triumph tribute album right now,” Moore said. “And he has just an amazing roster of the most fantastic musicians, who are all big names in their own right. They're doing a whole record of Triumph covers, but doing it their way. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag as to the list, but I can tell you it's a very star-studded list. Some of the treatments are similar to how Triumph treated the songs, but others are so different that it's almost unrecognizable that it's even the same song.”
Moore said the covers album is about half done and should be slated for release in the first or second quarter of next year.
In addition, Moore is working on delivering free music education to kids around the world via cellphone on a platform created through Metalworks. He’s also been working in concert and video production, which is fitting. His innovations, such as his aerial drum platform, use of pyrotechnics, and light show concepts are part of what made Triumph one of the world’s most compelling live acts of the 1970s and 1980s.
And don’t be surprised if there are more goodies down the road. It’s quite possible that more classic albums like Never Surrender and Thunder Seven could get the same anniversary box set treatment that Allied Forces received.
“Having seen how phenomenally well received ( the Allied Forces set) was and how cool the package is, as long as the label wants to do it, I know that Mike and Rick and I would be in favor of that for sure,” Moore said.
No doubt Triumph fans share that sentiment. Anything to keep the “rock & roll machine” rolling.
I hope you enjoyed Moore’s thoughts on the new Triumph documentary, Heavy Metal Hall of Fame induction, and Allied Forces 40th anniversary set. We also covered some of the gaps in the band’s history that may have been left on the cutting room floor, Moore’s thoughts on the Triumph catalog and the band’s songwriting, my personal favorite Triumph song (“When the Lights Go Down”), and much more. For all of that, please see the video below of my full interview.