By Greg Olma

Triumph is a Canadian band that started releasing albums in 1976 and continued through the 80's with a final studio album in 1993.  Their "golden years" produced such classic records as "Allied Forces," "Just a Game," "Never Surrender," and "Thunder Seven."  It wasn't until 1987 when founding member, guitarist, and lead vocalist Rik Emmett left did the band falter.  They released" Edge of Excess" but somehow the magic was gone.  Sure the record was good but the chemistry between Gil Moore, Mike Levine, and Rik was undeniable. There was something special about "Fight the Good Fight", "Lay it on the Line" and "Spellbound" and even though those tracks are firmly associated with the 80's, they are still great to hear today.  A great song transcends its time frame and Triumph had a ton of music that did just that.
Fast forward to 2008 and the original band got together to play 2 concerts (one in Sweden, one in the USA).  Triumph fans from all over proceeded to make the pilgrimage to the concerts to see one of the best hard rock bands ever.  Both shows were a success and the hope was that Triumph was going to do a full reunion tour and maybe even record together.  Since then, there has been radio silence until on May 2010, the band released a "Greatest Hits Remixed" package.  This CD/DVD set (which is reviewed on www.69facesofrock.com under CD reviews) is the definitive greatest hits sets of the band.  I had the pleasure of speaking with Gil Moore about what was going in the world of Triumph.
 
Why 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.
What was the process that you went through to pick out the songs because you have a huge cannon of music that you basically had to pick out one CD’s worth of music?
I know I couldn’t do it. It was kind of a combination of, I would say, over the years our perception was of what people wanted most and we had other things we did. We played Sweden Rock and the year before we went over there, we ran a contest to make a list of all the fan favorites in order for us to play at the festival. Over in America, I guess we get more dialogue back and forth through our website and so on. We were keeping our ear to the ground in a number of areas trying to determine if we were addressing what everyone wants but it comes right down to it Greg that you have to cut some songs out. We picked what we thought was the right way to go. On the DVD, it was a little more restrictive because we don’t have videos for every song so we had to stick to songs we had video coverage.
I hate to say it but being a Triumph fan for many, many years; I don’t know the story behind the cover version of “Love Hurts”.
There isn’t a great story behind it [other than] we really like the song; really like the lyrics. We crossed paths with Nazareth over the years because we were touring at the same time. I’ve always loved their version. It was almost like a country song or a folk song the way it was written. The Everly Brothers had done a version of it years ago and Roy Orbison did as well. We had this idea that we can heavy it up and do something that was different than Nazareth. The Nazareth version is a great version but we had a distinctively different approach which was to slow it down considerably and make it a lot more pedantic which hopefully we did. It was also recorded during what we call the dark years between when Rik [Emmett] left and Rik came back. No disrespect to Phil X who we love tremendously. He was and is a great guitar player and a great friend but we realized in that middle eight years of our career that it wasn’t really Triumph. We labeled the songs we did with Phil “Triumph v.2” on the disk. There’s a reason because we felt we had a good band with Phil and it was a great experience but it wasn’t really Triumph. That song was recorded during that time period.
I saw the Phil X version of Triumph at Milwaukee Summerfest.
That was one of about only 10 shows that that band played.
Are there any songs or videos that are still in the vaults?
Oh yeah. There’s still more stuff. I was a bit of a pack rat when we were performing so I got a lot of tapes from different shows and so on that I guess a lot of bands miss. You know, even when we did the US Festival, we were able to thankfully get the footage because Steve [Jobs] was good to us; he was kind of a buddy. We were able to take all our footage from the US Festival and turn it into a DVD. And we were the only band on the US Festival that had that in their contract so we’ve always had a lot of video and there’s still more of it. God knows it takes a long time to wade though it.
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?
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.



Did you enjoy those shows that you did and what did it feel like getting back on stage after so many years?
I enjoyed the heck out of being with the guys and the shows but the most phenomenal part for me was actually getting close to the fans. I don’t know why but when you realize how much the people have stuck with you, it means a lot. In the press conferences, some of the folks in the media I found they were the same way; really sticking with us. I really enjoyed that as well as hanging with the guys. As far as playing, the rehearsals were, I think, more fun than the actual concerts because there was more fooling around in the rehearsals and so on. I had to concentrate pretty hard on what I was doing. If I didn’t drum and sing at the same time, it would be a lot easier. For me personally, it’s hard. You need to get back in the groove. I needed to have played a week’s worth of shows to feel comfortable. Just playing for the first time and going out on a big show with thousands of people is fairly taxing. I’m glad we did it. It was a great experience. We have those two shows video-ed as well so that may come out at some point.
The last time I saw you live [with the original line-up] was on the Sport of Kings Tour. Did you do any shows to promote Surveillance?
I should know the answer to that but I don’t think I do. I don’t know what our last tour was. I think we toured on Surveillance.
I know it never made it to Chicago.
No, then we didn’t. We never miss Chicago so Sport of Kings must have been the last tour. That would make sense because Surveillance was where we got demoralized and then Rik left so that would make sense.
Do you feel vindicated now that the critics who consistently lambasted you guys in the past now see Triumph and your fans still live on?
I guess a couple of things. One thing that happened when Rik left, a lot of people took sides. We’ve even detected that a little bit in interviews where either Mike and I are perceived as villains or Rik is perceived as a villain. Nobody was a villain. We’re humans; we’re not perfect and we got into an argument that if we probably had not so much pressure on us and if we were a little bit older, we might have been able to just resolve it at the time. You know what, we resolved it years later. I don’t know [about] the vindication. I guess in a sense, all three of us, there’s a sense of satisfaction in having the “stick-to-it-iveness” to solve the issues and to be able to kind of shake hands with all our fans face to face as a united brotherhood. Critics have been good to us. Sometimes we’ve been criticized but you know what, it’s not a critic’s job to just go and pat everybody on the back all the time. We had Triumph supporters and we got lambasted and everything in between but that just kind of goes with the territory. I think that the Hall of Fame inductions in Canada that we went through were not a feeling of vindication but a feeling of gratitude on our part that there was so much appreciation in both the industry Hall of Fame as well as the music Hall of Fame, which the fans have a big impact on. There was a feeling that kind of tells us that what we did was OK.



What is your favorite Triumph album?
I don’t know if I have a favorite Triumph album but if I was forced to pick one, I might pick Allied Forces. We talked about it on Rockline last night. Rik remembered a couple of things. It was the first album we recorded at Metalworks. It was a feeling of “we had our own studio” and Rik was saying we felt like we hit our stride in the studio. I don’t disagree with that and of the tracks that came out of that session which was “Allied Forces” itself was written about Triumph fans. That’s one reason it's on the Greatest Hits. I always thought that kind of summarized two things because it’s got this para-military theme to it and we were kind of like that as a band. We went around, we were almost stealth like in the way we went in planning our tours and went bang, bang, bang, and we didn’t end up in some of the crazy situations that some of our counterparts did with the boozing and carrying on with guys ending up jumping out of balconies. [Like] some of the stuff we were talking about last night. It did happen to some of the bands that were on the road at the time. We were kind of like this football team or army or something where we went around and there was a real concerted effort to it and a direction to it. The fans were well described in that lyric “Allied Forces”. Maybe that album would be my favorite.



Since I asked about your favorite, I have to ask for your least favorite.
Well, for sure the last album because….
Edge of Excess?
No, Surveillance because we just weren’t happy. I really liked Edge of Excess as I’ve said, we call it Triumph v.2. When we look back on it, I just wish we had changed the name of the band. I did like a lot of the stuff. I like that title track a lot. “Edge of Excess” I thought was a great track and there were a couple of more there that I thought were really, really smokin’ tracks. It was fun to play with a different guitar player after all the years of playing with Rik but like I said, I don’t really feel like it was so much Triumph. It was something that we tried that was fun but was a different band.
What is next for you specifically?
I shifted gears when Triumph ceased to be. The efforts that we made with Phil and Triumph v.2 as I call it, they weren’t like a full time driving force like Triumph was. [With] Triumph, I woke up by 8:00am, sleep, everything was Triumph, Triumph, Triumph, 24/7, 365 and I’ve always been [active in the music business]. Before Triumph started, I had a little sound company when I was a teenager. I got back to that; the roots of being behind the scenes so Metalworks has had a 30 year history now of making records for other people as well as Triumph. We’ve had great success, piles of gold & platinum record. And we’ve also built a dedicated music technology school that’s also called Metalworks right here beside the studio. We have over 200 full time students studying here about this industry so I’m very excited about that; being able to give something back and trying to get those students focused. We have a full time production company also called Metalworks Production Group. We have a great bunch of crews that go out. We do touring sound and lighting and video on stage. We do festivals, corporate shows, and so on. Metalworks takes up a lot of my time. We’ve got over 75 people working here. I’m involved with some of the directions that the companies take and that’s really my focus. It allows me to stay here in town and be with my family. I’ve got 2 young kids as well as my oldest and I’m able to stay close to them and my wife. That means a lot to me.

links:
http://www.triumphmusic.com/