Gary James' Interview With Gil Moore Of
Triumph



Between the late 1970s and into the late 1980s, this band enjoyed widespread success. They recorded sixteen LPs and DVDs, which translates into twenty-five Gold and Platinum awards. They received nominations for Group Of The Year by the Juno Awards in 1979, 1985, 1986 and 1987. In 2007 they were inducted into the Canadian Music And Broadcast Industry Hall Of Fame. In 2008 they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame. In 2011, Triumph Lane in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada was formally dedicated in honor of the group. The band we are talking about is that Canadian power trio, Triumph. Drummer Gil Moore spoke with us about the band's history and what he's up to these days.

Q - Gil, I see you have your own recording studio.

A - Yeah. Metalworks Studio has actually become a bit of a conglomerate in music. We have a school called Metalworks Institute that's got two hundred full-time students. It's a career college here in the province of Ontario and we also have a live arm called Metalworks Production Group where we do touring and festivals and corporate shows. It's all audio, visual and staging. The studio is like the core business. It's forty years old now.

Q - You've had quite a few big name acts come into your studio to record, haven't you?

A - Over the years we've had more big name acts than any other studio in Canada.

Q - How are you able to attract these people to come into your studio to record? Are you advertising? Is it word of mouth?

A - It's all word of mouth. We don't do any advertising. It's just from industry connections. Beyond that I'm still working on Triumph stuff. We're just in the middle of a documentary that's going to come out in September, 2020. It's with Banger Films, who are the guys who have done Rush, Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden. They actually just finished doing ZZ Top, so they're releasing the ZZ Top film and then Triumph will be the next one.

Q - When a group comes into your studio, are they bringing in their own producer and engineer?

A - Each one is different. In some cases we provide the engineer and/or producer. A lot of times with big name artists they have their own engineer and/or producer.

Q - Is this what you spend the majority of your time doing, overseeing these companies?

A - Those companies really have their own management. I don't manages per se any of them. My daughter Lauren is the Controller. So, she kind of manages the finances of the whole operations. Most of my time right now, I've been spending on the Triumph documentary and working on a new, I just call it a visual technology that we're going to brand. It's going to be kind of the next step beyond holograms. So, our lighting director, who's working with the Dio hologram tour and so on, he was Triumph's lighting director. So, he and I are trying to design something for Triumph for the future. Then our studio, we have a tech start-up where we're building a Cloud based studio. It'll be the first of its type in the world. So, I spend my time on that as well.

Q - Is there still a Triumph that performs?

A - Well, there is. I mean, Mike and Rik and I are good friends obviously. We get together and we haven't performed recently. The last time we performed was ten years ago. (2009), but you never really know how life is going to turn out, right? There's no reason why we won't get back in the studio. I think a live tour is unlikely. That's why I'm looking into holograms and that sort of thing as a potential futuristic tour.

Q - That's strange, isn't it?

A - It is. Funny though. I love it. I love technology, I love lighting and I love lasers. I love technology like augmented reality and things like that. So, it's all fun.

Q - You could take Triumph to places where you ordinarily wouldn't go?

A - Yes, exactly. We're lucky. Live Nation is one of the investors in the documentary. So, I'm going to be presenting these ideas to Live Nation and hopefully get them as enthusiastic about it as I am. What's happening right now in conjunction with the documentary, 'cause this would be news to any Triumph fans and it's something that was only confirmed last week, so I couldn't talk about before. It's been in the process for a long time, but Mike Klink, who has worked with Triumph as a producer who is probably most famous for his work with Guns N' Roses, he's basically done all the Guns N' Roses stuff, but Mike has been hired by Round Hill Music. Round Hill is our current American label and Round Hill has hired Mike to do our tribute album. He's gonna be reaching out to sort of our contemporaries like artists that played on the Us Festival. People along those lines. As you can imagine, the usual suspects, right? From the '80s scene in America. They're going to record ten to twelve of Triumph's hits with a guest vocalist and guitar solos, drums, everything, bass. All really top name guys. So, it's a pretty exciting project. I don't know the release date of the tribute album, but if I had to guess, I'm gonna say they're probably going to release it simultaneously with the documentary.

Q - Do you know the names of the musicians who are going to be on the tribute album?

A - Yeah. The bands on the list would be the bands from the Us Festival. Mike is probably going to be inviting different artists. In terms of vocals you have to find some people that can sing like Rik Emmett and somebody else that can sing like me. Guitars, drums and bass. It's more like people that play a little bit like us, but the style is not that important. I would say there is no list of anybody confirmed, but literally the record just got confirmed by Round Hill about a week ago. People that we're going to be inviting on there would be our contemporaries. I do know a few bands and I probably shouldn't say the names of them, slightly younger bands that heard about this by way of the documentary because they expressed interest in being interviewed in the documentary. It would be the groups that we played with on tour at the time that played the big festivals and played the arenas around America.

Q - Going back to the early days, Mike Levine told Irwin Stambler that Triumph didn't want to play clubs because, "We don't want to play where people drink." You guys didn't play clubs?

A - We played a few clubs. It sounds like a bit of a misquote. Maybe it's just the context. In reality we wanted to play concerts, so I agree with Mike. We got out of the clubs extremely quickly. We were playing concerts within a year of when the band first performed.

Q - How'd you do that? Did you have a record deal?

A - We had a record deal the day we started. We had a record in the can before we played one show.

Q - On a major label?

A - No. On a Canadian, independent label, but none the less it got us off to a real good springboard in Canada. Then very soon thereafter we got a U.S. record deal and the same thing worked in America.

Q - From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Triumph was doing over two hundred concerts a year. Is that something that a group today can do?

A - No. I don't think so. It's just so much more difficult to travel. I don't know that there's as many concerts per week per market, but I don't have that information. I'm just surmising really.

Q - How difficult was it for a Canadian group to get air play in the U.S. in the 1970s?

A - Well, we were lucky because we had a radio station that started in Texas, in San Antonio that just loved the record and they were playing it like the National Anthem. So, it spread. It went to Corpus Christi and then it went to Austin and then it went to Houston and Dallas and West Texas. Before you know it we had a pocket in Louisville, Kentucky. It started very early. St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City. Chicago was another one. So, we got those pockets and then by the time we got to the next record it's like, bang! We were getting Detroit, Cleveland and L.A. It just spread like weeds in your garden, really.

Q - It's really something that you would remember all the cities that gave Triumph their initial air play.

A - You get certain cities like Indianapolis that's one of the very first cities that came onboard. It's unreal the difference. In the very early stages we got to play Market Square Arena. It's 15,000 people and you don't forget those kind of things. In Chicago, getting to play at the Rosemont Horizon was the big arena. In Detroit we played Cobo Hall twice I think. Next thing I know we were in Joe Louis Arena. We were playing Joe Louis Arena every single year. You don't forget those things.

Q - I recall seeing Triumph in concert in 1982. At that time you guys were all over the place. You were constantly being featured in the Rock magazines of the day. Then it just seemed like you disappeared. Did the Seattle Sound or Grunge shut you down? What happened?

A - There were a number of circumstances that happened all at the same time. For me, it started with my Dad. he died of cancer in 1987. He was my best friend. So, it kind of knocked the stuffing out of me for a couple of years. The last record producer we worked with at the time, we didn't get along with. So that kind of sowed some seeds of discontent. Rik really wanted to do a solo record. He was getting itchy feet. A whole bunch of things all at once. Yeah, the Grunge sound. Radio sort of turned against all of the bands they previously supported. It seemed like overnight. That wasn't an encouraging atmosphere. Just everything happened at once. It just seemed like okay, and then we ended up shutting it down.

Q - Did you have any inkling that a different sound was about to overtake the music business? Did you hear about Kurt Cobain and Nirvana? Did you hear about Soundgarden or Alice In Chains? Did you hear about those groups?

A - Yeah. Some of 'em I liked. Some of 'em I didn't like, but I get why they were successful.

Q - The other guys could see that as well?

A - Oh, yeah. Some of the bands I heard I really liked. I thought they took it in a good direction.

Q - They really pared it down, didn't they?

A - Yeah. I think a lot of the bands in the '80s were over produced and they kind of stripped it down to basics I would say.

Q - I was referring to more of the stage productions. There didn't seem to be a lot of props to go along with the music.

A - I've always been a fan of more, not less. I think the theatrics of Rock 'n' Roll are really a lot of fun and part of the whole excitement.

Q - In 1984, Triumph changed record labels. You went from RCA to MCA. What could MCA do for the group that RCA couldn't do?

A - I'm not sure I know how to answer that. We had a kind of a falling out with RCA. Irving Irving Azoff, who was the President of of MCA at the time, was a big believer in Triumph. It just sounded like a change that needed to happen, one way or the other. It's hard to go back and re-live those moments, but I guess we just wanted a fresh start.

Q - Who wrote "Lay It On The Line" and how long did it take to write that song?

A - Rik wrote it himself. All Mike and I really did was kind of just help with the arrangement of the instruments and obviously playing on the record. Rik did that one from soup to nuts. I don't know how long it took him to write it, but it was a complete idea. He brought it to the band. It was a complete idea. It was like he had it all worked out.

Q - Now, how did the band avoid the pitfalls that other groups always seem to find themselves in? I'm taking drug addiction.

A - I kind of grew up playing hockey and baseball. The job was so physical for me, singing and playing drums at the same time. I didn't have an option of being some woofed out guy. I just watched the Motley Crue thing and I don't know how they did it. I really don't. They had some horrible scenes in music with those guys cranking up drugs. I don't know how they survived it or even if they will in the long term. It just wasn't our scene. Rik was an athlete too. We treated it like a job. We treated it like a game and you had to be ready to play the big game. That's how we treated it. More like a sports team I guess.

Official Website: www.TriumphMusic.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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