519 November 2018

Rik Emmett
A lifetime of triumphs
4
Story by
Dan and April
Savoie
Rik Emmett
Wolf Performance
Hall, London
Nov. 28
Iconic Canadian guitarist Rik
Emmett has been a fixture of Canadian
rock radio for decades whether as a
solo artist or with multi-platinum band
Triumph. His hit songs are considered
essential Canadian listening - essentials like
Lay It On The Line, Hold On and Magic
Power are patriotic screams of the 70s and
80s.
We sat down with Rik to chat about
his upcoming Q&A session and acoustic
performance in London this month at Wolf
Performance Hall on Nov. 28.
You’re coming to London for an
“Evening of Stories”. What do you have
planned for that night?
Well I intend to leave it up to the host who
is a guy named Cameron Smiley, and it’s kind
of a one on one interview format. He asks
questions about different things that have
happened in my career and in my life and
sort of sets the stage for stuff. So then later
on the audience gets a chance to question
and answer and I’ve got a guitar handy
and if there’s a few things that lead me
towards wanting to illustrate something
or just play something or somebody
makes a request or something that I
might illustrate by playing some guitar.
But yeah that’s basically the format. I’ve
done this a few times before with Cameron
up in Orillia and once in Brantford, so
pretty comfortable pretty easy relaxed
and it’s fun. The one in Orillia was kind of
amazing. There was a friend of mine that had
been with me in high school who sat beside
me when I played violin in the orchestra and
stuff, and there was a teacher that was an
English teacher of mine from high school
who’s husband had been one of the football
coaches of the football team I was on when
I was only 14 years old. She brought pictures
and stuff.
So I mean I don’t know if anybody in
London is going to pop out of the crowd and
go ‘hey remember me’, but it could happen.
You never know.
I’m sure you get a million Triumph
questions at shows like the upcoming one
and in your forum. Do you ever get tired
of talking about a band that hasn’t been
active for about 25 years?
Good question because guess what’s
happening right now. (laughs) Some
guys are making a documentary right
now and so there’s been a guy that’s
been interviewing and the production
company that’s doing this for a bit.
They’re called Banger Films and
they’re doing this thing they’ve
done with Rush, Alice Cooper and
Metallica. They make these things and
they put them on HBO or The Movie
Network, so they did and do tons of research
and they ask all these questions. So it never
really ever goes away. And the answer to
your question is I’m human so sometimes yes
it bugs me, but most of the time I’m a fairly
reasonable kind of human being so I can kind
of look at it and go ‘well I can understand why
people have a fascination with it’.
It was a type of kind of commercial success
on a fairly high level. You kind of become
famous on more than one level. I was the rock
star wearing spandex pants, jumping around
and all of that stuff in the 70s and 80s. I also
wrote in Guitar Magazine and then I had a
career of my own where I made like 20 some
odd albums after I left Triumph. I kept very
active as a musician and a performer. I even
taught college for over 20 years.
Do you think that you’ll get together
again with the guys for another song?
No I doubt it. I mean it’s kind of ridiculous
to say no, but I said that to myself when I left
the band in 1988 and you know for a couple of
decades saying no never seemed enough. And
then what happened in 2006/2007. Oh jeez,
we got together.
There was a thing that happened were my
younger brother got cancer and was really sick
and was on his way out of this life. And he’s
going through that process of sort of trying to
put his affairs in order and make sure that he’s
leaving nothing undone or unsaid and he sits
me down and says ‘you know you can’t keep
carrying around that baggage about Triumph.
You got to fix that.’ And I said, ‘How can you
be such an asshole that you’re going to make
this be about me. Don’t do this to me.’ And
he said ‘if you want to make me happy I want
you to see if you can fix that.’ Oh my God.
I started talking through intermediaries
and there was a thing about putting us in
the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, so one
thing led to another and we started talking
about if we were going to play a gig. So we
went to Sweden and played a show and then
went down the Oklahoma and played a show.
So all of the things that I had said no that’s
never going to happen; they happened. You
better never say never because you never
know what’s in store or what will happen
when you turn a corner. So I try not to do too
much predicting, but having said all that, Gil
(Moore) is not really keen on playing drums
anymore. You know he really isn’t. And why
would I want to force him to do something
he’s not keen on. You know it was a very
tough gig for him - he sang half the songs
and played all the drums. Playing drums in
a hard rock band is like running a marathon.
You know the amount of work that you have
to do is it’s ridiculous. So I don’t blame him
for saying no I don’t want to do that again.”
Join Rik for tons of great stories and a
little music when he stops at the state of
the art Wolf Performance Hall on Nov. 28
for another edition of the Artist Life Stories
Series, a show being described as 50 years in
Canadian music history - an intimate evening
of story telling and songs. Tickets are $30 and
available at Ticketfly online.