Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Triumph Singer/Guitarist Rik Emmett [Episode 164]

Transcript

Triumph Singer/Guitarist Rik Emmett [Episode 164] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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When I was a little kid, I was Ricky, and then when I
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went to school, everybody called me Richard. And then when I got to
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high school, as soon as the track things started to happen, everybody started
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calling me Rocket. And then I got in Triumph, and they misspelled my
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name on an album and ri ck Rick became Rik Rick. That's like the
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mask? Where are the mask? For a couple of decades, Sometimes it's
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pretty hard to take it off to rock and roll. I mean, gotta
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leave you. You're reading Little Hens says it's time to rock and roll.
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Roll up. I totally booked. Welcome to Booked on Rock the podcast for
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those about to read and rock online. It booked on rock dot com.
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You can find every episode there, along with links still listening platforms, exclusive
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videos, flocks, and the latest rock book releases. Rick Emmett of Triumph
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is this episode's guests. He's just released a brand new book title Lay It
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on the Line, A backstage pass to Rockstar Adventure, Conflict and Triumph.
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Rick talks about how Triumph formed and rose to fame, the reasons that led
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to his departure from the band by the end of the eighties. He shares
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his songwriting process, his favorite songs, making the transition to a solo artist
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in the nineties, why he turned down offers to join Asia and Boston in
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the early nineties, and a whole lot more. A playlist of Triumph and
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Rick Emmett solo is on the show notes page. Rick Emmett, Welcome to
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the book Don Rock Podcast. It's great to meet you. It's nice to
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meet you too. What a book. And I was just telling you before
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we started recording, a very inspirational read, an enjoyable read. So much
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for people to get out of this book, whether it's from an inspirational standpoint
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or just if you're a musician and you're looking for some tips on songwriting and
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just to read about your career, it's just outstanding. Congrats on the book,
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Thank you very much. Yeah, I've been getting nice feedback, you
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know, doing interviews and stuff. Now. Of course, you know there's
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another side of it too. You know. I was sitting with my wife
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this afternoon and she was saying, well, you know, I saw a
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review on Amazon. They weren't too happy. There's just not enough Triumph in
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the book, you know, and I go, well, you know,
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like, okay, I can get that, but it's not a Triumph book.
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It's a Rek Emmitt book, you know. In my life. Literally,
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the way the book sort of ended up shaking out was there's a triumph
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chapter and it's thirty pages ish, you know, but there's sixteen chapters.
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And my life was about other stuff, you know, and the fact that
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I was a teacher and you know, a leader of bands and a father
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and a husband. There's a lot of stuff that's kind of and I was
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talking about with my editor Michael Holmes on the phone today and he was saying,
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Yeah, it's like self help, it's like motivational, it's like,
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you know, there's there's a lot of stuff about music, business, mentoring
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kinds of I go, of course, I taught for twenty years that stuff's
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going to be in there, you know. I just I love the fact
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you're so honest about your battles through the years with anxiety. I have the
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same thing, and I just thought it was so cool to read that.
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Was this book cathartic for you to write about some of the difficult periods of
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your life? It is, But you know, I hasten to add that
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if you struggle from stuff like anxiety and stress can do things to you.
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Stress doesn't ever necessarily go away in life, and that's not because not all
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stress is self induced, you know, like sometimes your loved ones get sick,
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or you know, are battling through things, or just life in general
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is kind of pressing in on you in there. You don't really have control
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over that, so you're always playing that game of balancing how do you control
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the things that you can't. Like my wife and I ran in a conversation
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yesterday about how the Israel Palestine stuff, if you watch too much news lately,
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you just get this incredibly despondent feeling about the future and you got to
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go, okay, well stop for a second, Like, you know,
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that Israel Palaestine thing has been going on to different degrees all of my life.
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It's never gone away. So how much stuff do I want to take
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on from outside and see? I have to go, okay, wait,
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you know, And of course I always had the nice release of being able
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to pick up one of these things and you know, time travel, escape,
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you know, whatever however you want to describe it. You know,
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magic power is just that's the about the music about being feeling young, not
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being young but feeling young and music can do that, yes, and sure,
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ken. I mean, well, when I was a little kid,
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you know, I was about nine years old and my mother had bought all
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of us little uh transistor radios and see, yeah, you could sneak it
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under the pillow at night, you can. You know, the world was
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now this little box and hit Parade at the age of nine, it was
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like, Okay, the world is opening up for me. So you know,
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one of the verses talks about you know, she climbs into Benchi pulls
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the Covis. It was me. You know, I was really being autobiographical.
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And the Ally Forces album was a very autobiographical kind of record. It
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had ordinary Man on it, which might have been the most sort of profound
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autobiographical thing I ever wrote. During that period of my life. It always
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did seem to me to be something that I write every day. So today
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I was writing something about, you know, reaching for the infinite, touching
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the infinite, you know, being aware of the infinite. And you know,
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I guess some people go to church and they get that sense when they're
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in prayer or whatever. For me, it was music. Music was the
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thing that kind of made me go oh, yeah, there's like I can
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see forever, I can touch forever. I've written these kinds of lines and
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lyrics all over the place, you know. But I think that also it
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allows the stress to kind of, you know, and let's air out of
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the you know, the compression that's happening. You kind of go, yeah,
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but this this goes on forever. And I used to tell students that
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this as well in my songwriting classes. You know, you shouldn't be very
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cocky about being a writer because you're really staring into the face of infinity when
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you're engaging in a creative act, and that should keep you kind of humble
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and modest that you know, you're you're trying to feel your way, you're
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trying to figure it out, and you don't want to think that you know,
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you don't know. You only know what you feel, and that's kind
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of how you figure out where you're going next, you know. But it's
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an infinite pursuit. It should make you pretty humble. Songwriting is something yeah,
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you could you could get better at it the more you do it,
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but it's also just something that comes from creative thoughts. Where do they come
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from? Yeah? That I mean obviously, Leonard Cohen was you know,
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one of the great writers of all time and revered by so many more for
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his lyrics than for but his songs too, he kept them intentionally very very
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simple musically, but lyrically they were you know, heavy duty. But he
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said, look, if I knew where the really good songs come from,
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don't you think I'd go and visit there? More like because the process,
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like and Colin used to rewrite lyrics over and over and over, you know,
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like he would have dozens and dozens of rewrites of songs that had already
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been on a record, you know, they'd already been put out, and
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he would still be going, I'm not sure I figured that one out necessarily,
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Like he was never one hundred percent sold on Allelujah, never really.
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Yeah, that he used to sing versus live that were different and in different
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order than he'd necessarily composed in the early days and stuff, and so yeah,
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I do think that there's a thing about being a creative person where you
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do have to sort of come to terms with the fact that you're like an
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explorer, a pioneer, you know, and you're kind of landing on beaches
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that you've never you're thinking, Oh, this is the new world here.
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You know, I should be I should be careful. There's an old I'm
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thinking about a Ray Bradbury short story where they could time travel, but you
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could only you could only walk on the floating paths, and you weren't supposed
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to And of course I think he was. The butterfly effect was something that
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Ray Bradbury kind of invented because somebody stepped on a bug or something and it
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literally changes the course of history so that when they return from being in the
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past where somebody did something they weren't supposed to do, it's like now the
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now, the present has changed. Fascinating. Now let's talk to the music
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business, because there's music in the music business, and you wrote the music
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business chose me as much as I chased it. When did you first realize
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that music was going to be What was the driving force that you're going to
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do this for a living? Probably took me about a year after I tore
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my knee up playing football. So I was in high school and I was
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seventeen years old, and I was very good at it because I was quick.
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I was a really fast runner. But I got my knee torn up
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on. I lost my ACL and I had medio collateral damage and stuff,
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so it was really badly wrecked and I was never able to recover. I
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tried, because I was still a jock in terms of my mentality. But
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so I would say it was probably my eighteenth year when I decided, oh,
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okay, so the dream of becoming a pro athlete, and of course
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it was probably a pipe dream. Anyways. I was five foot eight,
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I weighed about one hundred and forty pounds, like I was not going to
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become, you know, a professional football player or baseball player or whatever.
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You know, but you know, you're a kid. You're dreaming, you
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know. But that the year when I went, Okay, I'm gonna get
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really serious about this music thing because I want to play for a living.
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I go on have to work, so if I can't play sports, okay,
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then I'm going to play music. And I'd always been good at music,
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singing in the choir, getting a guitar, and becoming good at playing
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guitar in a fairly short period of time, which is to say, you
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know, I'll be humble again here, you know, like being better than
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your peers is not necessarily that you're becoming great, you know, I was
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just I was able to pick it up at a quicker pace than other folks.
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But that was the year that I bought a Fender telecaster and a little
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Fender amp, and I got my Union card and I started gigging, and
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I was still in high school. But yeah, that was a big year
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for me. And then August of nineteen seventy five, your life would change.
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This is the beginning of the story of Triumph. So how does the
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band come together? What were those early days like working with bassist Mike Levine
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and drummer Gilmore Well, I was to be a called Act three, which
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was kind of a progressive thing, and with a very good friend of mine,
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Dan Young was the drummer, and there had been a bass player in
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it called Chris Brockway, and the three of us we really did have something
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kind of extraordinary that was starting to happen. But Chris and Denton had a
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falling out, and uh, then we had to replace Chris and it really
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wasn't the same. The Triumph guys came in saw my plane in a bar
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of the Hollywood Tavern, in a tobacco in Toronto. They said, hey,
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look, we have a record contract. I go, you don't even
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have a band yet, and you have a record contract. And then they
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said, why don't we just come out, you know, to Gill's house
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in Mississauga and and uh, we'll have a jam session and we can just
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check it out. And I went, okay, you know I will.
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So the next week I went out to Gill's place and they had tour posters
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and stickers and and Gil was a kind of a booking agent that he could
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book his own band and so he had connections to high school booker and promoters,
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and he knew bar owners. And Gil sat on the board of the
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Toronto Musicians Association as a kind of a rock rep, you know. And
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Mike Levine's dad was the vice president of the He played bass in the Toronto
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Symphony. So, and these guys were smart and they were connected. Now,
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when we sat down and played, I was not all that impressed with
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the fact that they didn't seem to be the kind of guys that practiced very
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often. They had smarts, they had abilities, but they were clearly not
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in great shape as me and I would say like. So then they said,
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well, what do you think you want to try, and I said,
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well, we better practice a lot. There better be a lot of
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If I'm going to do this, you know, you're going to have to
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take my feelings and my ambitions one third into account. And they went,
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oh yeah, absolutely. You know. So I was like three musketeers and
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I fell for it and I was in and Rocky Mountain Way was the song
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that really it's started the momentum for the band Untain. Yeah. We used
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to play it as a you know, as a bar band in the very
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early days. And then we made our first record in a real hurry and
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put it out and and we were touring and playing gigs and things, and
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we were, you know, desperately trying to pursue American record deal because as
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a Canadian band, you know, you have it really, so we were
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crossing the border and playing gigs and these things were happening, and then the
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record company says, okay, well we want a second record, and we
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went into pre production and we just didn't have enough material. And so at
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one point Levine, he was kind of like the record producer. Levine said
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well how about Rocky? And we needed songs for Guil to sing because I
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didn't really have a problem writing songs that I could sing. But then Gil
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would sort of be lagging in terms of creatively. He had so many other
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things he was doing, kind of managing the band, and like you know,
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so, yeah, we tried it rehearsal, and then we decided,
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hey, this is great if we kind of simplify it, if we get
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to the talk box solo and you know, just kind of make it.
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Canadian radio might play it, especially AM radio, because it's a very simple,
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recognizable riffs kind of rock song. And so, yeah, one thing
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led to one another, and that's exactly what happened. It was we got
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a lot of airplay in Canada. It made us be able to go for
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playing smaller venues, to play in not the big arenas, but smaller arenas,
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and tour and have our big production with our flamethrower and flash pots,
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cop car lights and yeah. So it was great. Yeah, and then
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things start to take off after that. Then the hit singles come in.
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Hold on Late on the Line, and you're right about the nineteen eighty one
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album Allied Forces. That's one of the brightest shining moments in Triumph history.
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Engineer Mike Jones got some great sounds out of the guitars, Magic Power,
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Fight, the Good Fighter among Triumphs best Magic Power Top twenty in Canada,
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number fifty one in the US. Was that one of those like, yeah,
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this is going to be this is going to be a hit. When
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you finished it, listen back, well, you know, it's lovely for
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you to, you know, talk about it in those glowing terms. It
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was not a song that crossed over to AM radio, but it like it
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probably charted top five for FM radio ao R radio album oriented radio, which
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and that was right in the heart of the time when album rock radio was
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that was the thing. You know, MTV hadn't really started to change the
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nature of the business yet, and yeah, Magic was it was really something
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that changed the nature of how Triumph was perceived because now we had a song
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that in fact, women liked it as much as men did. And you
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know, we had been a harder rock band, mostly guys coming to you
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know, buy our concert tickets, and ally forces changed everything. Because of
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course MTV was also starting to happen, and you know, Ricky was with
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his long blonde hair and his you know, jumpsuits for whatever, that stuff
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was starting to make a difference. The curious thing, you know, as
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you were talking about magic Power, but at the same time that the Allied
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Forces stuff was happening at aor radio, MTV had been playing the videos from
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the Just a Game album, which had Land on the Line, because they
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were hard up for stuff to play in their rotation. Not a lot of
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bands had made videos, so in the early eighties they played land on the
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Line and Hold On and so that was something that was now starting to change
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the way that the band was being perceived, which was a lovely thing for
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us. You know, how crazy was that MTV what it could do for
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bands. Did you realize how much of a tool that was a marketing tool,
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because normally you got to get the song on radio stations and go from
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market to market and really work it hard, and then all of a sudden,
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if you had a video on MTV, it's like overnight. Yeah.
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Yeah, And it certainly saved you a lot of intermediate steps. The big
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thing too, was that you could literally become you like you wouldn't have to
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And a good example would be say Duran Duran. They never really had to
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ever tour and build it up. They when they came to America, they
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could literally go into fairly large buildings and be selling hard tickets at hard ticket
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concert prices because of MTV, and of course every agent, every manager in
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the business was seeing that and going right. So and record companies are going
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they can see how they're record you know, seeing sales, getting sales from
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things. So that whole old model of you know. And I think if
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he maybe looked to say Brian Adams, he'd been a guy that had gone
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out and he'd open for everybody. He just toured and toured and toured as
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an opening act, building himself up so that he could be seen by hard
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ticket audiences who would then maybe start to think of him as, oh,
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he might be a you know, a concert guy. We'd want to go
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see. We like his songs. I mean, radio could break you,
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but only MTV was the thing that could turn you into a media darling thing
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in a real hurry, you know. So it definitely changed the nature of
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things, that's for sure. I was listening to Magic Power in the car
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today and I wanted to ask about the lyrics. I thought it was interesting
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that the character in the song is a female. She's young now, she's
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wild now, She's free. Was that written about somebody? You know?
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No, it was about me. It was autobiographically originally it was he,
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you know, or maybe it wasn't, like the original font was about me.
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But maybe I started, here's a trick, and I used to tell
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this a song and it's not a trick, but it's a thing that songwriters
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do, and it's certainly something that I do. First, Yeah, a
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song usually has three verses, right, first verse a scene. You're trying
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to answer the standard questions, you know, who, what, when,
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where? Why? You know, like you're just trying to set the scene
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so time and place and establish it. Usually it's gonna be I I do
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this, I saw this, blah blah blah blah. You know. Then
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the second verse can be you know you blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
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blah. That's the second verse, and then the third verse can kind of
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go, you know, we blah blah blah. And so now what I've
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done is I start singing the song and then I'm pulling you in and you're
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listening to that second verse and you're going, ooh, this is about me.
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And then I go we us at the in the in the and so
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now you kind of turn it into this anthem kind of thing where you've pulled
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everybody into the song. And so by the time you're getting to the chorus
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and you're going I'm young, now I'm wild, everybody is popping their fists
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in the air because every and the room is young and wild and free.
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Everybody gets the idea in there. Yes, what about the opening line?
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How important is that? The opening lyric? It is? You know,
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I mean, yeah, anything is always important. But of course, if
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you were in a songwriting seminar workshop with me, I would also say,
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look, you know, what's a really important thing. Don't borius get to
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the chorus? Like their songs do have to have a certain amount of compression.
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So a perfect opening line would be one where you were going, like
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I'm trying to think of a great opening line that had a date and a
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place, you know, like you're going, it's Saturday night in the old
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Town Hall. Oh well, what, Billy Joel right piano, it was
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on Saturday. Oh no, that's Captain Jack write Saturday night and your all
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alone. I think like that, I can't sing find where you're going.
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Don't make me sing that's all right, but you're going, you know,
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you're going place time. Boom boom, You're that's a great opening line,
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you know. And if you make your second line beat, you know,
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Captain Jack Sparrow with his bloody sword. You know, so now you're going,
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Okay, now we've really set the story. Now we've got the protagonist
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and we owe a bloody sword. Clearly there's going to be some kind of
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you know, story coming up about war and bloodshed, and so that's always
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a really good opening if you can kind of land your character and your time
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and your place really early. The book done. Rock Podcasts will be back
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after this. What is your proudest moment or song from Triumph is the one
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that really stands out for your personal Triumph? Well, I really like that
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Ally Force's record, you know, I don't know, like my standard answer
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to this question is that if I could make my favorite Triumph album, I
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would be picking a couple of songs from this one and a couple of songs
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from that one. You know. But if you're saying my proudest moment,
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I'm gonna tell you what emotionally has been the longest lasting thing for me.
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Song Suitcase blues that's at the end of the Justin Game album second side.
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Yes, I played that every night at the end of my encore for decades
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when I went solo, because it was a song that was not I'm a
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rock star. It was a song like, this is what it's like to
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be a rock star who's all alone in his hotel room at the end of
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the night. And it was jazz tune and it didn't belong on a rock
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record, but it was this is who I am. These kinds of chord
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changes, this kind of voice leading, this kind of melodic writing. So
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I always felt proud of that tune. It had a lot. I owed
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a lot to Joe Pass for some of those chord progressions and things. But
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sometimes I'll tell you a couple of stories. One I was doing a radio
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or something that somebody played hold On and I hadn't heard it for a long
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time, and so they're playing the whole thing that the album version, and
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it got to the water choir in the middle, So that's that part where
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it's like gogoon, don't doom, the high hats going and there's these be
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and it's all harmonized guitars and Mike Jones and I did that in an afternoon
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at Sounds Interchange Studios in downtown Toronto, in a room by the way where
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Rod Stewart was also recording. We were splitting the days and so he was
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using it for vocals and then I was doing guitars in the during the day,
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so and I met him once in the washing room. We crossed paths
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in the washingroom with the plus anyhow, so I hadn't heard it in such
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a long time, and then I was listening back. I was going,
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man, that's that's really sounds good, like those guitars have a lovely texture.
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And you mentioned Jonesy earlier. I mean he's left us now, that's
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you know, God bless him. But yeah, he had that ability.
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He'd done justin Hayward Records of Moody Blue Stuff in England. He had been
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a staff guy working in a studio there, and so that the Booty Blues
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they used to do that where they would record a guitar part, double it,
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triple it. Now do a harmony, double it, triple it and
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then bounce that all down so that you're not you know, go. We
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got twenty four tracks to work with, but Jonesy was a genius at that
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and then you know, you get to the end of the day and then
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you'd mix this stereo wire choir of all these guitar parts. But I had
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feedback guitars in there, and I had it was great. It was like
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and I went, oh, yeah, that was a pretty good moment,
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you know. Yeah, And the Triumph catalog is littered with that stuff.
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You know, there's there's things like that where I could pick any moment and
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go, oh, yeah there was that I forgot. Yeah, that was
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a pretty good moment. Laid on the line, hold on huge success.
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The third studio album, Just a Game. That's Triumph's breakthrough. But this
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presents you with a common problem in music, and that's the publishing his songwriting
25:02
credit. So you did something which I think is really cool. You decide
25:06
let's put the songwriting credit to all three members. But it still didn't prevent
25:10
problems that would come in the future. Why was that when happened? Well,
25:14
you know, I thought that if I made that kind of a gesture
25:18
to the wards, the idea of and you know, we had an ethos
25:22
that existed. There was like three musketeers, but we all had very wide
25:29
ranging responsibilities within the business of the band. Kill was like the general manager
25:36
and chief accountant and with his dad, and he was the guy that dealt
25:41
with agents, and he was the guy that put together tour productions and stage
25:45
management and hired and fired roadies, like it was a big responsibility. But
25:52
the checks went across his desk. The money flowed through him. Levigne was
25:57
working radio and doing marketing and promotion, and he was very adept at kind
26:03
of sales and he could talk a real good game, you know, and
26:08
also expense account and you know, and so at a certain point I was
26:12
starting to worry, like, geez, those guys with their expense accounts and
26:15
what's going on with the money. Like if they wanted to, you know,
26:19
take advantage of me, they could so. But if I do this
26:23
where I say, hey, you know what, from now on, let's
26:26
just make sure these songs get split three ways. There won't be any fighting
26:30
anymore about who's going to sing what song, who's going to have a hit
26:33
single, who's going to have an A side, blah blah blah, which
26:37
was the stuff that between Lennon and McCartney, it created sowed a lot of
26:41
bad blood and then the police had broke the band up eventually because they're going,
26:47
sting, we want a piece of all this publishing. To this day,
26:49
Andy Summers said he's still going to try to file legal action again,
26:53
sting for every breath they take. He just said that, yeah, forty
26:57
years later. Yeah yeah, because of course, the amount of money that
27:03
comes, especially over time, from publishing if you have a successful song,
27:08
it's it's crazy, it's amazing. You know. Anyways, I made the
27:12
gesture, but it didn't really change things because and you know, I've come
27:18
to terms with this at the time. You know, as the band was
27:21
going on eighty three, eighty four, eighty five, we made it.
27:23
We changed labels, we went from RCAA to MCA. Bill still really wanted
27:29
to be a guy that was going to sing a hit single front the band,
27:33
be the star of the video. He really wanted that, you know,
27:37
it was his ambition. So even though he was, you know,
27:41
doing all this other kind of general managing the band, and you know,
27:44
it wasn't enough for him. As the band was up and running and it
27:48
had been his band from get go, like you know, he was the
27:51
leader on contract. He was the guy that when we went to the first
27:55
rehearsal. It was in his house, in his basement, you know what
27:56
I mean. Like it was Gills band. He was the guy that had
28:00
the band vehicle that we would use to go to gigs. He was the
28:03
guy that had the truck we'd rent from to put the pa in, like
28:07
all that kind of stuff. So and when I was writing the triumph chapter
28:11
in the book, I had a friend read it and he said, you
28:14
know, you shouldn't be too negative about and don't dwell on the negative stuff,
28:21
because Gil only ever wanted from the band what you got from it.
28:26
You got it that radio decided to play your songs, and you know,
28:30
you had these hits, and he just wanted the same thing that you wanted.
28:36
So you can't blame them for that. You can't hold that against him.
28:40
But you know I had I had been angry that what seemed to me
28:45
in the natural way that the band was going, that they tried to make
28:48
it be something that it naturally wasn't. You know, even the record companies
28:52
were going, hey, the blond guy should be singing those songs, you
28:56
know, like give us something that radio likes. The blanc I six,
29:02
you know, so but in the end, none of after a band has
29:06
broken up, it's seven years ago, by ten years go by, twenty
29:10
years goes by, Like there's no point in holding onto those things anymore.
29:15
They were the things of our youth and the things of our ambition, and
29:19
all of those things are now ancient history. You're right about outgrowing the mask.
29:25
This is referring to when you reach the height of fame with triumph,
29:29
and that was actually challenging. And I can imagine that because yeah, it's
29:34
got to be hard to do, at least to take a step back and
29:37
say, wow, look at everything that I've done, because you're actually in
29:41
you're inside of that tornado, right, it's like a it's like a Gerbil
29:45
wheel. You're just you're constantly touring recording, right. So yeah, what
29:49
what did you mean by outgrowing the mask? Well, the quote that I
29:53
used in the book, which I when I found it, I really really
29:56
liked it is from John Updyke, and he said, famous mask that eats
30:00
into your face. And of course, you know there was a movie Jim
30:03
Carrey did a thing about a mask and when he put it on, it
30:07
changed his personality and made him this you know, incredibly outgoing, incredibly charismatic,
30:12
you know, larger than life, larger than David Lee Roth kind of
30:17
you know, character and show business, especially if you're you know, you're
30:22
a rock musician kind of guy. It's a world of gestures that are larger
30:26
than life, you know, being on a stage and trying to be like
30:30
Mick Jagger and fill the space with your energy, you know, cross the
30:36
divide between the stage to the audience with that energy. So, you know,
30:41
I felt like when I was a kid in Okay, I'm gonna go
30:47
back when I was a kid and I went into grade nine, I was
30:49
at least one year younger than everybody in my class. I'd accelerated a grade
30:55
through grade school. And but when you get and I went to a high
30:57
school where I didn't know anybody. I literally I walked into my first day
31:02
at grade nine, I knew no one in my class, and I was
31:07
in a kind of a streaming thing where I was in with a lot of
31:10
smart people, Like it was kind of like the brain class, you know,
31:15
but everybody was older, and the girls looked so grown up. They
31:18
looked like women to me. You know. I had guys that were literally
31:22
shaving, you know, in grade nine, you know, because there was
31:26
a lot of you know, Italian and Portuguese kind of guys in the cultural
31:30
mix of that neighborhood. And yeah, so I kind of became a class
31:36
clown almost right away. It was my shooting my mouth off and running my
31:40
mouth and it became kind of like my persona. It was the beginning of
31:45
a mask kind of a thing, you know. And I've already told you
31:48
you know, I had this kind of athletic gift that didn't really happen much
31:53
in grade nine, but in grade ten in a huge way. I was
31:57
on the football team and started and the guy that scored touchdowns, and so
32:01
that was a big thing. It was like whoa, So performance becomes this
32:06
thing of it's like a mask. It's like you go, yeah, but
32:09
this is who I am. If I sing a song. And my mom
32:13
would when I was a kid, go to church and she would say,
32:16
well, you should sing the solo for the Christmas pageant. And I'm going,
32:20
oh, I don't want to do that, Like I'm shy. I
32:22
don't want to do that. She goes, no, no, no,
32:23
You'll overcome your shyness by doing just these kinds of things. So yes,
32:29
you are going to do that. And so you know, it's not like
32:31
my mom was nasty or evil. She was a stage mom in the sense
32:36
that she took great pride and great pleasure from seeing her son be able to
32:42
perform and do these things. But there's no question it was like there was
32:45
a mask. It was getting built, and it was you know, that
32:49
was becoming this thing of Okay, So when I was a little kid,
32:52
I was Ricky, and then when I went to school, everybody called me
32:55
Richard. And then when I got to high school, was still Richard to
33:00
everybody. But as soon as the track things started to happen, everybody started
33:04
calling me Rocket. Now I had a nickname. And then I got in
33:07
Triumph and they misspuilled my name on an album and riick Rick became Rik Rick.
33:14
And that's like the mask, that's part of it. I had this
33:19
kind of persona that was like, well, yeah, when I do this,
33:23
I'm not I'm not little Ricky, I'm not Rick, I'm not Richard,
33:28
I'm Rik I'm Rick the Rocket. That's so I'll just be that guy
33:34
wearing the mask for a couple of decades. Sometimes it's pretty hard to take
33:37
it off, you know, I would think, but you never, you
33:40
never fell into the trappings of the drugs and alcohol. Yeah, I mean
33:45
it doesn't necessarily, you know, burn everybody's candle at both ends. Some
33:51
guys seem to be able to handle it. I certainly couldn't, you know.
33:54
So, Plus I had that jock thing of hey, my body is
33:59
a temple. Well, yeah, did you have to take care of your
34:00
voice? I mean, you got an outstanding voice. So did you do
34:05
certain things like don't smoke? Yep? Right, I mean I did try
34:07
it. When I was in a band in high school. There was a
34:10
time when I went I was just a singer in a band called Messiah for
34:15
a little bit, and I can remember Thursday nights were rehearsal nights, and
34:20
it was the middle of the school week, and my mom hated the fact
34:22
that I was staying out really late going to the rehearsals. And I only
34:25
I didn't play guitar. I only sang, and I didn't have to be
34:30
part of the rehearsal all the time. So I walked down the street.
34:34
I got, you know, time to kill while the band is rehearsing music
34:37
parts. I'd buy a pack of smokes. I start smoking. I come
34:40
back, I start singing. I sounded just like Rod Stewart and the band
34:45
goes, hey, you sound just like Rod Stewart. I go, yeah,
34:46
maybe the smoking things, isn't it. Maybe that's not going to work
34:51
out. So yeah, I had to be careful. I had to take
34:54
care of myself in order to try and get there for the next show,
35:00
you know, and be able to bring it for the people that they paid
35:01
good money. You know. The people on Thursday night they don't they shouldn't
35:07
get the A show, and then the people on Friday night get the Beast.
35:09
So people on Saturday are getting the C show. No, no,
35:13
no, the people on Saturday deserve the same show that the people on Thursday
35:15
get. You know. So SO does something like this doing press interviews.
35:21
You got to be careful that not talk too much. Well, I've start
35:23
figuring so they don't sing as much as they used to. I don't do
35:28
live gigs anymore, although I should say this, I'm going to Sweden.
35:31
I'm playing a gig on New Year's as part of this Canadian contingent thing as
35:36
part of the World Junior Hockey Championships. And the guy who's the sort of
35:40
promoter guy that puts it all together. He loves my singing. Blah blah
35:44
blah. I did a video online you can find if you just google.
35:47
You know, Canadian cover crew Rick Emmett, eleanor Rigby. I sang eleanor
35:52
Rigby with a string quartet. And so the guy said to me, Hey,
35:57
he goes, hey, Rick, do you want to come to you
35:59
know, we need to be part of this thing and we maybe do Beatles
36:01
songs, you know, we we'll do Triumph songs. Rick, you can
36:05
move the keys, you can do whatever you're like. You can write your
36:07
own ticket for this thing. So he eventually talked me into it. But
36:09
then and once I say it okay, he goes, hey, Rick,
36:13
one of my favorite songs is My Love by Paul McCartney. Will you sing
36:16
that that? And I go yeah, okay, So I've just started rehearsing
36:21
it. You remember that song? Yes, of course is like you know,
36:24
no no, no, no, no, no no no. He's
36:30
und everywhere with mano man love does it good? Looks like it's so high
36:39
And I go, oh, man, you know, so I've started rehearsing
36:44
it again and I'm going, oh boy, you have to be very careful.
36:46
Yes, the book down. Rock Podcasts will be back after this.
36:55
Rick Emmett here to talk about his brand new book, Laid on the Line,
36:59
A backstage pass to Rockstar Adventure, Conflict and Triumph. I just want
37:02
to sneak in two more Triumph questions, because I uh, I don't think
37:07
it's in the book. Who came up with the name Triumph? Was that
37:08
already decided before you join? Yeah? Yeah, and it was I think
37:13
it was a young lady who was sort of like, you know, the
37:15
president of the student council or the head of the dance committee from her school.
37:20
And Gil knew her because he used to book his Baniana band that was
37:22
called Ambernathy Shaggnaster is washer wear rock and roll band, and everybody just called
37:28
it Abby Shak and he would book it into high schools on weekends and sometimes
37:32
into bars for split weeks that those markets existed in the Ontario market. So
37:39
he knew these buyers, and so I think it was like a girls' school
37:45
and he knew the buyer, and she caught wind to the fact that he
37:47
was starting a new band because he pitched her he'd sort of said, hey,
37:50
in next fall, I'm going to have this new band and it's going
37:53
to be like this hard rock band with a lot of you know stuff,
37:57
blah blah blah. So he pitched her and she'd sort of said, well,
38:00
hey, we were sitting around and we came up with a list of
38:02
names for bands. So I'm going to send you and I think he had
38:06
a fax machine or something, so she used the office's fax machine to send
38:09
him a fax of this list of and so Levine and him sat down and
38:14
they went down the listen. They go, Triumph. That's cool. Let's
38:17
call the band Triumph. So when I showed up, they'd already printed posters
38:22
and stickers and you know, all this stuff, and it had they had
38:29
a logo, it had a bowling ball at the middle of it, and
38:31
it had the wings. But I didn't like it. I thought from an
38:35
art perspective, it wasn't very good is our art design wise? But they
38:39
had posters that had like a devil's face when he had horns and he had
38:43
sharp teeth and there was fire and things printing, And I went, what
38:45
is this? And they said, well, we had posters that was going
38:50
to be for a band called hell Fire, but they didn't use them,
38:52
so we decided we use that as our artwork. I go, So you
38:57
put something called triumph on front of a something that was for hell Fire,
39:01
and you think that's I go, yeah, that you know, and but
39:05
I I you know, I took my time. It took me to the
39:07
both. I think it was the third album that just a game album where
39:12
the Triumphal logo changed. I would guys, that really should get redesigned and
39:17
now we should be trying to find music that defines this name that we have.
39:24
And so that was hold on to your dreams positive. Yeah, after
39:30
have songs that are about what the band stands for. You know. Last
39:35
question is and it has to do with van Halen because I remember back on
39:37
my radio days when in two thousand and six or seven, when the rumors
39:40
of van Halen reuniting with Dave were swirling, there was a website out of
39:45
Australia milaniccroc dot com. The rumor was that you were going to be chosen
39:51
to tour with van Halen on that O seven tour. Any truth to that?
39:53
Do you remember that? No? Is this news to you? Yeah?
39:58
So I wonder where that came rumors you're saying it was two thousand and
40:02
seven, it would have been, yeah, because they Dave rejoined in O
40:06
seven and they went out on that tour with Wolfgang on Base that was seven.
40:08
So probably around like maybe it was six when the rumors started to like,
40:13
hey, we hear Dave's coming back. Yeah, oh six, I
40:15
had not even reconciled with the fiance guys, and they included like, yeah,
40:22
Rick Emmitt's gonna get back with the guys to go out on tour with
40:25
Van Allen. I remember that. That sounds like, you know, you
40:29
know, a publicist decided to tell a story one day, like and you
40:32
know, I wouldn't put it past somebody to kind of float something like that
40:38
because they kind of have a and this would happen in the music business from
40:42
twenty time. Somebody has a kind of a dream, you know, and
40:45
they go, hey, wouldn't this be great? And so then they start
40:49
kind of a little bit of a rumor like you know, this might happen.
40:52
You know, it's possible it could, and you go, what is
40:55
that a guy that used to be an agent for us or something? You
40:59
know, And I wouldn't put it past and that there was a guy,
41:02
Troy Blakely that had been both Van Halen and Triumph and Sammy and Triumph,
41:07
and so I'm thinking he could have got a secretary to make a ponek call
41:12
to somebody, you know, like, yeah, so let's get to your
41:15
solo career, because I find the solo career fascinating because you really get to
41:19
be creatively do everything anything you want to do. And quite a few solo
41:24
albums, the first one nineteen nineties, Absolutely hit number twenty five in Canada,
41:30
fifty two in the US, five singles, including the top twenty singles
41:34
When a Heartbreaks, and Saved by Love. World of Wonder hit number twenty
41:37
two. But it's not your personal favorite. According to the book, you
41:39
mentioned Swing Shift being one of your favorites. Well, you're you're kind of
41:44
jumping two eras, and there was an era that existed from nineteen ninety to
41:49
ninety five. I did three albums for an independent label called Duke Street.
41:52
They had to deal with Universal in Canada and so they were the distributor which
41:57
had been the distributor for Triumph. So those guys knew me and I and
42:00
I knew them, and so it was a you know, it was a
42:05
convenient marriage. And those three albums, I was still sort of entertaining notions
42:10
of hey, maybe I can be mainstream, maybe I can get on the
42:14
radio. But radio was already making shifts. Change was starting to happen.
42:20
Grunge was coming in. You know, guys in their forties playing rock was
42:23
kind of going out. So you're getting squeezed. You know. There was
42:27
still classic rock radio and they were always going to be playing Zeppelin and you
42:30
know, Van Halen and like the people that were the monsters. But a
42:35
band like Triumph was going to start getting squeezed, you know, and certainly
42:38
the singer that from Triumph was going to get squeezed right out, you know.
42:43
Plus it didn't help that the first album I did, we made an
42:45
American deal with Charisma Records, and it came out and they worked it and
42:49
Saved by Love was the first thing they went to radio with and it did
42:52
great. It went top ten the first couple of weeks it was out,
42:55
and then Charisma went bankrupt and so that album they owned it, it was
43:00
gone. Now it was literally swirling down the toilet. Gone. Is that
43:06
why it's it's not on streaming services. I don't think. Yeah, But
43:09
I have good news for you though. A guy's putting out a compilation now.
43:14
It's gonna be called Diamonds the hard Rock Years, and I was able
43:16
to choose the hard rock songs from those three albums. I'm also going to
43:21
do another compilation later in a couple of years where I'm gonna take the softer
43:24
stuff and the singer songwritery stuff and I'm going to create a compilation of that.
43:30
And these are being done high end vinyl. You know. I've been
43:34
listening to their remixes and the remasters and they're fantastic. And I'm putting on
43:37
some of the old demos from that time that people have never heard. So
43:42
that era is going to get a nice little bump again for people that are
43:45
record collectors and you know, people that are into that sort of thing.
43:49
So that's gonna happen. Yeah, that should be out before Christmas. Like
43:52
people should be looking for that online if they went to a place called Rock
43:57
Paper merch That's that's the place, and Merchant Motion is the name of the
44:01
guy's company. He'll have that Diamonds album up already. You could pre order
44:06
it if you want it now. To answer your question, the second I
44:10
did those three albums, and then the second phase of my career started around
44:15
nineteen ninety six, and I went, you know what, I'm just gonna
44:17
become indie. I'm not gonna worry anymore about charts or promoting records to radio
44:24
or any of that stuff. I'm just gonna make records that I like,
44:28
and I'm gonna go out and play mc gigs and i'm gonna sell them off
44:30
the stage. I'm gonna sell them off my website, and whatever happens happens.
44:35
And so the first three albums I made, I've had a classical guitar
44:37
solo record, all instrumental. I made a blues record, sorry, I
44:42
made a swing shift, which was jazz and arch drop stuff, and then
44:45
I made a blues record, and so that sort of became like a trilogy
44:50
of these independent records. And then I had major labels coming to me and
44:53
saying, hey, you want to make a distribution deal with us, a
44:55
label distribution deal, because that's what Indy had changed, the way, you
45:00
know, streaming had changed the way everything had changed the way the music business
45:04
was. So I made a deal with EMI and Canada Capital EMI and I
45:08
had a distribution deal with them, and my records were out, and you
45:12
know they were for I mean, bricks and order retail was going down the
45:16
toilet anyways. But it allowed me to sort of be and I never made
45:21
a record where I lost money. You know, I made them cheap.
45:25
I sold enough of them that I was making a profit so that I could
45:30
afford to make another one. And that was the new model that I had
45:34
come with. The reason I liked Swing Shift the most was because there's something
45:38
about that music that I like, where there's that style of kind of smooth
45:45
jazz R and B lose meets jazz. I still write. I've got a
45:51
record I'm working on right now called ten Telecaster Tales, and it's that stuff.
45:55
It's kind of it's just solo fingers style electric guitar stuff, but it's
46:01
that pocket of R and B jazz blues. You know, it's kind of
46:07
what I like. You know, I feel like it's maybe not my most
46:10
natural thing. Most natural thing might be plugging in a Less Paul into a
46:16
Marshall and blowing my brain zone. You know, that's what I You know,
46:21
when I was a kid, That's what I did and the stuff that
46:23
I learned from clapping and back and page, you know, like that's the
46:28
stuff that's you know, I'm seventy and I still that's something I can,
46:31
you know, still get my yeah yas out. You know. Let's talk
46:36
about your wife, Jeanette, because it's clear how much you love her and
46:39
how much appreciation you have for her when it comes to your love of music.
46:44
And you're right about the year two thousand when she was the family's more
46:46
consistent breadwinner. So how important is she to you. She's the most important
46:51
thing in my life and she always was. And you know, we've we
46:53
spent a lot of time talking about Triumph, but the truth of it is,
46:57
and in the memoir I say, you know, I joined the band
47:00
because she was my girlfriend at the time, and we were talking about wanting
47:04
to move out and live together, and Triumph said, well, we'll pay
47:07
you one hundred and seventy five bucks a week whether we gig or not.
47:09
And I went, hey, if I do that, between her job and
47:14
my job and my friend Andy Bractiss's student loan, we the three of us
47:19
could rent a little place and we can move out and live together. And
47:22
so I joined Triumph because I wanted to do that, and a year later
47:27
I married her. You know, So I didn't join Triumph because I wanted
47:31
to be a rock star. I joined Triumph because I wanted to see if
47:35
I could fall in love with this woman and marry this woman. And so
47:38
forty seven years later, she's still the most important thing in my life,
47:42
you know. And four kids and four grandkids with a fifth one on the
47:46
way, Like, it's been a pretty great life, you know, it's
47:51
and as in what you alluded to was that time period where you know,
47:57
I'd gone Indy, I was still going to and playing gigs. I make
48:00
okay money, but you know, for the kids, we were going to
48:04
need college funds. And the kids needed to have cars to get around in
48:08
and stuff, you know, because there was a lot of them. They
48:13
were spread out. I'm going okay. Well, she had a job where
48:17
she eventually became like a national sales manager for Jostin's. I think you Americans
48:23
might know about the company that does school rings and mortar boards. Yeah,
48:29
school pictures and all that stuff. Yeah, so she rose in that company,
48:36
and man, she had mental plan and you know, all that kind
48:40
of stuff for the kids. So it was I leaned on her, you
48:45
know. And the thing about the leaning was it was selfish because I was
48:49
pursuing this artistic thing where me and these things and my studio. I was
48:55
able to have the time and given the the rope to hang myself, you
49:01
know. And you know, she stuck it out. She never she never
49:07
lost faith in me. And you know that I was lucky. I was
49:13
blessed by that for sure. Yeah, great story. You were offered to
49:16
sing for Asia around nineteen ninety one but declined, And there's a great story
49:21
in the book about being offered the job to sing for Boston in nineteen ninety
49:24
two, only you didn't know it was for Boston. Well, I knew
49:29
it was for Boston, because I mean I went and I was with Tom
49:31
Schultz, and we spent an afternoon together, we went out for dinner together,
49:36
you know. Like, But I thought what was I was under the
49:39
and it was my own misconception. I thought what I was sort of auditioning
49:44
for was to sort of become a guy that would be partnering up with Tom,
49:50
like writing new songs, playing on a new album. And I went
49:54
to a studio and I was singing parts on recordings and you know, coming
49:59
up with part and things, and I'm thinking, wow, this feels like
50:01
it's a creative partnership kind of a thing. And then I got back home
50:07
and a couple of days later, I get a call from Tom's lawyer sort
50:09
of manager guy, and he goes, hey, congratulations, you're in.
50:13
You got the job. I went, oh, great, he goes,
50:15
and so the tour starts. I go wait, wait, wait what He
50:17
goes, Yeah, you know this is so that you'll be the singer and
50:22
a guitar player in the touring band when they go out the summer. And
50:24
I went, oh, I thought this was like to sing on an album
50:29
or something and to be writing songs with him and stuff. And he said,
50:31
well no, but hey, why don't we just do this and you
50:37
know, go out and see where it leads see And I went, yeah,
50:42
no, thanks, but you know, I'm not interested in being a
50:45
sideman in somebody else's band, you know, like I thought there was going
50:50
to be maybe more to it than that. And I met no disrespect to
50:52
Tom, I mean no disrespect in telling the story. Now. You know,
50:57
Tom was perfectly willing, perfectly capable of running his business however he saw
51:01
fit, you know. But it was kind of like it was me kind
51:06
of laboring under an illusion, you know. Well, I think this was
51:09
when I remember the album walk On came out and it was without well,
51:13
there was some songs with Brad Delp and some songs with a guy that I've
51:17
become friends with, Mike Shotton. He's saying, Okay, I think some
51:22
of the stuff on that record he'd been hired like literally just kind of as
51:25
a studio guy to be singing on the record. And so the record was
51:30
a done deal. And I didn't realize that Tom was just running twenty four
51:35
like two inch tapes, and then he had open tracks and he'd say,
51:37
hey, sing this on this open track, sing this harmony, Hey,
51:40
double this, triple this, Hey put a harmony like And you know,
51:44
Tom had this mind where he could create parts, you know, instantly,
51:49
and layer them up. That's why those records sound the way they do,
51:52
you know. And I was thinking, oh, the genius of Tom Schultz.
51:57
You know, I've got to be part and parcel of a creative process.
52:00
And then the guy on the phone call said, oh no, no,
52:02
the record's already done. The record's already finished. I go finished,
52:07
Oh, okay, never mind. What do you hope people will gain from
52:13
reading your book? I hope people would maybe feel like creativity should play them
52:19
a stronger and more important role in their life and in their mental health.
52:22
I hope that people would feel like, hey, Rick Emmett is a pretty
52:29
cool guy, and he was a rock star and it didn't seem to it
52:34
did. It didn't turn out too bad? So, you know, in
52:37
my life, I don't necessarily need to be a rock star in order to
52:42
be able to make good things happen and focus on what matters in life,
52:47
you know, because I mean that book it's really just about fundamentals. It's
52:52
really about kind of family and love and kindness and forgiveness, and it's about
52:59
virtue and vice, you know, and how I you know, as one
53:04
of my life lessons was, yeah, you know what, lean on the
53:07
virtue. There's there's a thing in the book that I wrote about where I
53:09
went, you know, I thought about the shortcut, the low road,
53:15
and I went, yeah, I think I'm going to take the high road.
53:17
And the reason I want to take the high road it may be harder,
53:21
and it might be colder, and it might be, but it's it's
53:23
way better lit. That metaphor for me was like, yeah, this that
53:28
kind of encapsulates you know that if you choose virtue, you're actually choosing an
53:34
easier life to live within yourself. You know, your life is going to
53:38
be an easier thing to take. It's when you're looking for shortcuts and you're
53:44
deciding to cut somebody else's grass or you know, like and I don't mean
53:47
that in a good way, because you could cut somebody's grass and it would
53:51
be a nice thing to do. Yeah, but you know, I mean
53:53
like, I think that greed and ambition are not necessarily Ambition is a good
54:00
thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I think too much
54:04
of it you can turn into Gordon Gecko. You know, do your best,
54:07
but make sure you're doing the best you We all fall in that the
54:10
American dream, you know what is what is the dream? And you think
54:14
it's getting a big house with a white picket fence, and it's this,
54:16
and it's whatever you think, whatever works for you, don't don't sell your
54:21
soul. Us Canadians, we would get to see those ads that the army
54:25
would do. And it was like, you know, it wasn't anyone,
54:28
it wasn't Uncle Sam wants here. It would be be the best that you
54:30
can be, you know. But that's the Army's going to tell you what
54:34
the best you is, right, And you're saying no, I think I
54:38
should choose what's going to be the best me, and maybe you would choose
54:42
the army. Maybe that will be the thing that makes And I had a
54:45
friend from high school in fact, that's exactly what he chose. He chose
54:47
the military, and you know he never looked back, a lieutenant colonel in
54:52
the in the Air Force. You know, the song fights a good fight.
54:54
There were a lot of folks that thought I was writing about a biblical
54:59
kind of a fight, you know, a fight about religion and a fight
55:01
about the kinds of things that Saint Paul was trying to get everybody to teach.
55:07
But I really think the fight for me was more about your own fight.
55:12
You choose. You choose your fight, you know, and everybody's the
55:15
good one is the one that you've chosen. That really is you, not
55:21
somebody else telling you what you are, but you deciding. Yeah, I
55:24
think this is me, So I hope people would get that from the book
55:29
Laid on the Line, a backstage pass to Rockstar Adventure, Conflict and Triumph
55:34
side out through ECW Books. Yes, and yeah, you can find wherever
55:37
books are sold and where can people find you online, Rick Well, Rick
55:42
ammat dot com, I R I K E, M M E T T.
55:45
But you can also you know, Facebook, Instagram. You know,
55:47
I've got a lovely person named Kathy Wagner in New Jersey that kind of runs
55:53
these things for me, my social media things. And by the way,
55:57
I'm going to mention these since we're doing the you know, the wrap up,
56:00
I've just shot a little video that's gonna be on MJS Pickups, which
56:05
I and I'm demonstrating a new guitar that has their new pickups. But I'm
56:07
also a kind of world premiere some of the pieces, little snippets of these
56:13
pieces from ten Telecaster tales. So that's gonna start happening the next little while.
56:17
I mentioned the Diamonds compilation things. Yeah, so it's not just the
56:22
book, there's all these other things that are still happening because you know,
56:25
I'm still chasing it, you know, Rick, thank you so much.
56:29
This was a pleasure to talk with you. I was really looking forward to
56:31
this. Thank you, Eric, I've really enjoyed this too. That's it.
56:44
It's in the books.