Original-Cin Interview: Rik Emmett on being the 'Yoko' in the Triumph TIFF film

By Jim Slotek

Guitarist Rik Emmett admits some fans of the Canadian power trio Triumph didn’t take it well when he quit the band in 1988 after 13 years and about a million road miles.

“There was some of that, ‘Hey Rik is Triumph’s Yoko Ono!’” Emmett says with a laugh during a Zoom interview promoting the Toronto International Film Festival documentary Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine. It’s a tale of three Toronto lads who played their way, backed by pyrotechnics, from high schools to being introduced to a crowd of 300,000 by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at the US Festival, on the strength of hits like Lay It on The Line and Magic Power.

Rik Emmett, Mike Levine and Gil Moore, dredging up rock & roll war stories.

“I do meet-and-greets – or I used to before COVID – and it would be, ‘Rik, you cut your hair! Where’s the spandex pants? Where’s the double-necked guitar?’

“Sometimes fans are arrested with the imagery they had when the band became the soundtrack to their lives. That’s what they want, and that’s all they want. But that’s not how life works.

“And sometimes you have fans and they’re fans of you. So, I’d hear, ‘I don’t care what music you’re playing Rik, I’m still going to be your fan. So, you go ahead and indulge yourself.’”
Full disclosure: I’ve had connections with Triumph over the years. Drummer and band founder Gil Moore hired me to write the liner notes on a Triumph box set. And I was working for Canadian Music Week in 2007 when the band was inducted into the Industry Hall of Fame, and speculation was rampant whether Moore, bassist Mike Levine and Emmett would appear together after years of legal wrangling and bad blood. 

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So, it’s natural that Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine, by rock doc makers Sam Dunn and Marc Ricciardelli, would sprinkle hints of the Triumph guitar-god’s eventual departure throughout its narrative (which culminates in a heartwarming fan event at Moore’s Metalworks Studios in Mississauga).

“After a long time, it really was a soap opera,” Emmett says. “Even the story of reconciliation, the reuniting, that was a soap opera situation too. In a weird way, that soap opera sort of kindled continued interest in the band. It might have lagged if we’d just carried on and faded away. Instead, there was always this thing of, ‘Why did Rik quit?’”

Triumph… then.

The short answer: a lot of reasons, creative differences, personal differences, family. But the catalyst was the band’s signing with L.A.-based MCA Records by the legendary Irving Azoff, who felt that the camera-friendly guitarist/singer/songwriter with the flyaway hair should be the frontman, and not the drummer (Moore also sang, wrote songs and did all the deal-making).

“It was Gil’s band. I was the junior partner. So, they didn’t want to hear that idea. I remember us all talking during the Never Surrender time period (the follow-up to Triumph’s most successful album Allied Forces), and Gil said, “I don’t want to be the drummer in Rik Emmett’s band.’”

Triumph carried on in concert for another five years, with Phil "X" Xenedis as the new guitarist. The originals would play two reunion concerts shortly after their Hall of Fame induction, the first in Sölvesborg, Sweden in 2008, where the ashes of Emmett’s brother Russell, who’d died of cancer, were under the stage.

The story is that his brother’s dying wish was that Triumph reconcile. “It’s not like it was my brother’s only dying wish,” Emmett says. “The fact is he had to come to terms with what his life had been and what he’d hoped his life would be. And he would have his regrets, and the conversation turned to, ‘Rik, you have some baggage. You have regrets too. And don’t you think you should maybe do something about them while you’re still able to do it?’”

Perhaps the most feel-good moment in Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine is when Moore regales Levine and Emmett with tales of stage pyro disasters that leaves them in tears of laughter.

Artistically, Emmett, Moore and Levine are still a far from perfect fit. Emmett has won trophies at the Smooth Jazz Awards. He’s recorded Latin guitar, blues and jazz. 

“I mean, I was a guy, when I was in high school, who could have been a bluesy or a jazzy kind of artist and I’d never have been a rock guy except that’s where the chips fell. That was what was offered to me.

“I’ve always loved the idea of ‘play.’ I played every sport I could in high school.” And when injuries ended that option, “I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to get myself a Fender Tele(caster) and join the union and buckle down on the music thing,’ because it was play.”

These days, Emmett describes himself as in retirement, and is releasing a book of poetry, Reinvention on ECW press. And he plays for fun. On Oct. 2, he’s taking part in News Aid, an outdoor fundraiser for the Toronto newspaper West End Phoenix, with Rush’s Alex Lifeson, Rheostatics, Hawksley Workman and more. Artists are performing covers of choice. Emmett’s is Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits.

“I learned it once before, because I did this tour of orchestra shows. I did classic rock tunes with an orchestra, Stairway to Heaven, Sultans of Swing and a few of my own. And you have to deliver the goods. It’s hard to play, so I’ve been working my chops back up.

“And on Sept. 18, my son is getting married in Niagara Falls and one of his favourite bands is Queen. And for his first dance he wants me to do a kind of swinging Michael Buble version of You’re My Best Friend.

“So, I’m going to be a wedding singer!”

Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine debuts at TIFF on Friday, September 10 at 9 p.m. at the RBC Lakeside Drive-In at Ontario Place.