Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Rik Emmett: Toronto Mike'd #1396

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

In this 1396th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Rik Emmett about his new memoir, the potential of a Triumph-Rush supergroup, that rider for Canada Jam, the potential of a Triumph reunion and so much more, including his absence from Tears Are Not Enough. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Electronic Products Recycling Association, Raymond James Canada and Moneris. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

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Season five of Yes, We Are Open, an award-winning podcast from Moneris, hosted by FOTM Al Grego. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, returning to Toronto Mic'd is Rick Emmett. Welcome back, Rick. Thank you, sir. It's a pleasure to be here once again. Well, look, you had me at sir okay that's uh

oh my god i'm not worthy but a quick note firstly uh i know we tried to connect last week so i was promoting this thing for friday and then i said i said i'm giving rock god rick emmett the benefit of the doubt that that that i'm sure it uh maybe it didn't make your calendar maybe you blanked on it but i said i'm giving this man the benefit of the doubt but that was uh nothing personal you you'd simply maybe you blanked on the uh zoom we had scheduled on friday no i i got covet so you know uh it was a weird weekend for me in a lot of ways. And I've been stretching in a few different directions. I was finishing up an album project with a friend of mine named Blair Packham as an engineer. You know, Blair is a dear friend of this program. Yeah. Yeah,

I know. Yeah. And he was the one that said you should be talking to toronto mike again you should be talking to i went okay okay okay but yeah i i i just i did blink that i i admit to that uh i because it was on the books but it was just like friday i wasn't starting to feel well and um yeah so i'm feeling a little bit better now but i still have a little bit of covid but you can't catch it over the Internet. I'm safe. Okay. Well, Rick, you know, part of the deal with COVID is brain fog.

Like this is part of the thing. So you're fully excused. I feel terrible. I thought it was just a scheduling mishap, but you had COVID and I'm glad you've recovered. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not fully recovered, but, uh, you know, uh, just brain fogged enough to go. Yeah. A podcast. That'll be, that'll be fun. Sure. Let's give that a shot.

Well, let's, let's see how it goes. Let's, let me ask you off the top. I didn't realize you were working with, uh, FOTM Blair Packham. That's friend of Toronto Mike, your FOTM Rick Emmett, but what's it like working with Blair? It was a complete hundred percent pleasure. Like Blair and I are kind of like little old ladies talking over the back fence, you know? Um, and he likes to tell stories and I like to tell stories and the, so the sessions will often start winding up on tangents. But it's kind of like I go, that's why I like to do it, you know, so that I'm not necessarily getting into this really intense. Here's the thing about recording, and this was a solo.

It's like jazz guitar pieces, kind of, all electric solo guitar pieces. The thing about it is I can get down on myself. I can really start getting into an intense head right up my ass kind of thing. Having Blair around made it so that it was really good. Blair has a lot of recording experience going back to his days of working with Doug oh god, Doug McKechn McClemmons. Yeah, McClemmons, thank you.

There's the brain fog for you. But, you know, he cut his teeth there with Doug and then of course he's done so many of his own projects and done his own recording things and stuff. So in the end, I was having him bring his laptop over because he's got different plug-ins.

He was telling me about his plug-ins. I go, well, okay, bring your rig over and let's do it. So I mixed with him, and we used a lot of his plug-ins, and it was just a pleasure. It was great. It's funny you mentioned Doug McClement's name because I recorded with him in December 2022, one year ago. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had COVID when I talked to Doug. So I always think of Doug McClement as the COVID guest of Toronto Mike.

So just tie it all back to COVID. That is good i mean i've worked with doug many times because of course he's associated with insight productions and i've done tv shows in years back there was like toronto music awards and his truck would be the thing that would be doing those things and right yeah what what a legend here okay what's your uh review rick you know music what's your review of last of the Red Hot Fools by The Jitters? Is that a great song or just an okay song? It's fantastic.

Are you kidding me? I always liked Blair, always. And before I even knew him, I liked the whole Jitters thing. knew him. I liked the whole Jitters thing. He's always been the kind of artist that really loves the Elvis Costello kind of approach to

writing tunes and making music. But of course, Blair is your downtown Toronto kind of personality and character. So there's that Canadian thing that he doesn't have anywhere near the chip on his shoulder that elvis does you know uh which i love and then he was the bluebird

guy uh for the songwriters association for years and so i would go and do those blue birds with him and i go this guy and i there's something uh there's, there's kismet here or something. There's karma. There's chi. There's all of those things. Well, I'm glad to hear you guys work together. So when can I hear this new album you put together with Blair's help? Yeah, that's a good question.

Okay, so here's the thing. okay so uh here's the thing um i'm my my plan for this one is that it uh it'll be a record but it'll also be a book okay and so i'm writing the book uh and the book is about the making of the album but the book is also about the stories of the songs and the pieces and it's also about becoming 70 years of age and having to cope with uh just the whole thing of of uh i mean part of what i have been is you know how do i put this and not make it sound like i'm tooting my own horn too loud i because you're i've been sort of a guitar hero on a certain level but also been an academic on another, there's this whole thing of as you're getting older and maybe there's certain aspects of your skill set

that are eroding, you know, physically, but then mentally you're sort of trying to push at different edges of the boundaries of the envelope, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But of course, uh, there are guitar players out there that I can fully really appreciate what it is that they do. So, and this may not be people that are familiar to a lot of your listeners, but guys like Julian Lodge, uh, a jazz guitarist, finger style.

Uh, yeah. So, so that's just one example. But there's so many other Telecaster kind of guitar players, and this is, I'm trying to do something that's going to be part of the canon of Telecaster guitar playing. So that's a huge, long history of stuff because it goes right back to, I mean, I was born in 1953. The Telecaster was born in about 1950, 51, 52 were the great years of, you know, people that are trying to have guitar collections. They're searching for those kind of guitars. And you see Springsteen banging away on a Telecaster and Keith Richards, you know what I mean?

So there's a whole long history of this guitar, but it has a jazz side to it because there was Toronto's own, well, he wasn't originally from Toronto, but Ed Bickert was a jazz guitar player that people revere him as well they should, and he was a Tele guy. So I'm sort of trying to make a a thing into this telly history and um that's into the book so and i've got about i don't know 60 pages of the book written and i'm not sure it's going to be that long i don't know who knows um but But I know that my editor at ECW Press, Michael Holmes, he'd be keen on something like this.

And I'm thinking, yeah, you know, an album and a book. You know, I don't know how you do that anymore because people buy the book and are we going to bother manufacturing CDs to put in their house? I don't know. Maybe. But maybe it's just, I don't know, a thumb drive? A code? Rick, I just talked to the manager of the Cloverdale Mall Sunrise Records, and he says they sell a ton of CDs there.

Yeah, okay. Well, then, I don't know. I mean, part of it, too, is I've just come out with this. I hate to be blowing my own horn about all of this stuff. There's a package called Diamonds, which is vinyl album and CD. And I got the masters from my old Duke Street years back. And so we've repackaged those. The guy named Greg Campbell that runs Merch in Motion and Rock Paper Merch online online he's put out this vinyl thing

and there's people that are crazy about vinyl and I haven't done vinyl for a long time but it was really weird to go I was doing the interviews to set it up and stuff and to listen to stuff again on from a turntable

it's a different experience and of course the cutting of vinyl, I was never crazy about it, but here I am revisiting things from the 70s. Okay, Rick, lots of ground to cover there. It all sounds amazing. I'm going to

just let the listeners know that if they want the A to Z of Rick Emmett's career, I'm going to tell them to go, like you can pause this episode and go to episode 915 of Toronto Mic'd. And here's what I wrote. That was September 2021. And I wrote in this 915th episode, Mike chats with Rick Emmett about his years in triumph, why he left the band, his new book of poetry and so much more. What's interesting to me is we chatted about your book of poetry then.

You're talking about the next book, but I have a question from a gentleman named Dave Bedini, you might know, about this new book, which I just read, Lay It On The Line, A Backstage Pass to Rockstar Adventure, Conflict, and Triumph. And I just want to read, Dave, he has a two-point question here for you rick he writes i hope you talk to rick about appearing on the legendary call-in show on mclean hunter tv with kirk lapointe so put a pin in that come back to that but then he also wants me to know and the listeners to know he

says he got you your book deal so what say you rick about this uh mclean hunter tv show and also did dave bedini get you your book deal now that you're a prolific author he did he did yeah okay so first kirk lepoint so i knew him when he was a young and, you know, pimply high school kind of, just out of high school kind of thing. Okay. So Triumph is on the rise, you know, and in those days, and Kirk was too. He had a cable show in Etobicoke where he would interview people. And it was a call-in show, which, you know. Scarlet Road, right? Scarlet Road?

Yeah, somewhere around there. Yeah, I know this building. I've been there. Keep going. This is great. Yeah, and so Kirk would interview rock stars or, you know, up-and-coming rock stars. rock stars and or you know up and coming rock stars and in this interview at one point and am I allowed to swear on the cable show?

You can swear. So he gets a phone in call where somebody says to him hey Kirk and he goes yes and they go hey Kirk why don't you eat shit and die? You know? So he has to push the button and say, Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, you know,

and he looks at me and he's going like, yeah, this stuff happens, you know? And he goes, okay, get a couple more calls into the show and he presses the button and a crow goes, Hey Rick, I'd really like to, you know, and he has to hit the button again. She did get a little more out, but I'm not going to say. And so, um, I, now I'm sitting there staring at him and he's looking at me and I go, well, Kirk, I liked my invitation better than yours. Anyways,

he went on to become a heavy duty newspaper editor kind of guy and then he was working for CTV for a while running. I think he ran the programming there or something. I, anyhow, he moved up in the world and right. You know,

I moved sideways, but Bedini got you the book deal. What's this? He's taking full credit for this great new book. I, I, I, uh,

I, I'm a supporter of his west end phoenix and and i he'd invited me out to play and i played a fundraiser thing for him one year and then i was thinking about this book of poetry and he said you know who would be a really good editor for you is that michael holmes at ecw press And so he was the one that sort of opened up that conversation between Michael and I, and we really did hit it off, and I really do like Michael. And yeah, so now I've gone on and written my memoir. Now, I think the truth of the matter is, you know, Dave can try to take credit for landing the deal, but I think my own wiles were such that I said, you know, if I go to them and I say,

look, I want you to put out a book of poetry. Nobody really wants a book of poetry from an old rock star. But if I also give you a deal where I promise I'll do a memoir later down the road. So that was, I think that was the clincher. Dave set it up, but I think I was the one that, you know, put the puck in the net, as it were. Well, speaking of pucks and net, I'll just tell you, there's a recent episode of Toronto Mic'd where Ken Reid from Sportsnet was here, and he talked about how much he loved your book of poetry. And I thought it was great too. So there are a number of people who read and enjoyed your book of poetry.

Thank you. Yes. Well, uh, I, I, I love the fact that it gave me, uh, just another tangent for creativity as I'm getting older. And, um, I, it really did take my level of appreciation of writing. Because, I mean, I've been a songwriter all my life. And, of course, I wrote columns for guitar magazines. And, you know, I've done a lot of writing. But in a very sort of Margaret Atwood way, when you write poetry,

you're taking your writing down to this place of distillation and packing and unpacking kind of stuff so that as a writer in so many other ways. And then I took this stuff that I'd done of writing the poetry book and writing the memoir, and then I took it into writing guitar pieces again, coming back to something that I know a fair bit about. guitar pieces again, coming back to something that I know a fair bit about, but now being able to apply this. Yeah, it was, it was really cool from an artistic perspective.

Poetry really is something. It really is its own thing that reflects onto other, other approaches and other creative endeavors. Without a doubt. Shout out to the late, great Leonard Cohen. Yeah, yeah, for sure yes indeed you mentioned uh you know scribes uh people writing about music and newspapers you mentioned briefly and i got a nice comment from brad wheeler who's listening right now brad writes for the Globe and Mail. Brad says, the world needs a Triumph Rush super group, a farewell to the sport of kings.

Can Rick make it happen? And you know what? I'm going to tie this with another question that came in because Brad Wheeler is looking for the Triumph Rush super group. He wants you to make it happen. We'll get back to that. Jim Bromanco, who I actually saw the Trans-Canada Highwaymen with

at the Horseshoe like two weeks ago. And that's kind of a fun new Canadians, you know, super group. Jim writes, Rick, have you ever thought of putting together a Canadian hard rock super group? You could try to recruit Alex Lifeson from Rush and Brian Greenway from April Wine. and Brian Greenway from April Wine. I'm not sure who would play drums, but multi-talented Chris Murphy from Sloan appears to always be open to joining Canadian supergroups. So, Rick, what do you say to Brad Wheeler and Jim Romanco

who are trying to put you in a Canadian hard rock supergroup? Okay. Well, jeez. Well, I got a lot of thoughts. For the first thought I have is um uh i have been trying to learn how to say no and it's a really hard word you know for me um and and okay so and i said yes i'm going to sweden to play a gig on new year's the junior world hockey championships happen and some friends of mine have a band that uh

gets together and it's not a super group but it's a pretty damn good one and it's got larry gowan's brother terrence is playing bass and um the drummer is a guy named mike shotten that i know very well and i've made a record with him in the past and um and bob mccalpine's playing some guitar and uh and And Gavin Hope is one of the singers And anyway So they said, Rick Why don't you come, we'll do some triumph songs We'll do some of the

And you can write new arrangements If you like, and we're going to have a string quartet And my friend Claudio Vena Is going to go there and wrangle up Three Swedish string players And there's going to be there and wrangle up three Swedish string players. And there's going to be a horn section. I go, triumph songs with horns and strings. I go, okay, I can't resist.

Yes. All right, I'll come. So I'm going to Sweden to play. But I haven't played a live gig in years now, like literally years. So that's the first part of the answer. The second part, when it comes to getty and alex yeah uh let me just say that you know the my news feed because i tend to uh in my news feed i get a lot of guitar magazine stuff and and you know those kinds of things so i've been absolutely

inundated with getty lately right um his book is out, his memoir is out and it's great and it's full of amazing stories and then he did these really clever high end things of playing live, going out and doing these live interview things and dragging his friends out to

interview him and he got Alex up here in Toronto and okay so having said all that i understand the brotherhood of a trio you know i was in one for a long time and um that thing of of uh fraternity you see it that that alex and getty have it and they had it with neil and then the fact that that's gone but i really sense that there's something afoot there i could see those guys but i don't think they'd want to do a super group i think they would want to try to find drummers that can fit you know that uh you know and i don't it's hard to imagine that somebody

could you know sit on Neil's throne as it were you know but I think that's probably where they might go for a couple of things I don't think they'd want to be doing a super group I honestly don't and Alex

sat in the other day with Tool he got up on stage at Massey Hall and played with Tool. So I go, okay, well, you know, he's got the bug, you know. His juice is still flowing. I'm going to wait until after Sweden to find out if mine still is. Okay, let me know because you might know this, but Alex Lifeson has a new side project called, I guess it is not a side project of Rush is Retired,

but it's Envy of None, it's called. And playing drums in that band is FOTM David Quinton Steinberg, who takes my call, by the way. That is a brag. I just want to throw it out there. I can, you know, he takes my calls. Yeah, okay.

But I could make, I feel like I should, if you have any interest at all we'll see how sweden goes but i'll make a call with david quinton steinberg and see if the um everybody you know can get the triumph rush super group that they're aching for yeah well and he plays on uh those demos of of gettys that have just come out david was the drummer on that. Now I have a Steinberg story. Do you want to hear? Yeah, I would love it because he was with the mods.

I got to hear any Steinberg story you got. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so, uh, I was,

uh, teaching music business at Humber college and I booked him to come as a guest speaker one day, you know, I'm thinking, okay, music lawyer kind of guy, but he played drums and a band and he came and he he was in my class, and he was the most foul-mouthed guest speaker we ever had.

There were more expletives that escaped his lips during his 30-minute harangue. I went, you've got to love that. You've got to love a lawyer that's willing to swear. He played with Steve Bader's, right? Like, so it's going to rub off on the guy. And by the way, since you mentioned your, you're not technically a professor, right? You're a teacher. Yeah.

I never got a university degree. The only degree I have is the bruises on my head from the school. But I just want to shout you out because I've become good friends with the members of Mono Whales and they just wanted Juno for a breakthrough and when I had Mono Whales over to chat about their rising star

they gave enormous credit to you Rick Emmett as one of their teachers at Humber College for helping them immensely in their career. So I wonder what pride do you feel when you hear Mono Whales on the radio or you learn about yet another Juno Award or another sold out gig? How do you feel, Rick? I do feel a tremendous amount of, I'm not sure I want to call it pride, because I guess it is, but it's more like just happiness for them,

because it's a really, really hard thing to have that happen. And I had them all in different classes at different times. They were in my business classes. And here's the truism about Humber. When I was there teaching teaching often i was the one where jenny christianson god rest him he would come to me and say okay we have a problem child you know will you please take this problem child on and um the first one was sally she was the one in in you know the singer from the band she was in my business class

and i think she flunked the class you know already once or something uh and uh okay here's the story i like to tell about her so so i i she's asking me really good questions in class and stuff and i can tell she's smart and there's there's talent there and all of that kind of stuff but she's also the kind of you know kid that's looking out the window a lot you know not paying attention and you know that kind of stuff and then you know assignments she's having a really hard time you know uh handing them in on time or whatever i can't remember but so uh i i one day i said where i want to see after class and so we're standing in the hall and i say look uh i'm gonna do a thing with you where i

haven't done this with anybody else um there's a david bowie exhibit that's in town at the museum thing and uh and here's a link to the ont government, how to write marketing and business plans. So I want you to go and walk around the David Bowie thing and make notes, you know, do whatever you got to do. And then I want you to take this form, this template of the governments of how to write a book. And I want you to write me a marketing plan for your band based on what you learned from using David Bowie as a role model. Because I could just sense that this was something she'd get. And so I said, you don't have to come to class anymore. You don't have to do any other assignments. This is what you need to do for me and hand it in at the end of the term. And so when she handed it in, I said, this is worth 90s.

This has got to be like a 93, 94. I can't, there's nothing wrong with this. You know, this is fantastic. And of course, it was a thing that she was thinking about the motto was. Like, this is really inception. You know, it's not, they're not anywhere near down the road yet. But I don't know. The guitar player in, in my songwriting class,

I think with her at the same time, but also the drummer whose name I can't remember, but he, he might've been the smartest one of them all. Uh, he was the one that seemed to have the kind of the, the, the business guile marketing.

That's a Zack Sinardo. Oh, it's okay. The drummer's Jordan, uh, Sir Costa, Jordan. Yeah. And the guitarist Zach Zanardo. Oh, it's okay. The drummer's Jordan Cercosta. Jordan. And the guitarist is Zach Zanardo. Yeah, and Zach

was the one that was the most kind of rock star, Keith Richards. You know, I wasn't sure that they could, yeah, whatever. So, but yeah, I loved the band. I loved what they were about. And I taught all of them.

They had a keyboard player named Holly, too, that was with them. She was in my songwriting class for a while. I don't think she's in the band anymore. I think she's in Good Night Sunrise or something. I feel like she's got her own thing going on, but I don't, yeah, I got to look into that. Yeah, well uh they were all gifted creative folks and i'm i'm really happy that you know they've been able to keep it together i can remember sitting down with the ones and having that classic discussion of you know here's

the songwriter kind of front person and she's going well they're making the rhythm sections making noises about wanting a piece of the action. And I go, well, you're going to have to work this one out for sure because this goes right to the heart of why the Beatles broke up and why the police broke up. So figure it out early if you can. But imagine if you are an aspiring trio, because you're right, they became a trio at some point,

Mono Whales, and that's where they've had this success. But imagine you're an aspiring trio and you're able to be mentored by a member of one of the world's great trios like Rick Emmett is your mentor. That's a pretty sweet situation for the band. No wonder they're having success.

Well, you know, yeah, okay. Yeah, you can just take it. Just take it. My own horn. Well, here, let me just burn through just a couple more to boost your, as if you need your ego boosted on Toronto Mike. But Darren wrote in when he heard you were returning.

He said, very simple little sentence. He said, thank you for the music, Rick. There's a lot of that sentiment. Just thank you for the music. There's still people tonight who are going to throw late on the line and all these great songs. Hamilton Mike wrote in and said, I'm just a big fan

of his songwriting, his guitar playing, and that he is quintessentially a regular down-to-earth guy at heart. Being a rock star must be hella fun, but being a decent human being is always better. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, I've tried to sort of be that kind of a person. And to me,

the biggest thing was always that I wanted to, well, first, my, and this is in my memoir, you know, lay it on the line clearly all the time that my family always came first. That was always my, my, my biggest priority. Even though the career is something that gets in the way and, and eats up too much time and takes too much energy and stuff. But, you know,

the most important people in the on the planet to me are my are my kids and my wife and so that's a pretty straightforward ordinary you know it's not really a rock star kind of thing to to have as a priority but for me it was and then the next thing was music and creativity and art. And that wasn't necessarily career. And I think there's a lot of rock stars where the career thing is really important. You know, have they got the right haircut? Have they got the right shoes?

And I think even David Lee Roth, there's a quote of his where it was like, look, at a certain point, rock and roll, it's all about your haircut and your shoes. And it is kind of, you know, that there's a side of it where. But I mean, when I would teach my music business classes, the first day I would write on the board a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, which was like, you know, the music business is a long, shallow, plastic hallway filled with pimps and thieves and murderers and, you know, where good men go to die like dogs. There's also a negative side. And I would write that on the board and I would say, this is really, you have to understand that this is kind of the truth, that this is not an easy thing that you're just you're you know hoping to you're setting out to try and accomplish and you're going to have to have a hide as thick as

a rhinoceros because there is going to be all of this bad negative stuff but you always got to kind of emerge smelling like roses and going, yeah, that's okay. I make music for a living. I'm an artist. That's what I do. And as long as that will always resurrect you and save you, then you're good, you know. And by the way, you know, those monowales, I think they understood that very well. Absolutely.

Earlier, I had a question for you from Jim, who's trying to get you in the super group with Chris Murphy, who's already in like four other super groups, so I don't know how he's going to fit you in. But Jim mentioned April Wine, and we recently lost FOTM Miles Goodwin. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. When I think of 70s Canadian rock stars,

I think of April Wine, I think of Triumph. I wondered if you had any words to say about the late Miles Goodwin. Oh, I have lots of stories. April Wine opened for Triumph on a run of dates in Texas back in the day, and we shared bills with them. And then, you know, later on in my career, I would play on a bill with them.

You know, I can't remember, like Kingston or someplace like that where, you know, my band played in the afternoon and those guys were playing in the evening. And Miles, I think Gil Moore, the drummer from Triumph, I think he ended up having a tighter kind of a relationship with Miles and knew him better than I did. And, of course, I was always yakking up the other guitar players, Brian and I can't remember the guy that was one of the original guitar players in the band. And they always had like three of them or four of them because Miles played too.

And they would have all of these you know harmony guitar parts and and and brian had a uh his own record deal at one point too in the states um anyways uh david henman sorry just help me out though was it david henman the uh the guitarist you're thinking of one of of the brothers? He didn't last. And of course, one of the most gregarious guys in that band was Jerry, the drummer, Jerry Mercer. And

he was a lovely guy to be able to chat with and hang with. Yeah, it was a great band. And the records that they made where they had, I think, Mike Stone produced. And so the vocals were, oh, you know, big and wide and shiny like Journey records, you know. And great, great guitar harmony parts and stuff. And Miles was always kind of a serious guy, you know.

There wasn't a lot of laughter in his lifestyle. But he was an astute business guy. At one point, he did what the... There was a Canadian cartoonist, maybe Donato or somebody like that, that had gone and become one of the guys that lived in the Caymans or something.

And then Miles did exactly the same thing. He went and lived in Bahamas or the Caymans for a while because he was tax sheltered. There's a guy that's he's thought a few things through that guy.

Alright, while we're remembering, I just want to take this opportunity to point out since your last appearance on Toronto Mic'd, we lost both of the founders of Attic Records. We lost FOTM Alex Mayer and we lost Tom Williams. And of course, as we discussed in your first visit, Rick, Attic Records was a big part of like making Triumph happen. And I'm wondering if you have any words about Alexander Mayer and Tom Williams

at Attic Records. Well, I mean, obviously, yeah, we owed the first rung on the ladder of, you know, trying to climb up was the fact that this story has been told a few times but when when gill and mike came to recruit me into triumph they came to the hollywood tavern in etobicoke and uh they sat at a table and that way i played a set and then i came over to talk to them because they were there to try and recruit me and i was not necessarily sold on the thing but when i was sitting at the table levine who by way, at the time had a beard that made him look like Moses. And he slid this check and I can't remember if it was $1,000 or $10,000, but whatever. It was Attic

Records with the Attic Records logo on it. And they said, yeah, well, we've got a deal with Attic. We've got a single that's coming out and then we're going to make an album if they like the band. So, you know, that's coming out and then we're gonna have you know we can make an album if they like the band so you know that's what we want we want you in the band because they're gonna like you and uh yeah i went a record company wow we're gonna be able to make a record

it was a it was a very and that was really because mike levine knew Tom Williams very well and they were pals because of uh marketing records and doing record promo and so they knew each other from that um yeah from that bailiwick and and so Tom was the first guy that I met and then al had been the guy that had uh he'd been gordon lightfoot's sort of manager publishing kind of guy and then it got bought out and the money that i think that when lightfoot finally said you know what i'm buying you out al you know i want my own catalog back i'm going to run it myself thank you very much i think al took the money and decided hey i'm going to partner up with tom and start this this label, an indie record label. So when I met Al, I was very intimidated by him.

You know, stern-looking guy with, you know, the big glasses and, oh, this was a guy, you know, connected to Gordie Lightfoot. So that was like, ooh, you know, that was as high up in the Canadian music business as you could get, you know. So anyhow, they both turned out to be great guys and they were believers. They did like me, you know, the Triumph guys were right. And they believed in my ability and my talent. And that was a nice thing.

And they believed in my ability and my talent. And that was a nice thing. And then even years later, Al, you know, would make noises about wanting to sign me again. And I'd be going like, hey, Al, you know, thanks. But, you know, maybe I'll start my own little label or something. I don't know what I'm going to do. But, you know, anyways, Al was great. And then when he got inducted into Psalm Court, it was the Canadian independent music, something like that.

I got up at the thing and sang an acoustic version of Lead on the line to Al. I did a shout out to him in the lyrics and stuff. Yeah, it was good fun. So you mentioned Gilmore and Mike Levine finding you at Hollywood Tavern. I just want to take a moment here because I'm speaking to you from South Etobicoke, and I could probably throw a stone and hit that location. But I don't think everybody knows this, but Hollywood Tavern on the Queensway, that became the House of Lancaster.

So I know it. I knew it. Now it's gone. They demolished it, shut out the Ridley Funeral Home. But Hollywood Tavern is the building that became the House of Lancaster on Queensway, not too far east of rural York, basically. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

And I can remember it. Now, it wasn't all of the Blue Rodeo guys, but I went to high school and Basil Donovan, who is a bass player from Blue Rodeo, he had a group of musician pals. And when we were playing there with Act Three, they came one night and they were all sitting at a table and shouting out requests for yes material.

I do remember that. Like trying to challenge me in the third or fourth set of the night. Yeah, but can you play mood for a day? Can you play the clap? Love it. Love it. Hey, so again, we've established this is Rick Emmett's second appearance. And I'm about to get into the book here, of course,

because I have a great comment from Steven about it. But I didn't ask you a question the first time you were on, Rick, and it haunted me ever since. I'm glad Blair told you to get your butt back on Toronto Mike. This is good news for me. So here's the question. In 1985, there was a charity single for African famine relief. Tears are not enough.

Bruce Allen, David Foster, we we all know the kind of the story but Rick Emmett that's you you're not to be heard on tears are not enough and I need for the record definitively I need to find out were you asked to be a part of tears are not enough

yes I was and I was on tour and we were in I even recall we had done a thing where we played some Florida dates and then we were driving around the Gulf and we were just out of Louisiana, kind of, and maybe into Texas. the town but a motel and there was no way i could have gotten a flight and made it up and then made it back to the next gig and it was pissing rain it was a horrible weather thing that was going on down in the gulf at this point and uh but they had invited me and uh and i really wanted to do it and i think i was trying to negotiate like well could I film something and send it up again? You know, could I, could I participate in some other, but they were, they kind of went,

well, you know, we got lots of other folks we can, we can slot in there. So, and I felt bad because it would have been a great thing to be a part of, you know, um, plus I didn't know a lot of those people so and that would have been a nice thing to maybe be able to show up at the studio and and you know i've i've never met brian i have met david foster uh and that was great that was at the last uh walk of fame thing that we that we did he he was there and and uh sort of the the night the party before the night they have all the people come for a dinner and stuff wow and david up and play piano and sang some songs and sort of was the mc and and uh he's an extremely gregarious

kind of hollywood style. Lots of energy. He's great. So, anyhow. So, you wished you could have been a part of it. I'm glad to hear you were invited because I just talked to Randy Backman and he did not get invited because Bruce Allen was pissed at some BTO deal

that went south or something and slighted Randy. So, Randy never got the call to participate, but you got the call. You just were unavailable due to a scheduling conflict. Yeah, I never got the call personally, but I think they'd called like the office and then the office had let,

and then at the time, cell phones were probably, I think. No, 85. I don't think there were any hanging around cell phones. So those guys would have uh you know been the ones that were checking in with the office i never did you know and then they probably came to me at a sound check or something and said hey you know the tears are not enough people i'm not sure they called it that it you know at that point you

know that's in the wake of it that it's called the tears are not enough thing but whatever it was like hey foster and adams are looking yeah so anyhow um so a couple quick little tidbits because i i'm mildly fascinated with this charity single but one is that it turns out so it turns out leonard cohen also was in copenhagen or something and couldn't be in two places at once but they did make an exception. There is one individual who had a scheduling conflict and they literally flew, Jim Valance, I think, flew to Germany to record him separately and bring the tapes back to Toronto. And that was Bruce Colburn. So apparently, Rick, you're no Bruce Colburn.

No, no. And I would admit that quite readily. Yeah, no, you're no Bruce Coburn. No, no. And I would admit that quite readily. Yeah, no, I'm no Bruce Coburn. And Bruce and I have done a television show together and played together, had rehearsals together. You know, I like it was kind of like I was sitting in with this band. Wow. And it was it was really a lot of fun. There was a thing called In Session that they used to do

in Hamilton. Yeah. And I've always been a tremendous admirer of Bruce. He also came, when I was running the song studio thing at Humber in the summertime and Blair and I, that was

a workshop thing that we started. We gave him an award one year. It was a way to sort of get him to come out and appear and I, that was a workshop thing that we started. We gave him an award one year. It was a way to sort of get him to come out and appear and do a little speech and be there for an afternoon lunch kind of thing. Him and Bernie Finkelstein came. he's a very intense

guy, but Bruce does have a sense of humor, and he's just a very intensely gifted kind of artist, so that there can be

a level of intimidation. I can understand why they would want him. He was maybe a little even more iconic in the whole Canadian music industry thing than I was, being in, being in triumph. I mean, triumph was always, you know, overshadowed by the whole rush thing in any case. Right. So, you know, there was nobody that really overshadowed Bruce, you know, like.

What about Neil Young? Okay. Okay. Everybody gets overshadowed by somebody, but you brought up the triumph rush thing. So I'm going to slide right into Stephen's question. Stephen writes, I read Rick's autobiography and he came off as super smart and a good person. I'll pause

for you to take a bow. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. He's definitely one musician you can be proud to be a fan of. Of course, there are many others, but in these times of me too he sticks out as genuine and decent so this is steven talking then it gets to the the question do you rick emmett ever get tired of the comparisons between triumph and rush

to kick-ass rock trios to come out of toronto and with your voice, the comparisons were inevitable. Do you ever get tired? Well, you know, there's a petty side of me that goes, yes, I'm tired of it. But, you know, the larger part of me thinks we were lucky that their coattails were... I've said this many times in interviews, you know, Rush is a, they're a one-of-a-kind kind of band in the world of bands.

So, and I would say they're in a class where, for example, Yes would be a band like that. Pink Floyd would be a band like that. Rush is a band like that. They're progressive, but they're kind of hard-wrought. Dream Theater is kind of a band like that. They're progressive, but they're kind of hard-wrought. Dream Theater is kind of a band like that, you know. Triumph was not a band like any of those

kinds of bands. When I was in it, I tried to push it to become a band that would be kind of a band like that. And I think some of the material that i wrote could have taken it towards but the other two guys in triumph were not really those kinds of artists musicians they really weren't that's not how they saw the band you know um and you know i'm fine with all of that i don't have any unhappiness about any of that. The Rush thing was about an ensemble playing ensemble style progressive rock where the parts

that they come up with are really, really important to what the music is about. It's not really song oriented and Triumph really always had a very song focused orientation, you know,

um, and relatively straightforward kinds of songs, songs that you would hope would get on the radio, not because they were selling a band's image or a band's musicality, but because radio would go, yeah, this is something we can really play, you know?

Um, and, uh, yeah, so there was a big difference between us and Rush in the way that we approach things. But, of course, that superficial thing, you're a trio from Toronto with a, you know, a soprano lead singer. Right. It's like, yeah. Well, no, thanks for the,

the honesty there. David has a question. He writes, after swearing that he'd never play with Triumph again, and then in parentheses,

I love that band. Why did Rick agree to the reunion in Europe a couple of years ago? And why wasn't there a hometown Toronto show? Right.

Okay. So the person that said he would never play with Triumph again was a person that I decided I didn't want to be. And in the same way that I guess the guys in the Eagles kind of went, you know what, I think I can be a better person. I think hell can freeze over because I think, you know, I want to see if I can't. There was a song that Don Henley wrote,

I think it was called Heart of the Matter, and the lyric was something along the lines of you keep carrying around that anger it's going to eat you up inside or something along those lines and um that my brother had talked me into like look you know you got to do this for me he was dying of cancer at the time and and that was the thing that sort of pushed me so where i went okay i have to try and find out if i can be a a bigger person you know uh have a smaller ego and be a better person so um that was what started and then once i i sat down and talked to them and we did some of those music industry hall of fame kinds of things, I realized I'm a lot better for having my brothers back,

these two guys that I've been in the trenches with, than to be standing on my own stupid pride. So that was why I did. And we went to Sweden because we thought, well, you know, if we really fuck it up, you know, we're on the other side of the world, no one will really know. So I think, honestly, I think that was part of it.

But I also think that when we said yes to that, then our agent came back and said, well, two weeks later, you can play a rock, Oklahoma down in Oklahoma. And we went, okay. And then we thought,

Hey, if we say okay to these things, there's probably going to be more. And I think we did have an expectation that there was going to be more. And we played a couple of them. And then Gil went, I think I've had enough. I think I don't want to have to do this anymore.

So that was why there was never a Toronto one, because I think Gil kind of felt like, and, you know, when you're asking a guy in his 70s to play drums and sing, I mean, ask Phil Collins, how's it going? You know, like, it's a tough thing. They end up having problems with their backs and arthritis and stuff and and uh and it

gets debilitating to the point where they can't really do it and gil sang half the tunes right so not only are you asking the guy to yeah so it was it was it was a big ask to keep going to play more gigs so we didn't mark says can you ask rick emmett's uh opinion on the triumph album they made without him recruiting phil x who subsequently replaced richie sambora in bon jovi yes yes um well first of all i love phil and i think he's an incredibly great guitarist. I liked when I first heard him play on Frozen Ghost Records, I went, hey, this guy, he's special. He really is good. And he really is.

He's a tremendous electric guitar player. And I think one of the things about that album, Edge of Excess, is that you can hear what Gil kind of thought the band Triumph should be. And Triumph was always kind of his band. He was the leader on contracts. I've said this in the documentary.

One of the reasons we had that horrible thing that happened on the Sport of Kings Records with Ron Nevison was that Ron didn't realize that Triumph was Gil's band. He was trying to take songs away from Gil and make me be the singer. And I went, it ain't going to fly, Ron. You don't understand how this is formulated.

So when I left and then Gil went, OK, I'm going to try to make this band be something that this is the way I see it. I think that's there you go and I was trying to work with that and work inside that when I was in it but um there you know uh I would sometimes have to push at at Gil and Mike in order to get them to accept some of the things that I wanted to do, you know, to do. And my side of the band, there would be, you know, acoustic guitar pieces on records and there would be songs that started with acoustic and I'd be singing them like I was, you know, James Taylor or whatever, you know, and then the songs would blossom and get bigger. And that whole sort of, I don't know what you'd call it, symphonic approach to making records, like the Brian Wilson Beach Boys thing, where it starts out with one thing, and then before you know it, there's been a key change, and oh my God, now there's been a tempo change,

and now you get something. And it's all happening in three and a half minutes. There was a time when radio embraced that and man that was the triumph that I really thought this is great the Allied Forces album Fight the Good Fight Magic Power that kind of stuff that was

right up my alley of this is what I want Triumph to be but I think Gil always wanted it to be the kind of band that could fit on the US Festival Day with Ozzy and Judas Priest and Scorpions and all that kind of stuff. He wanted something that was more driving and straight ahead. So, you know, hey, it was what it was.

And I don't have anything bad to say about that record or about phil you know there was a time was a jim norris the canadian musician magazine he set up a thing once it was at the phoenix or something it was a snowy wintry day and this was i just left triumph and jim phoned me and he said look i hope you don't mind but i've invited phil x too he's going to be there is that okay and? And I went, yeah, it's perfectly fine. Sure. That's fine. And I'd never, I'd never actually met him, you know, in person. And so when I, when I met him at this thing, I walked up to him and I shook his hand and I held his hand tight and looked him right in the eye. And I said, man,

I wish you all the best. No one on the planet earth knows more about what you're getting yourself into than me. And I want to wish you all the very best. That's true. I was good with him, you know. Before I met him, I was good with him. But after that, I think we were good. We were tight. It was cool.

Love it. All right. Midtown Gord, he's listening right now. Midtown Gord writes, Hey Mike, I have a comment and a kind of awkward question for Rick. Okay. I've been a longtime fan. I had, this is for you, Rick. I had your book before the official release date and I couldn't put it down. By the way, everybody, this is Mike talking now. Lay it on the line, a backstage pass to Rockstar Adventure Conflict and and triumph is available now and all these stories and more in the book and it's fantastic but back to gordon's note he goes as i read i was stuck by the fact that you and jeanette lived at 5 30 dufferin street when you were married when i

googled it for shits and giggles i see it was near dufferin and Gordon. Well, when I was first married in 1991, we lived at Sheridan, just on the other end of Gordon Street. So it is fitting that Gordon Enright and Richard Gordon Emmett each lived at the end of Gordon Street, although at different times. My question.

I appreciate, yeah, lots going on here. I appreciate that you were straightforward with your feelings and experiences in this book. And I am disappointed in other Triumph fans complaining that you seem to not look too fondly on your Triumph days. Their opinion, not mine. How do you feel about those comments, Rick? Well, one of the things that I've discovered about writing a memoir and putting it out, maybe this is true of any author that writes a book and you put it out, the people that read it, they're going to interpret it and they're going to be revealing things about themselves in the way that they read it and the way that they interpret it. in the way that they read it and the way that they interpret it, as opposed to necessarily, A, what I put in there,

and B, what the majority of folks might think is in there. You're going to have, yeah. And, I mean, you know, at one point my wife, she says, oh, read me an Amazon review. And she goes, some guy goes guy goes ah this is bullshit it says triumph on the cover and there's hardly anything in there and i wanted more dirt about triumphant there's there's only one chapter in there about triumph what the hell you know and so i go yeah okay well that's his uh opinion you know and he's entitled to that. And I won't say that that's wrong, you know. But my life, I've had 70 years of it, and Triumph was 13. So, you know, it's only going to be one

chapter because it's my book. And I'm going well the triumph chapter and i didn't want to get into a lot of dirt about the band i really didn't uh because i don't think the other guys deserve that i don't think the legacy deserves that uh i think i was pretty fair and i think i uh i get to see gil and mike still when we have Christmas dinner together and you know yeah we always try to get together every year and have a Christmas dinner and I

get along good with those guys Gil let me come into the metal works last week we had two rehearsals for the Sweden thing like I have a good relationship with those guys and I didn't want to do anything in my memoir that was going to put that in any kind of jeopardy or I I mean I had friends of mine and lawyers read it to make sure that there was nothing that would be litigious I you know so

if somebody thinks that you know I was I gave an impression of not being happy about the triumph years. Man, I go, well, that's kind of news to me. Yeah. I mean, hey, I left it. I gave my notice and I left the band. So obviously, you know, at the end, I wasn't too happy. And then, okay, there were 20 years where I didn't really talk to those guys. Okay.

Still, you know, I managed to figure it out in a lifetime. That's pretty good. Well, you managed to lay it on the line, by the way, writing a memoir,

does that mean it's time to die? Like you have many good years left. You're not done yet. Actually, exactly. No. And yes, there's something very surreal about doing these,

these, you know, the round of interviews and stuff to promo and everything's you're talking about everything in the past tense and I feel like you know the Monty Python thing where a guy goes I'm not dead yet bring out your dead

no I'm not dead I feel like going for a walk you're on your last legs yeah so I feel like what's happened here is I'm going for a walk. You're on your last legs. Yeah, so I feel like what's happened here is I've kind of come to the end of Act 2, and Act 3 has begun in my life, and it's about writing. I wrote a book of poetry. I wrote this memoir, and I'm going to keep doing it. And I don't feel like I'm going to ever stop being creative.

But, you know, back to one of your earlier questions, do I feel like going back out on the road to play gigs in some super group, you know, and having to do sound checks where I have to tell Alex Lifeson his amp is too loud? I'm going, Alex, you're killing me here. It's too loud. Turn it down. You know, which which by the way

bruce coburn told me once at a rare so can you turn your amp down rick it's a little too loud um yeah so you know i honestly i i i don't want to do that but my life is not over you know i i intend to have a lot of fun in the next 25 or 30 years i like rick i like that act three begins now because act three was uh you were in act three before triumph i was i was and we once had a guy come to us at a bar gig yeah and he goes oh and three the final act the the the last act And we're going, yeah, okay. What have you been smoking? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, Act 3. Speaking of, I mentioned Act 3, the Blinding Light show,

is that the only Act 3 song that you brought to triumph? Yeah. Well, yes. It was the only one that made any sense. Act 3 had been a very progressive kind of entity. And I'm not afraid to try

We would play a set where we would play Queen songs And excerpts from Albert Lee's head, hands and feet Chris Brockway, the bass player in that band Tremendously gifted musician And we liked Yes and Channel Giant Chris Brockway, the bass player in that band, tremendously gifted musician. And we liked Yes and Channel Giant and King Crimson. There was a lot of things that we did. And the drummer Denton Young, he went on to have a band called Zahn,

and it was very theatrical. And he would sing like Queen's Sheer Heart Attack, Stone Cold Crazy. That was the song. So the band was very adventurous. And then when I went to play with Triumph, it wasn't going to be, I was going to have to push to try to get it to be adventurous. And Blinding Light show was one of the

things that could sort of fall into the wheelhouse but there's a riff in the blinding light show it goes like um it went like a but when we wrote it in Act 3, it was like... Like it was in a bar of nine, you know? And so when I played it for the Triumph guys, they go, can we make that be in 4-4? And I think the... It was also in like 7 or something right

so once I made those adjustments Triumph was like okay we can do that now Rick I know I asked for an hour and I now see I've taken the hour I have like listeners of your listeners of mine who love Triumph and love Rick Emmett

can I just burn can I get 10 more minutes? Yes, you can. You're right, you have trouble saying no so maybe I should ask for 20 minutes. No. You got to work on saying no. Okay, so I'll burn through this. Yeah, sorry. You know why I like going on Toronto, Mike? Because you

teach me how to say no and I like that. Well, we'll see. When I get to hour three, we'll see if I get a no out of you. Okay. Almost done. Mike from K-Dub. I have COVID. Come on, stop.

I know, but you sound great for a guy with COVID. You're one of the lucky ones, I think. I'm feeling better. No brain fog for you. Okay. Mike from K-Dub. No brain fog for you. Okay, Mike from K-Dub.

Curious what Rick Emmett thinks of the Burton Cummings-Randy Backman lawsuit against their former bandmates, saying they're a guess who cover band. Fighting words for sure. Any thoughts on this for Mike from K-Dub? This is an ongoing lawsuit. Yeah, well, I think it's an interesting thing of course that uh i think it was kale that ended jim kale ended up with owning the name because at a certain point both burton and randy had gone well we've gone off for our own careers and we're doing great and then you know the thing you realize about legacy is that it takes about 20 or 30 years before you realize, hey, guess who had a better legacy than my own solo career did?

Jeez. You know, so I don't know. people always give me credit for and praise is this whole thing of sort of being a nice guy and integrity and ethics and stuff and that's a double-edged sword you know um so this is what i have to say about this situation integrity when uh john bonham died and Led Zeppelin decided, yeah, you know what, without him, it's not Led Zeppelin. So we're not going to do Led Zeppelin anymore.

There was an integrity to that, that I really appreciated. I thought this is the way it should go, you know? But having said that, I also understand the reality of stuff. And Bonham and, sorry, Planton and Page, John Paul Jones, they're entitled, because they were a part of what it was, they are entitled to move on with their life and then evolve or mutate whatever led zeppelin might have been into whatever you know um so in the in the bachman uh cummings case they were the principal songwriters they were the

you know the singers um and i think it's a really unfortunate thing that what ended up happening was this kind of pale comparison to what the original was ends up becoming a cash cow for somebody that's taking it out. think the uh i don't quote me on this but uh i'm gonna go ahead and say it anyways i think at one point chicago you know the chicago transit authority because it was such a huge band they literally could have two versions of chicago out touring one in the summertime one playing the sheds in the west coast and one you know playing on the east coast and a couple of the guys in the band would be over in that one and a couple of the guys in the band would be over in the other one and they could call them both chicago and they weren't lying you know and you go well i don't know that sort of seems like you're stretching the integrity of the thing right you know uh maybe further than I could personally. But I don't think, honestly, here's what I take now as a music business teacher, all right?

Judges in a court of law will often opt for the law. They look for what the language in the contract says and if kale owns that brand name and the right to be able to exploit it i think bachman and and cummings have got a tough road in a court of law i think what they're hoping to do is have the guy go, all right, all right, all right. I'll settle. Just give me, write me one more check and I'll call. Hey, you know, um,

but that's just because I used to have to teach a little bit of music business. Oh, and that's my understanding of stuff. Very interesting perspective. Jim writes, Hey Rick, back in the 1990s,

our Mississauga softball team called Fishbone played your team a few times. You remember Fishbone? I do. They were a fantastic team. I loved that team because they were named after a band. Are you kidding me? Right. So Jim writes, I seem to remember it was a family affair with your brother and father as a coach, also on the squad.

I also remember for a so-called older guy in his 40s, from our mid-20s perspective, you still had very good wheels and could motor around the bases at a very good clip. After the game, you dropped by our picnic table to say hello. I decided to point out that you really did lay it on the line tonight. My teammates groaned, but you were good-natured about it, which I thought was very nice of you. How often does happen if ever is the question from jim like do people tell

you you really laid it on the line tonight uh rick yeah it's yeah it does come up from time to time yes um it's okay you know and i like it and uh i yeah that it's great that uh you know, and I like it. And I, yeah, it's great that doing the show and I get to hear these kinds of things, you know. That's a sweet memory. And we really did respect and like that team. There were some teams, I mean, you can imagine, you know, middle-aged guys playing slow-pitch softball. You know, sometimes it could turn into asshole and land in a hurry.

Rick, I played for 15 years in the RSPA slow pitch. I would often think, oh, I'm like a father. I'm going to be in a parking lot after this game throwing down. We're going to throw punches. It got really intense out there for slow pitch.

Yes, and we had some guys on our team that were good players but they you know they could sort of push the envelope towards uh-oh this game is you know it's getting a little out of hand you know right and i thought uh and my brother and my dad we weren't necessarily keen on that either you know but sometimes you sort of need some some good guys you know you want to have a competitive team anyhow um and at a certain point i the other thing about me which maybe your listeners don't know but i do have a kind of a short fuse Like my emotions can sometimes get the better of me. And so when I played sports, I had this thing.

I played to win. I was a real, I probably would have been a sort of a Kenny Linsman kind of a hockey player. The rat, absolutely. Slash Karl Amov's ankles kind of a guy. And that probably doesn't go well with this image. I keep trying to project it myself as a very ethical and wonderful human being.

Anyhow, it's really nice to that guy to what, what is the guy's name again? Jim Romanko. Well, Kim, Jim, Jim,

like a, yeah, Jim. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for writing in and reminding me of that uh that was great and i have a picture here in my studio of my brother and my dad me in those purple cadillac uniforms uh all standing like this and and you know posing and and we had some good Years there we won the championship one year Wow League 93 I think What year did he say it was

92 93 he just says that he doesn't Say specifically I don't think he just Said the 90s Yeah okay well We always love playing those guys because They had a they had a really nice Team attitude they were very Chill about the way they went about it.

They were like a rock band playing a gig, having fun, kind of like a baseball team. And we loved that about them. And they were good, too. They were a challenge to play. You still a big baseball fan? I am. Yeah, and I have friendships.

I know Gibby pretty good, John Gibbons, that managed the Jays, and occasionally hook up with him, emails or whatever. He had a podcast, and I think I did an interview on it once. Well, you know what? He had to stop the podcast because he's now part of the

coaching staff for the New York Mets. Yeah, yeah. Good for him. So he's back. Yes. All staff for the New York Mets. Yeah. Yeah. Good for him. He's back. All right. We're almost, you've been amazing,

Rick. I don't want to get a no from you. I'll be the first guy to get a no from you. So really quickly, Mark says, did Rick Emmett have a column in this Toronto star? I remember that, but I don't see anything online for the record.

Did you? Never had a column, but Gil had a, he knew Peter Goddard well and uh goddard would sometimes ask me to do guest reviews i reviewed an acdc movie once concert movie uh i think i might have written a thing once on new year's about what it meant to be canadian so i would have guessed things from time to time in the start. Right.

Peter Goddard missed. There's a guy that's missed. He was great. But in your book, it's funny. I'm reading your great memoir here, Lay It on the Line. And you noted a bad review from Jonathan Gross. And I just had Jonathan Gross here about maybe two months ago to talk about his career.

He co-wrote an episode of Seinf seinfeld which is kind of his claim to fame but uh it's interesting how much power these newspaper writers had back in the day like that power sadly the magic power if you will is gone but uh the peter goddard's the jonathan gross they wielded great power. They did, and I think that, you know, neither, well, let me try to put it in perspective. I think they didn't know the power they necessarily had,

which sometimes then led them to do things that they might have regretted. And the bands that we might have sort of thought that they had more powerted uh and the bands that um we might have sort of uh thought that they had more power than they really did and they might have thought they had more power than they really did which so that was the dynamic of it and i can remember once i think there was a triumph gig in town maybe it was wonderland or something gross was there jonathan gross and i ran into him like

i was walking up a thing and he was there and he was like a little, I seem to recall him kind of going, Hey, you know, sorry, like being a little sheepish or something. And I went, Hey, you know what? You've got a job to do and you're just doing your job. And I appreciate that. I understand that. And if you thought we deserved to get our ass kicked, then know that was your call that's not my call to make that was yours you know so uh will it stick with me and has it over the years sure but it's a funny thing that you know after a few months the thing that he wrote that i didn't have an original lick in my body it became a thing where the other guys in the band would tease me and say oh rick it wasn't a very good night you didn't have an original lick in my body, it became a thing where the other guys in the band would tease me and say,

oh, Rick, it wasn't a very good night. You didn't have an original lick in your body. And so it becomes this kind of, you know, you realize that you can take things really seriously and feel them intensely, but maybe they don't really have that layer. They're not what you think they are. Maybe you should just kind of let it go. So I let that go a long time ago.

Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed your return to Toronto, Mike. Rick, I feel like there's a third episode in you, so at some point we have to do this again. But if I may, listener Steve sent me he had a scrapbook and he sent me a picture of his scrapbook because in his scrapbook he kept the rider the triumph rider from canada jam so so i'm reading the rider which is wild so just in closing here and i think you credit uh you know mike levine for negotiating this in the book here but how did you end up closing canada jam and this getting everything in this writer like how it's quite the writer i almost want to read it but

tell me how that happened for canada jam well um the guy who was the promoter from woodstock was all was one of the guys that was the promoter behind canada gin is it mike lang michael lang i'm not sure about that i can't be sure about that um i i think in my book i did the research and I did come up with the name. Right. So anyhow, he came to see Triumph playing out in Calgary, I think it was. And Mike was, you know, having this conversation about trying to get onto the, and I think the Canada Jam people were going, well, we've got to have some Canadian representation. We've got to have some Canadian acts. And I think Mike was in there going, well, we've got to have some Canadian representation. We've got to have some Canadian acts. And I think Mike was in there going, well, you know,

you want us because we are the biggest thing happening in Canada right now on the rise. And it maybe wasn't true, but then this guy came and saw us play and we're blowing off our flash pots and shooting off our, you know, our flamethrower and stuff. And he was going, yeah, like, wow. Okay. You know, I, I definitely want to go to the bandwagon here.

So, you know, you guys will be the first act of the show or whatever. And Mike goes, oh, no, no, no. We have to close the show. And he goes, well, no, but you can't close the show. Yeah. Well, you know, we've got to have our, our big sign and we've got to have our flash pots and we've got to have our, and the guy goes, no, no, no, we've got to have our big sign, and we've got to have our flash pots, and we've got to have our... And the guy goes, no, no, no,

nobody's going to have any of that stuff. We've got the village people, and we've got the Kansas, and we've got the Commodores, and it's going to be this big, long day of all these actions. We're not letting anybody have any special effects. You're all going to use the same PA,

the same lights, and it's going to be a favorite nations kind of thing and Mike went well we'll go on last and then that won't be an issue and the guy went you want to go on last because you realize that you know Jimi Hendrix went on at 6

in the morning because he wanted to go on last at Woodstock you realize you want to go on last yeah we won't go on last and we went on it was like 3 to go on last. Yeah, we want to go on last. And we went on. It was like 3.30 in the morning when we finally went on stage and played. But here's the thing, right? Yeah. All of the Canadian acts that were looking at this thing from afar going,

what the hell is Triumph doing on that bill? Like, they don't belong there. Hey, you know, like the guys from, I don't know there hey you know like the guys from i don't know trooper or street heart or whatever are going like we've already sold three times the albums those guys have ever sold what why are they on the act and we're not and so then they're going what they closed the show they were the headliner and so that's a superficial thing you know people go ahead when you close a big outdoor show you're not a headliner not the headliners are you know eight o'clock at night and they're going to be home in their beds well fed you know but no so it was a horrible gig to have to play misty dew of late August night. But

having said all that, then we played the show and we're trying to tell everybody after the fact, like, oh yeah, it was a great show. It was terrible. It was cold. People were, you know, there were

seven or eight people shivering, huddled under their blankets. But Rick, do you remember that? Sorry, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. Do you remember that contract writer? Do you remember the...

I don't even know how to say these names. I'm just looking at it. It was six bottles of Pouilly Fouisse. I don't even know how to say that. Six 40-ounce bottles of Chavaz regal four dom perignon six cases of heineken gin vodka steak uh served on china with silverware plus cherry cheesecake and black forest cake and fresh fruit cigars cigarillos cigarettes like this rider is unbelievable yeah it's also not true what this is in the new i'm

looking at it in the newspaper and there's a quote from mike levine and he goes and they went for it we were amazed it's got to cost the promoters two grand and we would have done the show for corned beef sandwiches and beer yeah well you know mike was very very good at being able to sell a story he was uh that was one of his great strengths and of course mike was the guy that uh would always like he i think mike was the guy that recommended we howard bloom when we got the rca record deal he was the uh pr guy out of new york that a lot of big people used and mike insisted that rca had to pay for howard bloom to be our publicist so that strikes me as something that um uh publicists decided hey let's write up this writer they're going to say no

you know so it might be a little white lie when Mike says they said yes. I don't remember any of that. I do remember a bucket like a like a plastic garbage bucket with ice in it and lots of beer. OK. And then the night wore on and wore on and wore on. And then the night wore on and wore on and wore on. It was a bucket of just freezing cold water. And you had to reach down into it to get the beer at the bottom.

And your hand would be numb searching around trying to find a beer in there. But that's what I remember. Well, we don't print the legend on this show, Rick. Thanks so much for this. Merry Christmas to you and your family and good luck in Sweden thank you very much Mike I look forward to chatting with you again sometime and that brings us to the end of our

1396th show you can follow me on Twitter I'm at Toronto Mike, I'm also on Blue Sky much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery. Go to Great Lakes for your delicious

fresh craft beer. That's Palma Pasta. Authentic Italian food. So delicious. Raymond James Canada. Subscribe to the Advantaged Investor Podcast. Mineris. Subscribe to Yes We Are Open. Season 5 has been amazing.

RecycleMyElectronics.ca and Ridley Funeral Home. See you all tomorrow when we celebrate Festivus with Elvis. We'll be right back. Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold, but the snow, snow Wants me to dance And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine And it won't go away

Because everything is rosy and green Cause everything is rose and green Well you've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or will do For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true because Everything is coming up rosy and green

Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow Won't stay today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Cause everything is Rosy and great Well I've been told That there's a sucker born

Every day But I wonder who Yeah I wonder who Maybe yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true, yes I do I know it's true, yeah I know it's true, how about you?

Oh, they're picking up trash and they're putting down roads And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am But who gives a damn Because everything is coming up Rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold

But the smell of snow Warms me today And your smile is fine And it's just like mine And it won't go away Because everything is rosy and green Well I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain And I've kissed you in places I better not name

And I've seen the sun go down on Shakhty Kul But I like it much better going down on you Yeah, you know that's true Because everything is coming up rosy and green

Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow warms us today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away Cause everything is rosy now

Everything is rosy Yeah, everything is rosy and gray Yeah Everything is rosy and gray