In a new interview with Joseph Suto of Rock Show Critique, guitarist/vocalist Rik Emmett of Canadian rock legends TRIUMPH discussed the band’s decision to split its songwriting credits equally between the three members of the group after the release of their third album, 1979’s “Just A Game”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, the songwriting process never changed. It was more a question of the dynamics of the business of the group. So in the early stages, first three albums, when you wrote a song and you brought it down to rehearsal, it was your song. And essentially it was just mostly Gil [Moore, drummer/vocalist] and me, and we’d bring our song ideas down, and then the band would have to work up arrangements. And sometimes a song would require a lot of arranging, and I say that with a smile when I’m thinking about Gil‘s songs. And that’s fine.
“When you’re in a band and you’re first starting out and then the growth is starting to happen and success is coming, then there’s not necessarily a lot of things where you are being discriminating,” Rik explained. “You’re happy to try to make anything work. You’re making all kinds of compromises and collaborating on a whole bunch of different levels. In the case of TRIUMPH, Gil was sort of slowly but surely becoming pretty much the general manager of the band. And he was the production manager and he was the general manager and he was the guy that sort of did a lot of the bookkeeping and had his dad doing bookkeeping in the early days. And Mike [Levine, bassist/keyboardist] was the guy that was handling the record company liaison and marketing and promotion and all of those kinds of things. Rik was the guy that was writing some tunes and bringing them down to rehearsals and hopefully was gonna be writing some tunes that were gonna get us on the radio and all of that stuff. So, after in particular the third album, ‘Just A Game’ had ‘Lay It On The Line’ and ‘Hold On’ on it. And they both got a considerable amount of radio play, especially in the United States — they kind of broke the band, and they were my songs. And I realized when I was getting my composer publisher’s checks from SOCAN [Society Of Composers, Authors And Music Publishers Of Canada], I went, ‘Oh my God. I’m gonna be making a lot more money than the other guys.’ And I went, ‘That’s no good,’ because they’re in a position where money from the other aspects of the business is crossing their desk. And if they wanted to screw me, they sure could. And if they felt like they were getting screwed because Rik was getting rich and they weren’t, because Rik wrote the hit songs…”
Emmett added: “The other thing I felt like I didn’t wanna create bad blood in the band that, ‘Oh, Rik‘s having all the hit songs, Rik‘s becoming the star. And everybody loves Rik and, and nobody’s paying attention to me anymore.’ So I went in one day to Gil‘s office and said. ‘Let’s just split it three ways from now on. You can’t go back and change the old ones.’ I said, ‘I’ll just take my SOCAN checks and I’ll chuck ’em into the band account and we’ll keep splitting the money three ways.’ It didn’t really solve one of the issues, which was if Gil sang a song, it didn’t really do as good at radio. Radio, they liked high tenor singers. They liked FOREIGNER and RUSH and STYX and JOURNEY, and TRIUMPH kind of fell into that category. And Gil‘s voice didn’t. So it hurt the band a little that in the end we were always trying to get hit songs for Gil.”
Rik went on to say that he still thinks it was a good idea for him and his TRIUMPH bandmates to share everything equally.
“I don’t regret that I split the songwriting three ways, because I think in the end that has benefits for rhythm sections in bands because they’re always the guys that are looking for a paycheck and wanting the band to go out on the road because it’s the only time they’re getting paid, whereas Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are laughing all the way to the bank,” he said. “And it broke up THE BEATLES and it broke up THE POLICE. And in the end it sort of broke up TRIUMPH too, but I was trying to make sure that it wouldn’t.”
Emmett continued: “A song like, say, ‘Magic Power’, I wrote it a hundred percent and just would teach the guys. ‘Somebody’s Out There’, I demoed it the way that… When I brought it back to the band, ’cause it was an 11th-hour thing on ‘The Sport Of Kings’, where they were looking for a lead single, they wanted something very commercial. I wrote the song, and when I brought it back to the band two days later, I said, ‘You’re not changing a note. This is the way we’re doing it. This is the arrangement. Let’s just do this.’ And so we did. And it was the highest-charting Billboard song we ever had. So it wasn’t that I lacked an ability to be able to build an arrangement or have an imagination to know how a song should go. Gil‘s songs needed a lot more work. And then, of course, we were doing outside tunes, from outside writers, in order to try and find hit songs for Gil. So that required a certain amount of band arranging and time learning the tunes and stuff.
“I still think it’s good to split songs evenly inside bands. But I also think that when I went solo and I started to have what I always describe as a benevolent dictatorship, it suited me more. And, of course, now I write books, I write songs, I write guitar pieces, and I don’t have to share them with anybody. And part of the joy of that is you don’t need as big a pie. If I was still sharing everything two thirds — a third to Mike, a third to Gil — you need a pie that’s three times as big.”
Back in October 2021, Moore discussed TRIUMPH‘s decision to split its songwriting credits equally between the three members of the group, telling Let’s Rock: “There were various contributions at various times, and we also knew that we all had sort of a role to play. So, for example, Mike Levine was, from day one, and still is to this day, really functioned as not just a musician but also a producer. In today’s world of Drake and Justin Bieber, a producer is a writer of sorts. So maybe we were forecasting that value on to a producer.
“We looked at a lot of the production techniques or the producer guidance commentary — call it what you will — to be creatively as important sometimes as what chords you’re playing or what lyrics you’re singing,” he explained. “It’s almost like looking at it through the lens of rhythm — there’s no provision for rhythm being part of writing, and yet we knew that in a rock band, especially a three-piece one, how incredibly important the rhythm is. So I think at a certain point — it was after ‘Just A Game’ — when we kind of talked about how do you really assign who contributed what to a song. It was difficult. So we just decided, you know what? Whether one person is more instrumental in a certain song or not that we just would take credit, and individual credit would go the way of the dodo bird and we would just take credit as a band. I think it was a good decision, just for band unity and not having to really be concerned with credit. There’s so much effort that goes into a three-piece band, and everybody’s doing so much, it’s hard to keep track of the little bits and pieces. So that’s how we operated.”
Moore also touched upon the importance of drumming in rock music, arguing that some drummers’ contributions are significant enough to warrant a songwriting credit.
“RUSH is a great group, obviously,” he said. “If you take Neil [Peart] — rest in peace; great guy [and an] unbelievable drummer — and if you were to take him out of RUSH and insert someone else, or listen to the band with [original RUSH drummer] John Rutsey playing drums or whatever, you realize, yeah, the songs really change. When you change him, you’re changing a lot. And I think the same thing would happen if you were to switch out Alex [Lifeson] or you were to switch out Geddy [Lee], you’d find the same thing. ‘Cause those guys were all such a piece of the signature of that band. And most bands are like that.
“Look, with THE [ROLLING] STONES, having Charlie [Watts] pass away a few weeks ago, and you go, ‘Well, there’s a lot of guys that can play Charlie Watts‘s parts.’ No — not so much,” he continued. “Just try. I don’t care who it is. There’s a certain signature to Charlie‘s playing that’s unmistakeable. People would tend to think it would be easy to replicate simply because his concepts of percussion were sparse, but it’s not easy to change out that. Whatever that secret sauce or that signature that he has is, it’s pretty difficult to [replicate].”
Emmett, who quit TRIUMPH — acrimoniously, in 1988 — over music and business disputes, went on to pursue a solo career, while TRIUMPH carried on with future BON JOVI guitarist Phil X for one more album, 1992’s “Edge Of Excess”, before calling it a day the following year.
Emmett was estranged, both personally and professionally, from the two other members of the legendary Canadian classic rock power trio for 18 years before they repaired their relationship.
Rik‘s memoir, “Lay It On The Line – A Backstage Pass To Rock Star Adventure, Conflict And Triumph”, came out in October 2023 via ECW Press.
Moore, Levine, and Emmett formed TRIUMPH in 1975, and their blend of heavy riff-rockers with progressive odysseys, peppered with thoughtful, inspiring lyrics and virtuosic guitar playing quickly made them a household name in Canada. Anthems like “Lay It On The Line”, “Magic Power” and “Fight The Good Fight” broke them in the USA, and they amassed a legion of fiercely passionate fans. But, as a band that suddenly split at the zenith of their popularity, TRIUMPH missed out on an opportunity to say thank you to those loyal and devoted fans, a base that is still active today, three decades later.
After 20 years apart, Emmett, Levine and Moore played at the 2008 editions of the Sweden Rock Festival and Rocklahoma. A DVD of the historic Sweden performance was made available four years later.
Back in 2016, Moore and Levine reunited with Rik as special guests on the “RES 9” album from Emmett‘s band RESOLUTION9.
Released in 2021, TRIUMPH‘s documentary, “Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine”, was produced by Banger Films and directed by Sam Dunn and Marc Ricciardelli.
Source: blabbermouth.net
