Intervju - Mike Levine, Triumph Triumph från Kanada har beslutat sig för att återvända till livescenen igen och gör sitt första återföreningsgig på Sweden Rock Festival. Då jag personligen inte har lyssnat aktivt på bandet och är något av en novis när det kommer till deras musik, tyckte vi här på Metal Shrine att det kunde vara läge att ta ett snack med en av originalmedlemmarna. Sagt och gjort. Jag fick ett telefonnumer via Chipster Entertainment i USA och ringde helt sonika upp Mike Levine i vad jag trodde var någonstans i staten New York. Efter många försök nådde jag honom på en ytterst usel linje och det visade sig att han befann sig på Jamaica och var på ett strålande humör. Samtalet blev inte så långt och bröts vid ett eller två tillfällen, men jag fick i alla fall svar på en del frågor och här har ni nu hela intervjun. (Viss reservation för innehållet i hans svar, då det var väldigt svårt att höra vad han sa.) First off, what was it about the offer from Sweden Rock Festival that really made you decide you were gonna do this? Mike Levine: Eehh, you know, that´s a good question. I guess it was because it´s gonna be in the summer season and the thought of that it would be good for us to play somewhere else than in North America, for a change. Not that we´ve recently played anywhere. (laughs) We thought it would be a lot of fun to go over and do it in Sweden and it was a good offer and it was early enough. Now we can get there and come back and not screw up other potential dates. I was just thinking that you´ve must have had other offers made to you in the past? ML: Yeah, but this time the agent actually sold us to the offers as opposed to a promotor phoning him saying "Do you think the band is gonna play this year?". He just contacted everybody and said that Triumph´s gonna be available for festival dates this summer, so let´s see the offers folks! (Part of the answer not quite audible.) Cool! But are you rehearsing right now or what´s going on? ML: I´m wood shedding as you call it. I´m actually in Jamaica, but I´ve got an amplifier and guitar here, but it´s hard to concentrate, but I´m getting through it. It´s a lot easier to practise back home than it is down here. Rik and Gil have gotten together a bunch of times in the studio, just bashing away and running through songs and working on the setlist. We communicate back and forth on which songs we´re probably gonna end up with in the set. We´ve isolated it to what we´re not gonna play, so... Are you gonna go for a classic greatest hits set or are you gonna throw in some more obscure songs? ML: You know, I think people wanna hear their favorite songs, so it´ll be a combination of the real big songs and songs that weren´t so great. (laughs) What about the stage set then? Is it gonna be a big elaborate stage set or are you mainly gonna focus on you guys? ML: Because of the limitations for eehhhm... what´s in house on the staging at the festival, bringing a set over is hardly worth it, with all the special lighting and things like that. It would turn into a nightmare. But hopefully we´ll be able to put together a few surprises. What are the plans after this? I´ve read that there are plans for a full blown tour in 2009. Are you gonna sit down and write an album or is it just gonna be touring? ML: We want to get through this stage first and find out that we can A, still play together and have fun and then also travel together and have fun. It´s been a long time so we wanna just play a few shows this summer before we commit to real major untertaking, a tour. If all the stars line up in the right place and everybody´s still up for it, then we´ll see, but that´s still undecided. What about Rick Santers, whom you´ve played with before? Are you gonna bring him? ML: No, we´re not gonna bring Rick, but we´re probably gonna bring someone else. We´re still kind of undecided on that. It´s all about what we feel... the need to play the different parts. I think we´re probably gonna bring somebody, but I can´t say for sure right now. I got your dvd from US Festival in ´83 recently. What are your memories from that festival? That has to be a special moment in Triumph history and other bands history as well? ML: I think when we´re flying the helicopter into the site and just seeing how many people there were. I was flabbergasted. I just went "Wow, are we in for a treat or what! We better be good today folks! We better be good!". (laughs) Did you get a chance to check out any of the other bands? ML: Yeah! I saw a bit of the Scorpions show and a touch of Van Halen. David started talking non stop and the band wasn´t playing, he was just talking so I was just like "Let´s get out of here!". (laughs) I´d seen them before when David starts talking... Do you have any idea why... because there´s you guys, Rush and Saga, three really important bands in that genre and do you have any idea, why Canada? And why that type of music? ML: Eehmmm... good question. I don´t know. Rush were certainly, at least from our point of view, they were the leaders. They were out well before us. We got to follow in their footsteps and they broke down a lot of barriers and we got to take advantage of that, which was incredibly helpful for our career. Three piece bands... there weren´t a lot of three piece bands around. I guess, since we all played in other bands with anywhere from four to twelve people and really, a three piece band is the ultimate democracy. Nobody can gang up on you. You can´t have three against two. It´s either two against one or all three agree. (laughs) You know, "I´m right! No, you´re not! You´re outvoted. Shut up!". (laughs) I was kind of wondering if you have any special memories from that first album when it came out in ´76? Did you have any idea what you were in for? Any memories from recording that album? ML: It was fun to record, because it was, you know, our first album and we were playing together. I had made some albums before and Gil had been in a studio once and Rik, I´m not sure if he had ever been in a recording studio. It was a learning process for us as a band. You found out a lot. Like the first time in rehearsal and you listened back to it and went "Oh boy, that needs some work!". (laughs) We didn´t have a big budget to make that record, but we got it done and I think the high point, for me initially, was hearing "Blinding light show" on the radio in Toronto. We went "That´s us, that´s us!". If I understand it correctly, you bought back your catalog from MCA. Does that mean you own your music now? ML: We didn´t buy it back, they had to give it back. (laughs) We had a very smart lawyer who looked at our contract and after a certain amount of time all the rights went back to us. That´s what happened back in ´94 or ´95. That´s when we remastered everything. We wanted a good representation of what those records were since we were the record label now. It took a lot of work. Something like three years. Isn´t that a kind of rare thing these days, that you own your music as a musician and not the record company? ML: After we did it, other lawyers got aware of it and it started to happen a little bit more often, but not very often. They call it the Triumph clause. So when lawyers are negotiating they say "We want the Triumph clause!". It almost became a legal word. A bit about your background. What were you up to before Triumph and what were your influences or childhood heroes? ML: When I started to play, which was in high school I guess, we used to play all the hits from "The locomotion" to "Monster mash". I really got into bands seriously with rhythm and blues bands. That´s what was happening in Toronto at that point. There were r&b guys and bands that played Beatles music. Those were the two kind of bands you could play in. I were in some pretty good bands and then I decided that I didn´t want to do that anymore and got into the record business. I had a record label and that lasted for three or four years. I learned a lot about the business and I was a young kid. I spent a lot of time in New York and got to produce some records. That was fun and a great learning experience. After that, what did I do after that? My memory is lost. Gil had a band and I was producing jingles for commercials. Gil called me and said he had a kind of weekend kind of band, a high school band and he had a gig in three weeks and wondered if I could help him out and I said that I couldn´t. (laughs). But he talked to me some more and some more and I said "Ok, ok I´ll do it!" and it was a lot of fun to do. The other bass player never showed up so I got stuck playing with Gil and his band for a year almost. Then I said "You know, we should go serious with this! Why don´t we start a band and really go for it?". Gil said "Alright man!"Then we decided on what kind of band we´d really like to have and all that. "A three piece, so let´s go find a guitar player!". We found Rik in another band. Cool! Do you remember where the name Triumph came from? ML: We had a high school and a lot of bands and we just sent a lot of people notes that we were gonna start a band and we needed a name and we ended up with a list of 500 names. It came down to two names, Triumph and Hellfire. We all agreed on Triumph. It was like "If we should choose Hellfire and make a record and if it ever gets played on the radio, they´re not gonna say the name of the band!" It was a girl from a Catholic girl school that came up with the name Triumph for us. Alright! I know that the song "Magic power" is in the movie "School of rock" with Jack Black. When that happens, do you make money from the sales of that movie or do you get paid a certain amount for them using it? ML: You get paid a license fee in advance and the they get to use it for pretty much perpetuity, I think is the phrase they use. Forever. If the movie plays on TV you get paid for performance money, but some companies doesn´t pay you another nickle, unless you negotiate. Did you guys notice an increse in Triumph record sales around that time or...? ML: No, I don´t think so. There was some buzz about it and maybe sales went up a little bit. You know, a song in a movie doesn´t drive people to go out and buy a cd, unless it´s a song they just fell in love with. Usually they´re listening to it in context with the movie, so... I know you worked with Eddie Kramer and also Mike Clink, who went on to do "Appetite for destruction" with Guns´n Roses. What was it like working with those guys? ML: Eddie was a piece of work! I love Eddie. Just the stories alone were incredible. You know, because he worked with Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and all these acts that I grew up with. I learned a lot from him and I think he learned a little bit from me too. We just hired him to come in and mix the record and he had a thought of how the band should sound and I had a thought of how the band should sound and we didn´t agree. He decided to challenge me and we almost came to blows, but we were mixing it at Metalworks and everybody there works for me and not for him. He was outnumbered. If he would´ve taken a shot at me they would´ve beaten the hell out of him. (laughs) But we ended up with a meeting of the minds and it worked out. He was fun to work with. What made you decide on working with Mike Clink? ML: Clink? We started that project with a producer named Ron Nevison and Ron disappeared one night and we never saw him again and Clink was Ron´s engineer. He hadn´t really produced anything in his life. We decided to keep the record company happy, give him production credit and keep him around. I guess the guys in Guns´n Roses liked the record and Clink got to do "Appetite for destruction" and he became a very wealthy man because of it. Also, I know you toured with Yngwie Malmsteen in ´86 or something. What was that like? ML: Yeah, something like that. Yngwie? I loved Yngwie! He was a piece of work!(laughs) One night he... he constantly played over his allowed schedule and our tour manager kept warning him and saying "You´ve got an hour!", but he kept going over and after the fourth or fifth date our tour manager went to him and as the story goes, said "Look Yngwie! If you don´t get off on time, I´m gonna pull the plug!" and Yngwie went "Yeah, yeah, yeah!". So the next night Yngwie´s going over and Jeff, our tour manager, pulls the plug. So Yngwie´s doing his solo and the stage goes black. That was kind of funny. (laughs) Finally, do you have a lot of unreleased stuff that some day will see the light of day, or have you pretty much released all there is? ML: There´s some stuff in the vault. I´m kind of leaning to the fact that it should probably stay in the vault, because it´s really not very good. (laughs) That´s why it went into the vault. It´s interesting, but... Right! Do you have any more shows filmed? ML: Yeah, there´s a couple. There´s one from Baltimore. It´s early. I think it was shot in ´79. And there´s another one from a venue in Toronto called Ontario Place, that I had totally forgotten about. We have a tape of that. It was for a TV broadcast. Those are, I think, all we have that´s not out there now of complete shows on film or video. I´m pretty sure. We´re gonna try and film the show in Sweden. Yeah, that would be awesome! ML: Yeah, so that´s kind of what we´re looking to do. We wanna film everything nowdays, right? Yeah! Well, it´s been excellent talking to you Mike and I wish you all the best with the gig in Sweden and whatever comes in the future! ML: Thank you sir! It´s been a pleasure speaking to you.
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