 Jimmy K here. Metal voice. Look at this. Metal voice shirts are now on sale. Just go to a video description to find out on how you can purchase one. Metal! Let everybody know. Jimmy and I were doing small talk before this started, but now the talk is going to get large. That's right. Here we go. On the metal voice today, Rick Emmett of course of Triumph Guitarist, solo artist, and now author. Yes, poet. Re-invention, poems, but I don't know. I found it was more of a biography than a book of poetry. At least I was reading. I mean, there is, of course, there is that rhyme, right? That sort of poetry aspect. Sometimes not even rhyme, just the phrasing and the flows. And there's a type of poetry called ultra talk, which kind of, it's a license. Almost like you're writing prose sometimes, although there is a poetic nature. And of course, you know, I'm a singer and a lead guitar player. My whole life has been about phrasing and, you know, trying to find the poetic structure in music. So it's not a huge leap, but you're right about the autobiography stuff. I mean, that was really, that was a big part of it, that I was kind of trying to have this therapeutic thing that was going on where I started writing and, yeah, trying to come to terms with, you know, getting older and all of the rest of that. So, yeah. Why not an autobiography then? Like, why not just take that extra step? Yeah, it's coming. The memoir is coming. But in typical Rick Emmett sort of style, I decided I was going to mishmash a bunch of stuff, you know, and try and reach for a sort of a higher aesthetic before I, you know, had to buckle down to deal with. See, memoir stuff is more like people want the anecdotes and they want the stories and what was it like to have been there? And there's almost like a reporting angle to that. Whereas with poetry, I felt like I had a lot more license. I could do say things the way I wanted to try and say it and, you know, I just felt like I was going to take that step towards a world that's more Gord Downey and Leonard Cohen and, you know, and just take a baby step towards that, you know, I'm not necessarily putting myself on that level. This is only my first attempt, you know. Did you find like it's cryptic in a way and that kind of protects you because, you know, you sometimes, you know, what's what it means to you might people might not actually see it, but you're kind of saying it, but you're not really saying it. Yeah, I think that and I think that's your kind of spot on there that poetry can be elliptical, it can be illusory, it can be, you know, it can be like, you know, I when I was a teenager, I really loved the band Yes. And John Anderson's lyrics were just sometimes like right out there. So elliptical, you couldn't possibly figure out what he was talking about. Crystal. You was talking about crystals. Well, he's a very spiritual guy, right? So there's a certainly that's kind of deep, cosmological, spiritual stuff is in there. It's just we're going, yeah, I think I sort of get a sense of it, but I'm not really sure I understand what you're driving at. But but and poetry has that there's no question. Even though, you know, I mean, as a songwriter, I've always tried to be try to make it clear, try to make it so that people hear it the first time and they get it, you know, the first time that they hear it, which is, I didn't always stick to that, you know, sometimes I would make it a little harder for people than than than just first listen. But generally speaking, I don't I don't think my poetry book is too hard to to to chew at, you know, although yes, sometimes I'm hiding a little bit behind the words or trying to make it so that instead of, you know, just sort of pissing and moaning and coveching about whatever, you know, I'm actually sort of trying to say, okay, how do I how do I get over to virtue from vice? You know, how do I make that flip? And I think in poetry, it's a little easier to do that than if you're just writing a standard autobiography memoir, where you're going, okay, so then I was here and this is what we did. And this is what happened on that day. And this is how I felt about it. And, you know, that's more like a kind of a reporting storytelling. And I'm going to have to cope and deal with that that the memoir is part of my book deal. So how long until the memoir is released? Yeah, how long till I can get it finished? The back end of my website has a forum where I have communicated with fans for a couple of decades. And so I asked my webmaster, hey, Adrian, can you compile all of my posts there? So, you know, make it into a one document so that I can, she was well, it's going to be pretty big. And it was like single spaced way over 5000 pages. So I have narrowed that down to about 400 and change now. So I'm close with that source of material. That's not to say that I'm not going to, especially after the experience of writing poetry, I'm not going to want to go at it again from a different angle, tell some slightly different stories. You know, I really feel like, you know, I mean, I've been writing all of my life, wrote guitar player magazine columns, I wrote, you know, I wrote songs since I was 10 years old. But, you know, here I am in my senior years, and I'm starting to feel like I'm just learning about writing in new ways, which I find very exciting. It's kind of, you know, you held up the book, like, this is a cool thing that that all of my life, there we go, you know, we're both doing it. It's commercial. Like to hold that in my hand is actually, I said to a guy yesterday, it's like when I forgot to hear my song on the radio for the first time, you know, like, it's an exciting thing. And it's something that I kind of always wanted to do in my life. So, you know, now that I'm started, I don't want to necessarily just put out a memoir just to have put it out. I really want to try and write something that makes an attempt at literature, even if, you know, maybe I'm not exactly, you know, I don't have a doctorate or anything. So, we'll see how it works out. Well, you've got the experience, that's for sure. Okay, so give everybody a skeleton of a blueprint of what they can expect with, there we go, the ad, here's the ad again. Yeah. Do you want me to read one? Well, no, if you want to read, you want to read a favorite line? They've been asking me if I want to read one. Read a favorite line, how's that? I could read a favorite line that I saw of it. Yeah, okay, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, you're the show, Jimmy. You should be reading what you think is... Okay, here we go. I'll give you one, then you give me one. How's that? Okay, all right, fair enough. It's like we're jamming here. All right, good. I was the junior partner who got voted on things that never really mattered and who got managed and manipulated into much of the rest. Yes, who got outvoted. Who got outvoted. Yeah, outvoted on things that really mattered and got managed and manipulated into much of the rest. And the reason I can say that so quickly is because I had it open to exactly the same page. I was going to read, well, I was going to read from that same poem. Because it says so much, right? Yeah, it relates to the, also, I mean, your show's a metal show, so it relates to the time that I was in the rock and roll machine and feeling the crunch of that. So yeah, the chunk before the one that you just said is, to the front of house, I was a barking seal, an organ grinder's monkey, a clawless, clueless, toothless tiger, leaping around on platforms at the crack of a whip, the poke of a chair. So, you know, to me... So go ahead, explain. Well, the thing that I loved about poetry was that I was able to sort of constantly be having these metaphors, but I didn't have to try and find rhyme schemes. I didn't have to try and fit them into like song architecture. You could literally just let this idea expand itself until it said what you wanted it to say. And it might take two lines, it might take four lines, but there's a nice distillation to poetry. And, you know, what I was talking about there is that, you know, people see you up there under the lights doing, and they think you're this, you know, powerful, you know, amazing, wonderful, it's great. And it is. I'm not saying that it isn't. But when you're inside it, it's also like being a tiger in a zoo, which is like, go ahead, you know, growl and jump up and down. Yeah, and, you know, claw at the air. But really, then they're going to make you sit on that thing and poke you with the chair. And then when, you know, they give you the signal, you're going to run out through the tunnel and, you know, the show's over. Like there's a thing about show business where, you know, and everybody's in it. You know, I don't care heavy metal folk, jazz, you know, you're in show business. And so it's a business of showing. You know, that's what it is. So, you know, that poem in particular, that was one in a series of four. So the first one was called Invention. And then there was Reinvention, sort of part two, and then part three and part four. My life, I have reinvented myself constantly. And so, you know, here I am talking to you and I'm in a new stage. You know what? And this outvoting, you know, and I don't know, I guess it just really hit me, hits home because if you're constantly being outvoted and you're never being heard, that's where you growl frustrated, right? Yeah. Was that really, I guess we'll see that in the documentary that's coming up, right? But was that really how you felt that your voice wasn't being heard? And you know what I mean by voice? I mean, you're right. Yeah, not enough. And, you know, here's the thing, like in triumph when we first started, it's a trio. And that is like a perfect little democracy. It's as small as you can get and still have a perfect democracy. And in the early stages, it was like it was as if the other guys, there would be discussion and, you know, my voice would be taken seriously. And we were building something. But once it got built to a certain point, there was an imbalance that existed. You know, Gil was the general manager of the band. It was really his thing. Mike was the guy that, you know, dealt with the record company and did the marketing and the promotion. And so then when there were things where I was going, hang on for a second, you know, I think direction wise, we should be doing this. It was like, sorry, Rick, you're getting outvoted. And I was getting outvoted on too much stuff to the point where it was like, well, clearly, I'm not going to be able to, and, you know, in the early stages of trying, if here's an example, you know, I think the other guys wanted it to be a very metal, hard rock kind of thing. But I was the one that was going, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was the guy that was going, well, you know, blinding light show, like, how about we do this? And, you know, it's a little bit more progressive. And the lyric is a little bit more progressive. And I'll put a classical guitar solo in the middle of it. And they went, okay, yeah, sure, that's great. But then as time was going on, that was getting bled out. And we weren't a hard rock band anymore because of what was happening at MCA and Universal and stuff. So there wasn't even the integrity that I find that metal has that hard rock has. Because sometimes heavy metal can be like, limiting, like Gustav Holst, it can be big, it can be huge. It's so powerful, you know. And I dig that. I really like that. But we were turning into a pop band, you know, like, and I don't think any of us liked it. But the other guys were, they were kind of going, well, yeah, but this is where the bread is buttered. And I was going, I don't care about butter, you know. And I mean, you know, here I am a poet, after doing jazz. And you didn't even know Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's like, sometimes money is making a machine do what a machine is doing. And then I'm kind of, I lose interest, you know, but I would think that the record company did take care of you. Like there's a lot of I do, for years, I've been doing interviews. And the biggest complaint was the record company never paid us or they never paid us fairly to what I think they should have paid us. But I get the sense that triumph was always okay in that part. I don't know, I just, that's the language I'm seeing from you guys, like, you know, the body language or like what you do with triumph, because you guys would have been on tour for the last 30, 40 years, if that wasn't the case. I mean, again, you know, I'm just asking the question. Yeah. First of all, you know, imagine the difference between being say a beetle and a rolling stone. So Beatles, they, you know, they were like, in the same kind of way, they were, well, we're going to, we're not even going to go on the road anymore. You know, we don't have to. Steely Dan goes, you know, we're not going on the road. We don't have to. And there was a time in the music world where bands can make those decisions. But the Rolling Stones didn't sell anywhere near as many records as the Beatles did. And they didn't get as much airplay. The Beatles were getting airplay everywhere all the time. So you can imagine what those checks look like. Like if you're Elton John, you know, Paul McCartney, those airplay checks are rolling in and they're gigantic because you're getting played everywhere in the world. The Rolling Stones didn't get that much airplay. And the heavier your band gets, the less you're getting airplay, you know, the more you cross over to softer formats of radio, the more you put out ballads and, you know, the more airplay you get. So that's a whole other revenue stream. Now, Triumph, we managed ourselves. So there wasn't a big slice coming off the top, like 20% of the gross that's going to a management company that, you know, so we didn't need as big a pie as other bands did in order to be, you know, there's money from merchandising. There's money from touring. And in fact, Triumph probably made more money from that stuff than we ever did from selling records, you know. So that was never as big a thing. The other thing is, you know, in Triumph, Mike and Gil very astute business people. And they really knew right from the get go what it was that they were trying to achieve on a whole bunch of levels. So it wasn't like there was an ignorance or a naivete it to what was happening there. No way. It was like, no, there was an awareness. And so, you know, I learned an awful lot at the feet of those masters. And, you know, you know, I think at a certain point, it just became that, you know, they were going to run their thing, the Triumph rock roll machine, the way that they were going to do it. And I went, I got to go, see you. All right. So going back to the book, being a kid watching the Toronto, there's a lot of Canadian in this, right? Being a kid watching the Toronto Maple Leafs. And then, oh my God, now you're playing on the stage, right? Where the Maple Leafs, I mean, tell me about that. Well, I mean, it was a, you know, people really should get the book and read it. First of all, that, when I originally wrote that, it was a prose piece for a friend of mine named Kevin Shea. And he had a book called The Blue and White Voices of the Leafs or something. And it was like, hey, Rick, will you write something? And so when I was doing the poetry book, I had this piece and I went, you know, this is kind of like ultra talk, I could really sort of just revise this, change a word here and there, change the rhythm of it slightly. But I didn't change it much at all from Kevin's book. But it was really just a thing of what did it mean to be a kid growing up, you know, where we would have Leafs jerseys playing ball hockey out on the street and be doing the play by play from the, you know, the radio guys and the TV guys. And so, you know, in the poem, my grandmother, well, I guess it was originally my grandfather, but he died, had a heart attack and died. But my grandmother had inherited the tickets, Maple Leaf Gardens, tickets, North End Blues. And so every season, my dad would get a chance to be able to take my brother and I down to these games. And we, you know, so you'd see this thing, you'd see it in black and white on the TV, but to be there in living color, oh my God, and anybody that was, you know, part of my generation age growing up, that was this unbelievable thing that here was this mythical place, Maple Leaf Gardens, where, you know, these larger than life hockey heroes played. And so, you know, back to the triumph thing, when the bands first starting, like I said, the other guys were very astute and it was kind of a cockiness to the band. So we were supposed to play Massey Hall. We played, you know, clubs and bars in high schools and we'd risen to a certain point where we had done a few little small concerts in small places and it was like, okay, we're going to play Massey Hall. And the promoter Cole, Michael Cole and CPI, they'd go, okay, they wouldn't let us use the flash pots, the venue. They said, you can't use your lasers and your flash pots and your flamethrower and all that stuff. And we went, well, we got to have that, you know. So we said, well, if we, you know, we said to Michael Cole, let's move the show to the concert pool at Maple Leaf Gardens. And he said, are you nuts? Like Massey Hall is a couple of thousand seats. If I take you to the concert pool, that's like 7,000 seats. Like, you're not big enough. No, you haven't had enough airplay for that. Not going to happen. And so the other guys in the band said, Michael, if we lose money, we'll write you the check. Like we'll cover the loss if we lose, but we're not going to lose. We're going to play that show and it's going to be a huge success. And Michael was like, you guys are so cocky. Holy shit. Okay. All right, let's try it. So we did. And then I got to drive down in a limo and go into the bowels of Maple Leaf Gardens and walk out on a stage and go, this place, this place, when I was a little kid and sat up on those seats, here I am on the stage. And tonight, my name's on the marquee. And then what happened? We pretty much sold out and Michael Cole put Maple Leaf jerseys in the dressing room when we came on stage and hey, a boring assolving for Jersey. All right. So yeah, that's the story. That's a cool story. So what about, and the sad part of it is your brother, the passing of your brother, right? You know, come, you know, come triumph, there's tragedy, right? Just a little bit about that. I mean, he's sort of like that reunion, that sweet and rock reunion, you know, he's kind of telling me about how we sort of, that was his last, I don't know if it was last wish, but it was sort of connected, right? Yeah. I mean, it took me a long, like I couldn't talk at his funeral, you know. And so the eulogy is kind of those poems in that book. But when he was passing away, he had asked me, you know, don't you think, can't you compare the hatchet with those guys? Can't you figure out a way to get back and give all the fans everywhere? And him too, it was like, this is what I would really want. You know, I'd want to see you guys back being friends again. And I said, okay, I'm going to try. For you, I'll try. So, you know, that eventually led to triumph playing in Sweden. And I took some of his ashes, I put them under the stage there. It was, yeah. Yeah, that's a nice story. Did you and the guys in triumph have that much animosity between each other all those years? It was bad. When it went bad, it went as bad as bad can get. And I think all three guys would say that. And it was there for a long time, eight years, you know, 10 years. So, and it was a long way back. Like, it wasn't easy when we first sat down in a coffee shop together. Like, there were, it was a herd of elephants in that room, you know. But, you know, the thing about forgiveness that's, and this is in the poetry book too, that forgiveness, forgiveness, rock and roll and forgiveness right here. Well, you know, you have to find it within yourself and get past your own ego, your own vanity, the things that make you hold on to your anger, you know, we got too much of that in this world now. You know, people storming the Capitol and, you know, people that are unhappy about vaccine passports. And there's just too many people that are holding on to their, their own anger. And, you know, if we're going to get along, you have to learn how to let go of that. You have to learn, you have to teach yourself how to forgive. And it's not easy. I can tell you that as somebody that wanted to hold on to that bitterness and that jaundice is like, you know, tooth and nail. But you have a reason to unite, you know, and that's, you know, the, the documentary that's coming up on September 10th, I believe, right? Yeah, this is coming out September 13th, I think, right? September 14th for the book. September 10th for the documentary. It's like this fall is turning into September 12th, the Metal Hall of Fame. So everybody could tune into that. That's a live acceptance speech. We're not going to talk too much about that because we don't want to give it away. But everybody could tune in on volume.com, Metal Hall of Fame to try and be inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame on September 12th. The folks should see that the award we got to, it's, it's a, it's like a bass drum that's got a flying V that's impaled itself right into the bass drum. So there's a skull in there too. I think it's on the face of the bass drum. So it's very heavy. It's very metal. So, and then, of course, the documentary, what can you tell us about the documentary? You looked at it. And I'm sure, you know, when you look at something, your life on the, you know, on the big screen or a little screen, there are things you say, wow, that was cool. And then there's other stuff. Maybe it's cringe moments. Maybe it's, it's, what were the pros? What were the cons that you felt? I mean, again, you know, it's, you have the words and all, you got to show it, right? But yeah, yes or no, you say words and all. And I think it's the end all that I would take issue with because a documentary, first of all, Bangor films made it. And they've done this before they've done it for Iron Maiden, they've done it for Rush, they've done it for the Alice Cooper and Zeezy Top. I mean, these guys, they're experienced and, but they're telling their perspective of the story. They've done their research and then they've decided, well, this is the angle we're going to take. So that's the first lens you're getting. The other thing is, it's not my story because I was only a part of triathlon. In fact, I don't actually own that brand. Gill owns that brand. So you're going to get a little bit more of Gill's angle of it than Rex. And that's fine. I'm cool with that. But in truth and in fairness, I think people need to know that. That's what you're going to see. You're going to see something that's been passed through those filters. So, is this okay? Have all three guys signed off on this? Yes. But you're not getting my story. You might see- But maybe your story is your perception, right? And then you need those three fighting perceptions to get the real story, right? Yeah, sure. Except, you know- It's my story. Jimmy, what is real? I don't know what real is. All I can tell you is this. Sometimes I think I'm always right. And this is my perception of what right is. But somebody else's truth might be also right. But it's just not my perception of it. But maybe a mix of them together creates the truth. I don't know. Maybe I'm getting just too full of soft. No, no. But, you know, I mean, I used to do this in my own, in my classes at that Humber when I was teaching the college in a tango music business. And I would take something like, you know, a can of Coke and put it on the table. And I would say, tell me the truth of this. Tell me the absolute truth about this can. And somebody says, well, it's it's red and silver. I said, what if you were under the table? You can't see the red. That's right. So truth is perspective. Truth is a point of view. And everybody has, you know, everybody understands that it's just everybody also has this sort of ego thing where they go, yeah, but my truth is better than his. My truth is way more important than hers, you know. So and that's that gets back to that vanity thing again about how you have to let go. So the documentary, you know, you're talking about trying to find truth from an integration. And I'm saying compromise and collaboration. Yes, you get a kind of an integration. But what I'm showing you here, that's only two dimension, you know, there's there's more to this than than just what you see. So, you know, one of the lovely truths and one of the stories that Banger does is they, we tied this thing together where the band got back together and actually played. So there's this little performance that takes place where they invited, like the most loyal of Triumph fans into this place. And, you know, at the warehouse at Metalworks. And when we played three songs for these folks, and it was an unbelievable feeling. It was like standing in a jet engine and just feeling this powerful thing, you know, and there were cameras that were all over the place. They had, you know, probably 20 cameras shooting this thing. So it's pretty cool. You know, it's a pretty interesting moment in life. And not too many folks get to experience that kind of thing. You know, so a documentary is really cool that it can accumulate a lot of these moments. The helicopter flying over the US festival and seeing these people on the heavy metal day. Oh my God, you know, like, now imagine getting out on the plane in front of those people. Not too many people get that in their life. I did. It's amazing because growing up like Canadian and growing up in Montreal, Triumph was like a big deal, right? Like a really big deal. And people didn't realize the magnitude of the popularity of Triumph. And of course, because the band hasn't been active, there's like a generation that hasn't been exposed to it, right? Yes. Yeah. And I think the truth of Triumph 2 is that we were never like an A band, but we were kind of like almost an A band. We were like the top of the B level bands because we'd never had the airplay that, you know, I don't know, Bon Joviad had, you know, but we'd never had the promotion that like Ozzy Osbourne had experience. We'd never sold as much records as Rush. Like, so that was a comparison that happened always right away. You know, you talk about being Canadian and stuff, like no matter where you went, Rush was always the Canadian trio that had sold, you know, 10 times the amount of records. Yeah, you know. And the other thing was, and I'll say this for the benefit of you and the people that view your show, there are bands like Voivod or, you know, like heavy bands, and we were not a heavy, heavy band. So we were always a band that was trying to flirt with FMAO, our radio, maybe even trying to cross it over to AM a little bit, you know, could we have some pop? And I didn't mind that. Like, I could have wrote pop songs. I could have written pop songs, you know, from the ground up every day, all my career. And I wouldn't have been unhappy, you know, I didn't mind writing pop songs. But, you know, did the other guys in the band want to be pop? No, they were fighting against that. But did they want to sell records like pop bands sold records? Hell yeah. You know, so there was always a thing about trying for it had kind of a split personality, you know, or a multi personality kind of. And a lot of the really A level bands, they find a way to sort of be one thing and just be that target that demographic thing with an arrowhead and just pierce it, you know, and we never really figured that out. We were always kind of splat around a little bit, you know. All right, here's a here's some good words of wisdom. No substitutes for work ethics. Is that no shortcuts? Yep. Stop searching for shortcuts. Embrace failure. I always tell people, and I don't know, this is from my experience in life, and I think you're kind of saying the same thing. Don't work smart, work hard. Don't work smart, work hard because working smart is like trying to find shortcuts. Now, maybe you want to speak to what your philosophy on that is. Well, your readings, my, you know, that's part of my philosophical stuff that you're reading. Like, and I used to try to teach this to college students. And it's kind of something that I always tried to live by. And like embracing failure, the, you know, I would say to folks, you want to know the secret of life? Here's one of them. 0.367 is the major league batting average, greatest of all time, Ty Cobb. And he failed more than six times out of 10. So he was the greatest of all time. And he failed more than six times. So what do you think you are? You can get into the hall of fame if you fail seven times out of 10. You can get 300 batting average, it gives you the whole thing. I would say, so when you're writing songs, you think just because you wrote a song, yay, I go, no, you write 10 of them. And three of them are good. Seven of them are average, or shit. You know, so, you know, that was one part of it. And if that's partly humility, you must learn to be humble in the face of the work, because the work is what's important. And there's nobody that's like in professional sports or that makes it in the higher levels of music. And like one of my heroes is Pat Matheny, not a heavy metal guy, you know, not at all. Don't get me wrong, Rick. Rick, I like all kinds of music just because we have the metal voice. I know who your audience is, too. They're kind of going, Pat Matheny. Who is that? Pat Matheny. Come on, John Petrucci. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. So I get it, and I've had to live it my whole life. But Matheny is an extremely humble guy in the face of the work. And it's what makes him so extraordinary that there's very few guitar artists on the planet that can reach the level that he reaches, because he's humble in the face of the work all the time, all the time. So there's very little that he does where the work wasn't put in front of the ego. He's very egoless. And that's not to say that he doesn't have one. I'm sure there's guys that have been in his band that went, oh my God, are you kidding me? The guy, I can't stand the guys driving me crazy. Because I think when you're a band leader, you do have to have a certain ego. You have to have a certain say, I'm sorry, I'm a benevolent dictator, but I'm a dictator. We're going to do it my way. So I don't know. I think work ethic is incredibly important. And part of that too is, and I think the book sort of makes this apparent, I'm a big believer in the perspiration, not the inspiration. Inspiration is great, but it can also be something where you smoke the joint and you're kidding yourself. It's not really the truth as Jimmy K might see it. So inspiration, okay, but if you put in the work and then it really is turning into something and it's starting to talk to you and tell you what it wants to be, then you're on to something. And that's just going to require more work in order to get it finished. So I don't discount inspiration. I think it's a big part of things, but I like guys that are ready to work really hard. I believe in pre-production rehearsals. I believe in trust rehearsals for tours and lots of it and getting up with the cameras and filming it and then sitting and watching that stuff and going, yep, this is crap. Yeah, let's change this. Yeah, let's not do this. When triumph first started and we were going around it and we were all in three guys in a rental car going from gig to gig, we would have board tapes from the night before and sitting listening to them and anybody that has been in the business will tell you board tapes back in the day where they were horrible because there was no reverb on them. They were dry as a bone and you sounded awful, but you got to hear every single mistake you've got to hear and we would listen and that to me was one of the, that's one of my favorite memories of being in the band is like doing that work, sitting in that car, going over that stuff, making changes so that the next night we were going to fix it. Did the band ever open up for anyone? Very rarely. Like what happened with triumph was when we made our American deal with RCA, we did get some tour support as part of that and we decided that Gil had a lot of intelligence and experience about PA systems and trucks because he had a little bit of a PA business that he'd run out of his garage so he just kept growing that and then so triumph literally went and signed like bank loans and credit, the musicians credit union and we bought our own PA and lights and had our own tractor trailer and then we went, hey RCA, when we go into Cleveland or Pittsburgh, we want to go into the small theater and we want to headline our own show and they would go, you're nuts, you haven't had enough airplay to do that, that's we're not going to do that, we would say yeah but we can make a deal with the local FM radio station, they'll do a 99 cent ticket so we'll go in, we'll be you know massaging our relationship with a promoter, we'll be getting bums into seats to see our show and then we're going to put on a show, we're going to blow off flash pots and shoot off flamethrowers and Rick's going to jump around and we're going to do this show where people are going to go, holy shit you guys missed that triumph show at the Beacon Theater last night and next time we go we'll have a legit ticket, we'll be getting some airplay, so that was how we built the band, we didn't do it by opening for other bands where you get 30 minutes and you get this much stage and you know you get nine lights and half the PA like but that's not to say we didn't you know we opened for Alice Cooper once in Cleveland on a New Year's show, we uh you know we once did a tour in Texas where we flip flopped with UFO so they would headline one night and then we would headline the other they didn't necessarily like the nights where they had to headline because if we'd already gone on we would have already had you know lasers and flash pots and you know and they went like oh we don't want to have to follow that crap yeah yeah yeah so last question and I'll let you go is rock music dead uh no uh is the rock music business dying uh that's that's debatable I would say maybe you know um is is the digital universe morphing rock music so that it's becoming unrecognizable is it not it's in there yeah you bet yes it surely is so you know the future belongs to the people that can morph and adapt and can stay light on their feet and change direction you know I mean we all hate the fact that politicians have you know turned the whole thing about pivoting into you know it's it's a pivoting is bullshit but nevertheless you know that's the world we live in though if you can't pivot if you can't change direction if you can't take the constant flow of change into consideration you're in trouble you know and um now back to your question is does rock music have certain fundamental values that are so good that they will never go out of style and I would say yes I would say I can listen to a Chuck Berry record and go oh I get that I get that that will never lose its charm it will never lose its its quality and I would say you can listen to a deep purple album and you can go that's there's never going to be a 14 year old boy that won't go holy shit that's great because it's great it's it's truly a classic great thing that will never die will it become a smaller smaller thing until it's sitting in the same place where you know when I was a kid there were jazz guys that were going like oh Elvis and the Beatles they ruined everything there used to be swing bands where you know where tenor saxophone players could get a paycheck riding in a bus you know playing all of these old dance halls so that's gone and it's gone forever that's never coming back you know that that's what's going to happen to rock music too but that doesn't mean that the essential charm of that jazz stuff that's never that's never died it still exists you know as it become more of a historical library kind of thing yes you know is that what's in store for rock I can't say you know it might you know certainly rock could not survive the onslaught of rap and hip-hop and that that became such a major market force that all the kids in suburbia that used to gravitate to rock they weren't gravitating to it anymore it wasn't happening you know so um that's ancient history you know so yeah yeah no so here we go let's go full circle now here we go back to the book reinvention the poems the autobiography rick em it's also coming out with an autobiography I guess in a year's time maybe two two and a half yeah okay well it's all good it's all good we got the documentary like tie us over so again this is the 14th this is going to be released tiff toronto international film fell fest premiere september 10th and i think it's coming out on crave later on rock and roll machine by triumph the documentary by banger films and a metal hall of fame catch the band catch the band on the 12th on the 12th of september that's really funky and cool so it's a cluster bang it's a good timing basically that's what it comes down to great timing anyways thank you so much for being a guest thanks for your time and we'll do it again okay jenny my pleasure all right okay bye everybody