Liberty Manifesto - an Interview with Rik Emmett
oneze...@bluebottle.com
http://www.classicrockrevisited.com/Interviews/07/rikemmett207.htm
Jeb: Congratulations on a fantastic collection of music. Airtime is a damn good rock album. I am sure you have been answering this question all month... Why return to the rock arena at this time in your life? Especially after you seem to have almost avoided it for for decades.
Rik: Mike Shotton poked & prodded me and then I got into it. I found it fun to write rock, practice rock, record it, play the bass, arrange, etc. The singing wasn't as much fun because it was pretty demanding. But rock is, mostly, something that comes fairly natural to me, so it had a nice sense of organic comfort to it after a while.
Jeb: The creative process can be harvested many ways. It can be a conscience effort to write in a specific way or it can be more of an internal yearning to do so or it can be just what comes out. Explain the process behind making Airtime...
Rik: All three of those things. Some licks had a long history, waiting for the right circumstance to find an outlet. Some stuff came out of jam sessions between Mike and I and some things grew out of taking 'idea' tapes home and fiddling with another guy's ideas to add something.
Airtime became defined through process - we weren't sure what it was going to be - just that we wanted to try and be rockin', melodic, and not deny any tendencies toward 'classic' rock', in order to try and fit in to whatever perception of the market exists now. I wasn't about to detune and try to sing like a second generation vocalist imitating Eddie Vedder. It makes me laugh when people say they listen to "Midnight" and the riff reminds them of Rob Zombie or something. I couldn't pick a Rob Zombie song out of a set list if my life depended on it. Mike wrote the detuned drop D riff and I've used dropped D on classical guitar pieces: I learned 'slack key' pieces off of Chet Atkins records. "Buggy Ride" and "Lickity Bit" are pieces written in a dropped-to-C tuning!
"Process" is often just cloning and hybridization and distillation and serendipity. The process is the thing to enjoy - to have fun and to immerse one's self in it because there's no guarantee about what might happen with perceptions of the end product or whether the market might take a shine to it or not. It's about journeys, not destinations.
Jeb: Ironic you named the band what most talented rock bands who happen to play solos and write good songs have the hardest time getting!
Rik: It's like skateboarding slang, too - or surfing - like 'hang' time.
Music is something that floats on the thin air between us - maybe it connects us, maybe it fails to do so. But music is all time-related in the way it is constructed between musicians. When it gets made, it floats in thin air.
"Time" has also always been a theme of mine. And it's pretty hard not to return to rock after several years as an old-fart going-into-the-hall-of-fame guy, and not have 'time' be an issue. Like Led Zep, "Airtime" has a kind of light-heaviness to it.
Yes, it plays on radio exposure. It plays on the demise of classic rock, too - being turned into a diminishing category that hardly ever plays new music when something from 1968 to maybe 1982 will do. Any 'new' music of this genre is probably going to spend its time floating around, lighter than air. Critics of high tenor vocalists with lots of shiny harmony will get out their slings and arrows and try to prick the hot-air balloon. So, it's also self-mocking, a bit.
But it plays very simply too, as a two-syllable compound word that is memorable, probably won't be misspelled very often, and will be close to the front of the bins in a record store [soon to be totally extinct as well], since it starts with "A". That's how I found the word - on the first page of a Webster's dictionary [3rd edition, 1976], that had the new words it was adding in the addenda printed in the front.
Jeb: One thing that is clear from the getgo is that you have taken amazing care of your voice. This is a different style than jazz or folk. Was getting back to the rock sound easy for you or did you have to do some vocal calisthenics?
Rik: I don't do vocal exercising, no. It takes me longer to get my voice warmed up - and I don't have the range I used to. I don't have the stamina, either - and I'm glad for Shotton's production expertise [he's a better singer than me, probably], so he coached and cajoled me and babied me and pushed me when he thought he could. When in doubt, there was always his engineering & editing genius.
There were plenty of comped finals [composite constructions, with different lines in a song edited together from different takes]. It's not like I went out in front of the mike and sang those tunes end-to-end with no punches.
Jeb: Did the induction of Triumph into the Canadian Hall of Fame and the olive branch between Mike, Gil and yourself have anything to do with relighting the rock torch inside of you?
Rik: Other way round, I think. Mike Shotton knew Gil - and maybe the process of Airtime, amongst many other things, led me to think about reconciling with Mike Levine and Gil. The induction offer gave us an excuse, a catalyst, for a reconciliation.
In truth - the biggest thing was that my younger brother got liver cancer, fought it hard for over a year, and passed away. But he and I talked at length about things - every little thing, all the heavy things - and he pushed me to take care of a lot of things because life is short and there's not a lot of time to carry around too much extra baggage. He got to hear Airtime in the last few weeks of his life and that was important to him. And he got to see me reconciled with Mike and Gil and that was important to him. Gil and Mike came to the funeral home - Gil came to the funeral. That was stand-up stuff. It's all part of paying tribute to my brother's extraordinary life.
Jeb: Before we talk songs, lets talk the name of the album. Liberty Manifesto. Explain how you came up with that and the significance behind it.
Rik: 'Liberty Manifesto", had many shades of meaning:
- it signaled my return to rock, after many years of absence, and after some deep unhappiness and disenchantment with the whole genre [i.e. make a statement].
- this little manifesto was happening through a vehicle [Airtime] that gave tons of personal freedom. It was quite liberating and challenging [i.e. liberty].
MANIFESTO, because ...
- the genre of classic melodic hard rock itself is often critically disparaged and overlooked. It has very little mainstream cachet. People find it quaint and somewhat foolish to try and make music that could never outdo 1967 through 1982. The values and qualities of rock music have changed a great deal, and there is not a heck of a lot of respect given to new music that embraces melodic hard rock with progressive tendencies, high tenor singing, and harmony vocalizing, and songs that also contain intense soloing - these kinds of traits are almost universally dissed by critics of most stripes. But Mike and I said, "Who the fuck cares? Let's just make a record that we like, that focuses in on rock skills that we both possess."
'Manifesto' takes on a personal political kind of flavor, because the music biz has been changing - drastically, struggling to cope with file sharing, decimating the fundamental values of copyright for creators. So we made a record without worrying about how it might ever do in the current commercial marketplace, which is pretty much eroded, assimilated by digital technology megacorporations, and close to ruins - much like the debris of the 9/11 towers [our song "Liberty" is about that topic]. Along the way, Michael personally went through a separation and divorce, lost his brother in untimely and devastating circumstances, and around a year later, I lost my younger brother to cancer. We have managed to continue to work our way through, and out of, these very human trials. So the project became a personal manifesto for us, of sorts - we kept rebuilding, from many different piles of ruins.
Jeb: As compared to the 'good old days' with Triumph what was it like to work on a rock record without the following:
A. Pressure from the record company for a hit
After so many years in the business, pressure exists everywhere anyways. How can you escape your past? Answer - you can't. How can you escape the need for champions, at radio, in the press, in other media? You can't. What is a 'hit', anymore? if I could get somebody to do something insane on a homemade video for youtube, with an Airtime song as the soundtrack, we might get a "hit". If Jobs from the iPod iTunes world decides to give me a commercial license deal, to sell his new gizmo on a TV ad, ["ooooh, I like the one that comes in blue, with the instant fileshare off the internet feature! But first I need to IM my friends and check my Facebook and myspace accounts"], I might have a 'hit'.
Pressure is usually self-inflicted. Some people have an ability to tell a record company person, or an interviewer, or an audience member, to fuck off, and they don't ever feel a twinge of regret. I'm not made that way - so I end up pressurizing myself about all kinds of things, because I don't want to let other people down - and I want to try and keep myself happy, too - which doesn't seem to get easier as I age - it would seem to be getting harder.
B. Worrying about hurting other band members feelings when you are chosen to sing the single
Hmmm. Working with Shotton is a treat. It's been almost an ego-less exercise, so far.
C. Not having to deal with a producer
Make no mistake - both Mike and I think like producers. I dealt with two every day on this project - him and me. I find myself very difficult to get along with, sometimes - I just don't want to take direction from myself, and don't seem capable of taking my own best advice.
Jeb: How much thought goes into the placement of tracks on an album like Liberty Manifesto? I notice you put "Edge of Your Mind" as the opening track and it happens to have a killer solo right at the beginning. It kind of sends a message that you are gonna rock on this one! Does that kind of thinking come into play when you put the tracks listing together?
Rik: Mike and I kicked the list around a fair bit - in the end, I let him decide. He wanted that kind of energy up front: he loves the riff rockin' stuff - "Midnight" was his riff: "Addicted" is his riff. "Edge" was an old riff of mine, but Mike liked the almost three-piece, Rush-like aggressiveness of it off the top. I was cool with that.
Jeb: "Midnight Black & Blue" is a powerful track. Please share the inspiration both vocally and musically behind the song.
Rik: Mike had that riff - no song, just a riff. So we jammed on it a bit, and I made some suggestions. We made some demos, I took 'em home and started fiddling. I rewrote the lyric through several drafts. I think we had the hook - "Midnight Black & Blue" - and I worked backwards, thinking about an evil guy who had a heart that was twsited and cold and coloured like a really bad bruise. Vocally? Concept was - verse down & dirty, chorus big & shiny. To me, the song didn't really work 100% 'til I put the slide part on with my old National lap steel.
Jeb: If you are game lets do the same question for each song on the album... "Edge of Your Mind."
Rik: "Edge of Your Mind" grew out of a riff from an old Guitar Player magazine column thing I came up with in the early 90's. It's frantic, edgy quality led to the idea of the rat race, of a consumer-mad, commercial, marketing-driven culture, and how gentle, humane attributes of our sanity have been pushed to the fringes of our instant gratification society.
Jeb: "Liberty"
Rik: Liberty is written as a post 9 / 11 look at the dynamics of 'freedom'. The Statue of Liberty in the harbour in New York has been an enduring symbol of The American Dream, and has some powerful poetry written by Emma Lazarus that is part of its heritage [which tied into the lyric]. The 'dream' of American democracy - a beautiful and moving thing - is something that is always tested, from within and without, and it has suffered a great deal since 9 / 11, which is, at the same time, understandable but also sad and troubling. 'Freedom' is a beautiful ideal, but it's also not easy to achieve, or maintain - it comes at a price. What's the price we're willing to pay? What does one default to when they have to build back up from the ashes? It's not an easy question to answer, and we didn't try to prove that we had an answer - we're just trying to make people aware of the heaviness of the question - how it can be complicated and intricate. Maybe it's even always unsymmetrical an!
d unbalanced - say, like a chorus that has a bar of 5 in it.
Mike and I considered that track to be the 'epic' heart of what we were doing on Liberty Manifesto.
Jeb: "Headstream"
Rik: A lovely day in the studio, indulged and egged on by Mike, as I was playing classical guitar stuff as an intro for "River", loosely using the chord progression from it. Mike cut it together like the skillful digital surgeon he is, then put overdubs that I also added to as the thing grew.
Jeb: "River Runs Deep"
Rik: A theme I've written to before - the arrogance of youth, our obligation to our ancestors and to our children's children's children: it's about how love and duty and honour - virtuous stuff - seems like the current, the tide, in the flow of our humanity. If it ain't, we're in trouble, I fear. This song wouldn't be out of place on an old Triumph album, I think - probably in the era after Never Surrender. If I'd written it for Allied Forces, I think it would have been a smash hit song then - crossing over from FM to AM like "Fight the Good Fight" and "Magic Power" never could have. That world is gone forever but The River keeps running, running...
Jeb: "Find Your Way"
Rik: Mike's original chord riff: Mike spent a lot of time pushing for different production angles on this. Mike wrote most of the lyrics in the verses - I contributed the chorus and the bridge. A soul in trouble, being offered a candle, to hold up against the dark. I often think songs need to try and do this for folks. If music isn't a source of recreational hope, faith and love, it's only going to be about hormones, or the Seven Deadly Sins. Lots and lots and lots of songs and movies and books about that shite nowadays. Songs like this are more rare now. To many, that's considered a source of ironic smirking. [A Douglas Coupland character in a novel might retort, "No one writes Roaring Twenties tunes anymore either, Rik; no one writes 'I'll Be Home For Christmas' war-time ballads, either, or big band 'String of Pearls' dance tunes." And that's why so much modern music is just plain lousy -dreadfully boring and depressing.]
Jeb: "Addicted"
Rik: Another one of Mike's riffs - always made me think of Lenny Kravitz. Some music director at a radio station said it reminded them of "Cold Ethyl" by Alice Cooper. I just did an interview with Alice - but I must admit I've never heard the tune. I wrote the lyric - but I think Mike came up with the hook / title when we were jamming the song out. So I just worked backwards. It's lots and lots of fun to play on guitar & bass.
Jeb: "Code 9"
Rik: The funk era of Led Zep - rock meets R & B. Hilariously, I read that some reviewer thought that this tune sounded like "jazz". Right - like Coltrane's Giant Steps!
We had the bedtrack groove stuff, then the chorus [which always hit me like a "Foreigner" kind of hook / riff] with the title / hook. But if you Google Code 9, there isn't a lot to go on. It sounded vaguely like an emergency kind of code call, so we went with that. Urgency, emergency ... A relationship in crisis, a guy about to self-destruct, something on the brink of something ...
Jeb: "Rise"
Rik: We had a bedtrack, no lyrics - I sent a few of our rough beds of tunes to Jim Peterik [of "Eye of the Tiger" songwriter fame - a friend from the Chicago area, who has invited me down to do his World Stage show many times, and it's always good fun]. He sent back a chunk of poetry / lyric for this one that didn't hit me right, but it had a line about a pheonix, rising from the flames ---- which really struck a resonating chord in me. It tied to the idea of "Liberty", and of rebirth [like the CD itself]. It had prosody to the sense of the chord progression in the head. So, Jim didn't know it, but he'd given us the title & concept. The chords in the B verses are pretty cool - this song has some angles and tricks in it that some people probably won't pick up on until repeated listenings. If they manage to give it that much of a chance.
Jeb: "Moving Day"
Rik: I wrote this lyric about Mike, who went through a day when his ex-wife came and moved out all of her stuff [and a lot of the stuff related to their two boys]. I thought I'd caught something and got it right here - how a person gradually comes to terms with their heartbreak, and resolves to be a better person out of the pain. [The lyric morphs from chorus to chorus, just a bit.] Songs like this are tough; you know some rockheads are not going to like a ballad on a rock record, no matter how you execute it. You know that things like fretless bass and coral electric sitar guitar are going to push the song into too 'pop' of a space for others. But sometimes a song is a song and you have to let the song tell you what it needs. And it deserved to be on the record: it was a 'moving' song for Mike, emotionally, and from a diary / snapshot-of-my-life point of view. I really wanted Mike to sing it: as I wanted him to sing 50% of the stuff, all along. But he really fought me on th!
at: he wanted me to sing everything, and make a definitive statement about a personal return to the rock idiom. He felt it would make for a stronger record that would attract more notice. So - okay. I ended up singing this one. But this song would have been better if Mike sang it - I still believe that.
Jeb: "Transmutation"
Rik: One of the first songs we worked up - a Rush-like instrumental. I really like this side of Airtime's personality - a bit progressive, but also accessible, and almost garage band-ish. Shotton cut the drum tracks with his kit set up in the control room of the studio, playing takes, then spinning around on his stool and hitting the computer start and stop. I had played the guitar parts rough, to a click. I was doing Chris Squire and Geddy Lee impersonations all through the album, using a pick on my Nathan East 5 string bass.
Jeb: Will Airtime tour? If so will you throw in any songs from your solo career and/or Triumph? Any thought as to what you have not played for a while that you would like to play again?
Rik: Will Airtime tour? Maybe. If the album meets with enough acceptance and success and fan support, we would consider some live dates, yes. Touring is something that needs to make financial sense. So promoters need to be excited at the prospect. That takes time - and maybe doesn't happen at all.
Would I throw in any songs from my solo career and/or Triumph? Maybe. Probably. I dunno. Cross bridges if & when you get there, I say.
Jeb: Before ending this interview I do have to ask about the 'other' band. You not only survived the Hall of Fame ceremony, you walked away with some healing of the past. Has that healing process continued? Are you still in touch with Mike and Gil?
Rik: [We] had a meeting last week. Very nice. Plenty of yack yack and blah blah about offers but nothing solid. Gil is heavily committed to his businesses and family life until at least May 2009, and isn't sure he could face the daunting prospect of getting himself into drummer-shape, after 17 or 18 years away from it. I can totally see that - I'm certainly not going to pressure anybody about anything - I'd really need to see the I's dotted and T's crossed about anything before I'd want to commit, anyway, and Mike & Gil both know that. It's a bit strange, still - there are dynamics of why I left the partnership that have not necessarily been resolved, and may never be, after so many years. But they've become relatively inconsequential, at this point. They wouldn't be if anything as ambitious as a reunion tour was ever attempted. At this point? No pressure, no stress. It's all good. We're casual pals. That's an easy thing to take.
I had 13 years of my life with them: but we were bandmates and business partners - we weren't family, and we didn't hang together much, or grow up together, or any of that stuff. So after almost 20 years of not talking to them, they are still somewhat like strangers to me. It's good to see them and talk again - but I imagine it's much like when professional athletes see teammates from two decades ago: there's been a lot of things that happen in separate lives in twenty years.
Jeb: This is about the fifth interview we have done. Some by email and some by phone. I am always amazed at the reaction our interviews get. People think we hate each other and are fighting when it is actually laughter. Have you been surprised that people have followed our interviews like that?
Rik: I'm never really all that surprised by people anymore. Sometimes/often disappointed, or hurt: sometimes/often amused. Sometimes/often baffled. Occasionally, someone says or does something that restores my faith in humanity. As for our interviews - nope. I try not to lose my sense of humor. Folks that know me know that I tend to always come at it from that P.O.V.
Jeb: Last one: You spell Rik without the usual letter C before the K. Is that your birth name or did you change it to look Rock Star Cool?
Rik: In 1976, back in the era when I still used to routinely spell my name R-i-c-k, like almost everyone else, Mike Levine owed me money from cash I'd lent him on a road trip. He wrote me a check to pay me back, and spelled my name R-i-c on it. A few days later, he phoned to consult with me on the correct credits to put on the album cover of the very first Triumph album in Canada. "6 & 12 string guitars, lead vocals on this track & that track, etc."
"Yeah yeah," I said, " but what's more important is - I hope you spell my name right! You got it wrong on that check you wrote me the other day - it's not R-i-c, ya know - it has a "k" on the end of it!"
"Ooooh, okay", he says. A few weeks later, the print proofs for the album jackets come back - and there's my name, spelled R-i-k.
"What have you done, Mike?? It's not R-i-k, it's R-i-c-k. I didn't mean drop the 'c', I meant add the friggin 'k'!"
"Ooohhh .... well .... that's a problem, man, because there's already been 20,000 jackets printed up, and it's too late to change it."
So what was I to do? I said - take a deep breath - take the long view. This is show biz. Simply leave it that way, and it will be a bit different, and unusual, and it will be a story I can always tell. And I do have to tell it. Over and over and over and over and over and over.
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