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Q&A: Lips and Robb of ANVIL
An online exclusive interview
Friday, May 15, 2009
By Drew Fortune
I have a confession to make: Anvil made me cry. I can’t recall a better underdog story in recent years. The documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil is a tribute to the unwavering belief in a dream. In the early Eighties, on the brink of superstardom, Canadian rockers Anvil were poised to bring the world to its knees with their influential brand of ear-shattering speed metal. They toured with the biggest names in the business, played the biggest festivals of the day and then suddenly disappeared, while seemingly all of their peers went on to fame and fortune. Through a series of miscalculations, inept record labels and cruel fate, Anvil spent the next 25 years dwelling in cult obscurity, their brief moment of fame remembered only by the most die-hard head bangers — or so it would seem. With the release of the documentary, musicians and celebrities alike are coming out of the closet to confess their love for Anvil. Whether it’s Slash professing Anvil’s influence on a young Guns N’ Roses or Dustin Hoffman throwing devil horns during the Anvil performance following the documentary at the LA premiere, Anvil is once again primed to take over the world.
After more than 30 years in the game, band mates Steve “Lips” Kudlow (guitar, vocals) and drummer Robb Reiner remain the group’s core members. They are also, as exposed in the film, closer than brothers, and the heart of the story belongs to these two men who set out with a dream as teenagers, and have shared in each other’s failings and triumphs equally. They are perfectly suited to one another: Lips as the outspoken, eternal optimist and Robb as the stoic, often stoned yin to Lips’s yang.
I spoke with Lips and Robb from their native Canada about the strange and unexpected journey of Anvil, and what it takes to have faith in a dream despite overwhelming adversity.
Stop Smiling: While it may not have happened the way you planned, are you currently living your rock ’n’ roll dream?
Robb Reiner: I guess to a certain extent, yeah. It’s not complete. It’ll be complete when we start playing to 10,000 people every night.
Lips: For me, yeah, I’m absolutely living the dream. I’ve been living my rock ’n’ roll dream all along. Anvil’s been around for 30 years, man, and I’ve been living it all along. What’s happening now is really the icing on the cake. I’m having my cake and eating it, man, so it’s all good.
SS: How did the documentary come together? Was director Sacha Gervasi a life-long fan?
Lips: We met him in 1982.
RR: We met him when he was 16 years old. He came to us with the project. He came back into our lives and tossed out the idea of making a movie. He became a film guy and we didn’t know that until we reconnected with him. Our story of never giving up and rocking out all these years inspired the hell out of him, and compelled him to make the movie.
SS: What was the budget?
Lips: Everything that Sacha had to his name went into making the movie. He wrote a movie for Spielberg (2004’s The Terminal) and turned around and put everything he had into making a movie about his buddies, man.
SS: Did you ever worry about the film becoming melodramatic or a Behind the Music facsimile?
Lips: No, Sacha was intent on making the kind of movie that no one had ever seen before. He had to make a movie that no one else in the world could have made, other than him, and that’s precisely what he did.
RR: It was a very personal movie to him.
SS: Is there anyone else who you would have allowed into your lives to shoot this besides Sacha?
Lips: I don’t know any other filmmakers.
RR: We gave him full access because we trusted him, you know? He was a friend.
Lips: Not only is he a friend, but a major fan, so the last thing on his agenda was to hurt the band. All that he wanted to do was bring some justice to where he felt there had been an incredible amount of injustice, and he thought that on a number of levels this needed to happen. From his perspective, he thought that we should have made it a long time ago, because he felt that everybody had ripped us off. Then he discovered that was actually the case, particularly by looking at it in retrospect. When he went to go shoot people to find out how they felt about Anvil, there were virtually lineups. See, we were an obscure band that all the other bands listened to, and it’s just one of those kinds of things — just one of those anomalies that happened in the heavy metal genre.
With us and bands like Captain Beyond, these are the underground sensations that stayed quiet to the mass public, though were the biggest things since sliced bread to the musicians they inspired. We come from that underground world. From Sacha’s perspective it shouldn’t have been that way. So he did something about it. And what’s great about all this is that we stayed underground and never sold out. At the end of the day, what the movie has done is create a testament to sticking to your guns and making it on your own terms.
SS: Did you have any idea you were such an influence on Slash and Lars?
Lips: With certain guys, yes. With Slash, I didn’t really know, although it was kind of apparent to me, mostly from Duffy [Guns N Roses’ bassist Duff McKagan]. We had met Duffy many years ago, and some of the things he said to us, even at that time, pretty much indicated what was going on, in the way that he said, ‘There’s no justice in rock ’n’ roll. You’re one of my favorite bands, and my band made it and you didn’t.’ So what does that say? It’s not saying anything much different than what Lars or Slash said, or Scott Ian. It’s just one of those things that happens, and it takes a lot of things to be in the right place at the right time. There are many different spokes in the wheels, and if any of those spokes are missing, then you’ve got a problem — you don’t make it. And it’s the same thing with making it: All the spokes have to be perfect. That’s just the way it works. There’s a great deal of luck, and also who you’re involved with at a particular time. It’s really complicated. It wasn’t our time in 1982, but it’s our time now. That’s just the way it goes.