In their teens, Toronto school friends STEVE ‘LIPS’ KUDLOW and ROBB REINER made a pact to rock together forever. The result was heavy metal band Anvil. Over the years they influenced a musical generation including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. But instead of selling millions of albums like those bands, Anvil’s career took a nosedive into obscurity.
Now in their 50s, the Canadian rockers are back with their thirteenth album and their first film, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which follows frontman Kudlow and drummer Reiner as they juggle family life, living the musical dream, and the effects of ageing. Film journalist Jan Gilbert caught up with the Anvil two for a chat.
MMM: You met the film’s director Sacha Gervasi in London back in the early 80s. Do you remember those days well?
Kudlow: Oh yeah, it was 1982 at the Marquee Club. It was our first time in the UK and we met this little 15-year-old kid who was excited as hell to meet us and hang out with us. He took us out to Carnaby Street to buy leather jackets and bullet belts. He became our friend and came out to Toronto where we come from in Canada and he has family, and he started coming out on the road with us. Then he basically disappeared for about 20 years and we wondered whatever happened to him.
MMM: What was it like when he got back in touch with you?
Kudlow: It was completely out of the blue and it was a very weird set of circumstances in which it came to pass. We had gone to Italy to play a festival and these two guys from the band Candlemass came and knocked at our dressing room door, invited themselves in, and told us they’d met us on Carnaby Street in ’82. I started flipping out because I remembered signing autographs for these guys and that we were with Sacha. So that made me start thinking about Sacha again.
Anyway, I get home from the festival in Italy and there’s an email from Sacha. He invited me down to Los Angeles where I brought him all the albums we’d recorded and freaked him right out! I found out he’s an accomplished screenwriter and he came back up to Toronto and sat me down at his uncle’s place and told me that he was going to make a movie about us. I flipped out, man, I couldn’t believe it. A complete utter miracle had transpired.
MMM: So the idea for the film came first, then the European tour, then the new album This is Thirteen?
Kudlow: Yeah. About two weeks after the festival in Italy Sacha told me he was going to make a movie. At that festival we’d met Tiziana, the booking agent, and I was able to put a tour together and once I did that, things started getting going really good. And Sacha suggested I get in touch with the producer Chris [Tsangerides who produced Anvil’s 1982 album Metal on Metal]. He was another guy I’d been trying to get in touch with for ages and then finally I did a search and there was his name, I found him. We talked to him and we ended up coming to England to record again. It’s unbelievable. All this stuff is just wild synchronicity, all meant-to-be stuff, really out of this world, man. Somebody’s guiding it, somebody’s putting all this stuff into place. It’s really a surreal experience I’m going through at this point.
MMM: You and Robb have been playing together as Anvil for nearly 30 years. What’s kept the band together all this time?
Kudlow: There’s a number of things at play. First of all we’ve always had a true belief in what we did and we knew, because we’d been told by our peers, other musicians who’d made it very big, that we should never give up because what we have is very special. The other aspect is that we never really did business very well and the people we did do business with screwed us over, but we never blamed those things on ourselves and we kept true to our own beliefs and never gave up. And the bottom line is that we love to play live, we live for that, and we believe that if we can play one big concert, we can play another.
We’ve always felt that way, and it’s always come to pass. There are always big festivals to do as long as you keep your band together and keep recording. To give up is no way to get through life. You’ve got to persevere. We’re compelled to be this way. If you don’t have your dreams and your goals, what is there in life? Isn’t that what life is? That’s what it is to me. And I consider myself a very fortunate individual in the way that I’ve been able to get away with having a beautiful long career like this.
MMM: Over the course of that career you seem to have stayed quite philosophical about the music industry.
Kudlow: The music industry is jam-packed with insincere people. They’ll pretend to be your friend only to make something or take something from you. But as a player in that business I’ve grown immune to its effect. I mean you can only get screwed over so many times before you become aware why and you just don’t let it happen any more.
MMM: The film follows you on tour in Europe. What was the most memorable part of that time for you?
Reiner: The most memorable part for me was just being able to play every night. I love to play. I love blowing people away. That’s what I live for and that’s what it’s all about for me. As for making the movie, I was just myself and went along with everything that was happening. I never really knew what the outcome was going to be until I actually saw the movie.
MMM: So what was it like seeing the finished film?
Reiner: The very first time I saw it I had to see it three times. The first time I saw it I knew I liked it, I knew it was a great piece of work, but I needed to see it a couple more times to actually get what the director was trying to get across, because the whole time the movie was being filmed I wasn’t really sure what it was going to be, where it was going. When I saw it the third time I totally understood it and I completely love it.
MMM: The film screened at Sundance. How was that experience?
Reiner: Sundance was mindblowing. They showed the movie there at six screenings and they were all sold out. It was the hit of the festival. After that I knew there was something very special about this movie. I love that the movie’s being embraced by everybody who sees it. I wanna rock, that’s what this is all about.
MMM: And you found a new fan at the festival.
Reiner: I wasn’t aware Slash was an Anvil fan so that put a big smile on my face. I thought it was pretty cool. I met him in person at Sundance and the stuff he was saying to me about how much he enjoyed Anvil really blew me away.
MMM: Your new album and the film are both out now. What’s next?
Reiner: When we first met Sacha and asked him to come on the road with us, he used to set up the drums and sell T-shirts for a couple of tours. Those were all great early days. We were kids having a lot of fun. Now we’re big kids having lots of fun!
I’ve been friends with Lips since I was 14 years old, and he was 16. He’s my life-long buddy. We have our differences sometimes but it’s no big deal. We’re gonna keep rockin’, as long as we stay healthy, we’re gonna keep rockin’.
