Interview by Mark Lacey
It’s been close to 50 years since Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and Robb Reiner started Anvil; their friendship cemented through their school days, some early band collaborations, and the dream of making it big in the music business. There can be few musical partnerships that has lasted such a test of time, and so many highs and lows. And yet Anvil have just released their 20th studio album, and surely one of the finest albums to date. With another extensive tour across the US, and dates in Europe and the UK to follow, this never-ending story still has many chapters left to write.
“I think we both feel blessed that we’re still alive. We’re still here, and we’re only here till we’re not. We’re going to keep going. We’re artists. We love to play, and we like to make music”.
MGM: The first time I saw Anvil was around the time of your movie, and an early screening at the Bloomsbury Bowling Alley in London, after which you played a show in one of the lanes alongside Anthrax’s Scott Ian. That was a crazy show and no doubt a whirlwind time for you guys.
Robb: Ah, the movie days.
Lips: The Popcorn tour.
MGM: The last time Anvil were in the UK, COVID hit, and you had to return home early. That must feel like a lifetime ago because you’re back out, and touring pretty successfully.
Lips: Yeah, it was terrible. Going home really sucked because we’d just got settled in. We did about 18 shows, but all we’d done was the UK, and we still had all of Europe to do. And then we went home. And that was shit.
Robb: And then we sat around for two and a half years and wrote and recorded two albums.
MGM: Anvil were real pioneers of the heavy metal genre. Over in the UK, we had the New Wave of British Heavy Metal about the same time that you guys started out back in school. You influenced so many of those early bands around North America. Where did the inspiration for your style come from?
Robb: The way I remember it was we were influenced by all those great English bands; Deep Purple, Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Cream, Humble Pie, and maybe we smoked more dope, so we created whatever we created.
MGM: Did those bands used to tour around Canada when you were younger?
Robb: I think Humble Pie, and Sabbath, came here, but that’s about it. The others were primarily American touring bands. I was too young, but I was into the music, and it influenced me. Same with Lips. We were both influenced by virtually the same stuff.
Lips: I was lucky enough that in 1971, and that’s actually before I met Robb, I saw Sabbath with Humble Pie here in Toronto, which was pretty amazing, because it wasn’t until a long time later that Sabbath returned. But to me, I was there. I saw it. I was 15.
MGM: Was Anvil the first band that you both played in together, or were their others beforehand?
Robb: Absolutely. But very obscure, and very unknown. Lips and myself were in another band prior to Anvil, called Gravestone, which morphed into GAWD. Then I was in a band with Lips called Kickback. I was in a band without Lips called Whalebone. It was really weird. We did some things together, and other things not together.
Lips: There was a point when Robb was in Whalebone, and these guys were a fair bit older than us. So, Robb went out on the road while I was still finishing high school. He did his high school training on the road so that when I quit, at least I’d be with somebody who knows the road. He went out to do some reconnaissance with Whalebone. So that’s what he did.
MGM: Did you guys put out any music as Kickback? And did it sound like Anvil?
Lips: ‘Bedroom Game’, and ‘School love’ were in the repertoire, but they weren’t called ‘Bedroom Game’, and ‘School love’ and the arrangements were a fucking mess because we had a separate singer. That’s what drove me to become a singer, because of what that son of a bitch did to me whilst I was playing one day. One night on stage, he started punching me in the kidneys. And I’m going, why am I putting up with this? The guy isn’t even that good a singer. I could do this. And I started doing it. That’s what it turned into. It was actually an inspiration. I’m going to take this on myself, even though I don’t want to do it.
MGM: How do you reflect back on that early period of your career? The first couple of albums that you did, ‘Hard and heavy’ and ‘Metal on metal’ are still regarded as classics of that era. And you were there when that era of classic metal was riding the waves. What did that feel like to be part of that at the time?
Robb: For me, we were kids, so we didn’t know what was going on. Technically, it felt great, but the significance of it only hit later on.
Lips: It was fun when you come to realise what you were just doing.
Robb: In the moment, I was excited with what people were saying about the riffs and the drumming. We weren’t sure what it all meant. And then ‘Forged in Fire’ happened, which was also pioneering. It took us a few years to really get a hold of the whole thing. That’s what it was. But I’d say we didn’t really know. We were just like, wow, what’s going on? We’re just a bunch of cool guys getting stoned in a room and writing some cool songs that we like, but not aware that it’s got a cool drum part or this riff’s fucking progressive or whatever.
Lips: To us, it was just what we’re doing. You’re hoping that it has all these different facets to it, but you can’t recognise it, and you won’t be able to recognise it until it’s in retrospect. We were still discovering what Anvil was.
MGM: It’d be fascinating to jump in a time machine and go back and revisit those days with the benefit of hindsight. What do you think?
Robb: That’d be great for life in general.
Lips: We could go back and fix lots of stuff.
Robb: We were innocent. We were just a bunch of guys who had a vision. We wanted to play the music that we liked, whatever that was. It wasn’t like, let’s be Black Sabbath. It was, let’s try to have that heaviness. That would be a term we would have used. Let’s have the finesse of Deep Purple, and add a little bit of fucking Humble Pie, Cream, and rock blues into it.
Lips: The whole thing I discovered as a songwriter, virtually, was that I could skeletonize a piece of work by another artist and put a whole new body on it. And people don’t recognise it. There’s one album in particular where I really did that. I took apart songs and rewrote all the notes. In a technical sense, you’ve rewritten the song, but it’s got all different notes.
Robb: It’s about the feel and the groove. Man, that’s a great fucking feel. But you don’t want to play the same riffs. You come up with a riff that works with that groove.
MGM: Many people will have discovered your music for the first time through your documentary, but of course you had a long career before that. Albums like ‘Metal on Metal’ and ‘Forged in Fire’ are classics of that era. During your 40-year career, the heavy metal genre has gone through peaks and troughs of popularity. That sound seems to be going through a resurgence right now. Does that resonate with you guys?
Robb: Yeah, we see that. It’s been happening for a while.
Lips: There’s been a resurgence of it. And it could be that Anvil is part of that resurgence and caused some of it. Maybe the Anvil movie. It certainly had an impact on our audience in the sense that when we play a show, I would say more than half the people there are first-timers who’ve never seen us before. And in many cases, they’re kids.
MGM: How do you reflect back on the film? You would have been recording it maybe two or three years before it eventually came out. Did you imagine it would have the impact that it did?
Robb: The movie obviously changed everything due to its success. Lips anticipated it more than anybody, but that’s what happened. And what it’s done is given us a full-time job to be Anvil.
Lips: I did my last delivery for Choice Children Catering and never had to do it again.
Robb: We’re a band. We’ve always been a band. The movie was just this extra thing that happened and went beyond a normal documentary. It was something new.
MGM: Anvil have just released a new album titled ‘One and Only’. It’s your 20th studio album. The pair of you have been releasing albums for 40 plus years, and were together 10 years before you put out ‘Hard and Heavy’. How do you feel looking back at playing together for almost 50 years?
Robb: Well, I think we both feel blessed that we’re still alive. At least I do. We’re still here, and we’re only here till we’re not. We’re going to keep going. We’re artists. We love to play, and we like to make music.
MGM: How do you keep that creativity going? Often people’s creativity comes from change, and yet you two are a constant.
Robb: We’ve discovered what Anvil is. Lips certainly has discovered as a writer what Anvil is. Now, we’re just trying to be Anvil, just like AC/DC is always AC/DC. Lips records and writes his riffs. He’s got thousands of them. So, he gets stoned and comes up with whatever, and we pick and choose things that we feel could go somewhere.
Lips: Which one becomes your favourite? You got hundreds to listen to. And it’s interesting because sometimes it’s so there that it’s shocking. Robbo hears it and he goes, that is going to be fucking massive. Holy fuck. And I’m going, yeah? OK.
Robb: I hear it right away. As soon as Lips starts up the riff and it’s pounding away; I‘m like that’s going to be a massive fucking hook, dude. That’s big. As big as ‘Metal on metal’ or anything we’ve ever done. So, let’s choose that and let’s make it into something.
MGM: Unless I’ve read you wrong, Robb, essentially what happens is, Lips and you get stoned, you jam out some riffs, and the magic happens.
Lips: I load my computer with all the riffs, and then I put them on my stick and I take it to rehearsal, plug it in, and I go, which ones, man?
Robb: And then I will sit there and I’ll be fucking smoking, and we’re all sitting around discussing them, and we listen. There’s never any pressure. The things that are really good always jump out, and there’s certain riffs that are like, that is signature Anvil.
MGM: A few songs that are sure to resonate from the new album are ‘Truth is Dying?’, and ‘Feed your fantasy’. The latter of those two is really different from usual Anvil, and incorporates a shuffle feel to it. Certainly, it’s less heavy and more bluesy.
Robb: Yeah, that was us introducing something fresh. It’s still us, but doing something different. We just got fucking stoned and started doing this fucking groove; this shuffle. We’re going, yeah, man, this is fucking cool.
Lips: That’s our original roots. We’re from the seventies, man! All my lead guitar playing is blues-based. I don’t play from the modern books. I’m old school. That’s what my roots are. Almost all of the Anvil musical construction is blues progressions. You got the E part, you got the A part. You got the B part, the A part, back to the E part. They all work like that, in one way or another. That’s rock and roll.
Robb: One of my favourite bands is Status Pro. There’s a band that does lots of cool fucking hard-rocking, shuffle feels. And Foghat. The list goes on forever. These are bands we love.
MGM: Another great track off the album is ‘World of Fools’. Who or what is that song about?
Lips: We’ve all been taken in, and we let it pass. This world is a foolish world. The amount of bullshit that we just accept and do nothing about it, and not because we can’t do anything about it, there’s no point. I know that that sounds bizarre, but if you wanna talk about conspiracy theories, or whatever, you can talk about John F. Kennedy and the magic bullet. One bullet did all that. But meanwhile, you watch the footage of what’s happening, and you can visually see that he’s been hit twice. So, somebody tell me how the fuck that works. Or you can watch footage of three buildings in New York being completely demolished perfectly. It’s not that three buildings fell, but they all fell perfectly, demolished, like a real demo job. You go, what happened there? Oh, nothing.
Robb: Lips wrote those lyrics. It’s a fucking solid song.
Lips: It’s not just conspiracy theories. It’s stuff where there’s obviously monkey business, and no one does anything about it or it ever will.
MGM: You’ve already announced a huge number of live dates for 2024, including some more club shows in the UK.
Robb: We’re coming over in September / October. We’re all good with playing in those types of places. It’s the only time when you’re close to the people and it feels like a real fucking love fest.
MGM: You guys must now both be in your sixties, and yet you’re both real high energy live performers, and playing with a level of intensity onstage that betrays your ages. What’s the secret?
Lips: You stay in shape and then don’t you have a problem.
Robb. I’m 66, and you stay in game shape. We play all the time. If we’re not touring, we rehearse four days a week, an hour every day just to stay in game shape. We’ve been doing that our whole lives. And then otherwise, we’re playing virtually every night.
Lips: You got to keep the calluses on your fingers. You got to use your brain. We always writing new songs. There’s always something to do, man. We’re musicians. That’s what we’re supposed to do, not sit around and watch TV.
Robb: It seems that as long as we keep playing, physically, you keep it together.
For more information:
http://my.tbaytel.net/tgallo/anvil/tour.htm
Anvil brings their ‘One and Only’ tour to the UK & Ireland in October:
1st October: Bannerman’s, Edinburgh
2nd October: Academy 2, Liverpool
3rd October: Corporation, Sheffield
4th October: The Welly Club, Hull
5th October: CLWB CROWN, Merthyr Tydfil
7th October: Grand Social, Dublin
8th October: Limelight 2, Belfast
9th October: Audio, Glasgow
11th October: The Dome, London
12th October: Academy 2, Leicester
13th October: The Joiners, Southampton
15th October: The Crypt, Hastings
About Author
