Robb Reiner, Steve Lips Kudlow on Anvil
Sacha Gervasi Directs The Story of Anvil Rockumentary
Apr 2, 2009
In 2005, filmmaker Sacha Gervasi (The Terminal) and former Anvil roadie approached the Canadian thrash metal pioneers about making a documentary on the group. Despite their 1982 disc Metal on Metal becoming one of the most influential thrash discs of all time, the group never received their due and Gervasi wanted to chronicle his former heroes on film.
The resulting movie, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, is doing the rounds at the festival circuit and will open across Canada, starting in Toronto on April 3rd. It's an alternately hilarious and heart-warming story of two men who have dedicated their lives to the rawk. Now a trio with Glenn Five on bass, Anvil sells their CD's solely through their website Anvilmetal.com.
Suite 101 sat down with founding members Steve 'Lips' Kudlow (vocals/guitar) and Robb Reiner (drums) at their publicist's house to discuss how they met Gervasi and why Anvil never got their due.
S101: How did the movie come about?
Robb Reiner: “We met Sacha when he was 15 years old –"
He used to roadie for you guys, right?
Robb: “After, yeah. He was a metalhead fan kid, we met him in 1982, in England at the Marquée Club; we were doing a gig there. And we became friends with him. He came out on the road with us for a few tours.
“Then we went our own ways for 20-odd years and I always wondered what happened to him. What happened was he had turned into a Hollywood screenwriter. In 2005, he decided to look us up; we’re not sure why. He wrote an email and Lips responded to him."
Lips: “We dumped the 12 albums we had recorded on the table in front of him and he was flipping out. So, about 2 weeks after we visited him in L.A., he told us he wanted to do a movie and I flipped out. I thought: ‘Opportunity of a lifetime.’ Thirty years, and all that we’ve done, we’re gonna tell the world about.”
What was that like, having the camera crew in your faces like that –
Robb: "We gave him full access. The cameras were all around, it didn’t bother us. The whole thing was ‘Get on with your lives, be who you are and we’ll film everything.’ We trusted him because he was a friend. Even though we had some final say over the end product, we trusted him anyways.”
Were there some stuff that you said, ‘Oh no way.’ Because that film documents some real highs and lows –
Lips: "Like there is in real life. All kinds of things kinda happen; the movie just continues. In the rock n’ roll lifestyle, anything can be around the corner, and we’ve always lived that way. So what’s happened here is that the movie came around the corner. If you make it your destiny that you wanna be a rock n’ roller, if you stick around, an opportunity will come because of the randomness of it. The longer you do it, the better the chance that you’re gonna get someplace with it. Most people quit before they ever get a chance. I lived long enough to get a chance the first time, and I knew it will happen again.
"Although there was a dip in our popularity or whatever, there was still no reason to stop doing it. I thought, ‘We’ll continue, what difference does it make?’ Randomly or by design or by perseverance alone, we’ll get another opportunity and I will become a star, like I’m supposed to be because I always felt in my heart of hearts that I am going to be successful on a financial level.
"On every other level, I am successful. I’ve recorded 13 albums, I’ve toured all over the world, I have literally hundreds of thousands of friends, I can go to virtually any country in the world and ring someone up and have them come and get me at the airport. I don’t know if you can imagine the warmth of what you can attain by doing music as your vocation. It’s amazing! This is great that we got a movie, that people get to see –
Robb: "If we didn’t have the music, we wouldn’t have had this movie, we wouldn’t even be here."
Lips: "We devoted our lives to being musicians and creating music, and that’s what we do."
You mentioned learning from the first time around. At one point, you seemed poised for stardom. What happened, what did you learn from that?
Robb: "We had a bad manager."
Lips: "Yeah, bad manager, bad decision, but it’s the randomness of it, it’s not necessarily –"
Robb: "Timing, fate . . ."
Lips: "A combination of things were not in line. It takes a lot of things to get in line for a success to happen, it’s not just one thing. I gotta great song; yeah, so what! Who's your record company? Did your manager send it to a record company to get you a record deal at the right time, with the right record company that needed that kind of act, with the audience that wanted to buy it: all the things that have to align in order to have the big financial success.
"It’s insurmountable. So the randomness of that, so many combinations, it partially happened when we were 25, now it’s going way further. Right now, we’re a much bigger band than we ever have been, if all that didn’t even happen."
(In this article, Anvil talk more about the movie, and why it shatters the stereotypes of metal musicians)
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