ANVIL Frontman: 'If You Have A Passion For It, Then You're My Man'

Jim Rowland of ber Rck recently conducted an interview with Canadian heavy metal legends ANVIL. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ber Rck: How did Bob Marlette [end up producing the new ANVIL album, "Juggernaut Of Justice"]? Was it because he is a fan, or because he is a very good producer?

Robb Reiner (drums): Our manager brought him in.

Steve "Lips" Kudlow (guitar, vocals): What's fascinating about that is everybody that we let in, it has to do with passion. If you have a passion for it, then you're my man. What happened is that Rick Sales [ANVIL's manager] called his friend Bob, and said, 'Do you want to do this band?' His wife overhears him on the phone and says "ANVIL? You're going to have an opportunity to produce ANVIL? Have you seen the movie? You've got to watch the movie!" So he watches the movie. I go pick him up at the airport, he gets into the car and says, "I wanna do this album so bad, I'm gonna give you the best fuckin' record you guys have ever recorded. This is your moment, dude." And everything he said, he delivered.

ber Rck: Glenn Five [bass], to the older fans, you're still the new boy, even though you've been in ANVIL for sixteen years now. What were you doing before that?

Glenn Five: I was playing bass in another band just trying to make it. I had the dream, just trying to get out of the basement. We were in the band for nine years, and I had that desire to just do it, but they became kind of like this drinking team and it was more about the party than the music, and I was like well you've got to get to the party before you can act like you're at the party, right? It kind of fizzled out and I was 25 years old and at a crossroads in my life. Just as I was thinking about that a flatmate of mine came home with a number of a band that needed a bass player. It happened to be Robert's number from a band called SACRIFICE. They were old mates of mine so I figured they needed a bass player and I phoned them up and they said, "No, it's not for us, it's for ANVIL." He hooked me up with their number and we talked and we jammed and I'm sitting here fifteen years later. I've had the dream, some people call it a struggle, I call it a life.

ber Rck: Were you a fan of ANVIL at the time of the early albums like "Hard 'N' Heavy" and "Metal On Metal"?

Glenn Five: No. When "Metal On Metal" came out, the name started getting around. I knew the big songs like "Metal On Metal" and "Forged In Fire". When I joined the band, of course, I started to jam all the songs that I knew and I started listening to tapes and CDs of the stuff I hadn't heard yet and I started going mad how can this stuff not have got into my circle of friends? I was slightly a generation after that; I was part of METALLICA and SLAYER, that generation. I liked MAIDEN and PRIEST and some classic rock like YES and JETHRO TULL and ALLMAN BROTHERS stuff. I started getting educated more on the older stuff and these guys were like my teachers, and they accepted me into their family quite soon, and album by album I contributed more, and now I consider myself a pretty vital part of the threesome.

Read the entire interview at ber Rck.