Will TRIUMPH Ever Get Inducted Into ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME? GIL MOORE Weighs In

In a new interview with Rock At Night magazine, drummer/vocalist/songwriter Gil Moore of Canadian rock legends TRIUMPH was asked if he thinks he and his bandmates will ever get inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I don't know. You think we're one Hall Of Fame short of a load? I don't know at this point. The last one we did was the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame, which was [last October]. And every one of these is kind of like… Well, they're obviously a real honor. A couple of years before that, [we got inducted into] the Metal Hall Of Fame, which is another lens into what's gone on over the years. And each one, to me, is a special memory. Yeah, you get a trophy or whatever. I look at that kind of, like, [it's] for my kids to see Dad wasn't just sitting on the couch. [Laughs]"

Gil continued: "But the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in America is — yeah, they decide what they decide, however they decide it. It seems like there's a lot of controversy about who has been put in it and the definition of what rock and roll is. I know our friend Ted Nugent has been a big proponent of some of the people that are omitted. And I look at that, and I think if he isn't in there, what the heck? He should be in there. And I don't think he is. But I don't wanna really worry about it one way or the other."

Moore added: "If I was running the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, which I'm not, I would be more concerned about my own country, I'd be more concerned about the Americans being looked after appropriately. But maybe that's wrong. I mean, if you think about how I grew up in the business, I learned, as I think — the bands that came after, THE BEATLES and THE [ROLLING] STONES and LED ZEPPELIN and so on, who got their roots from the bluesmen, and that's where I got my roots, was from the same American bluesmen that they did. But then laterally, you don't hear so much because THE BEATLES and THE STONES become huge, LED ZEPPELIN becomes huge. And those are sort of the influencers, I'll say. But [the bluesmen] were the influencers' influencers. But in terms of a Hall Of Fame, to me, Howlin' Wolf gets in there before LED ZEPPELIN does, but people would probably disagree with me and say, 'No. LED ZEPPELIN gets in there.' And I don't even know if Howlin' Wolf is in there or Albert King. There's so many great American bluesmen that, to me, these guys, they were the godfathers of a lot of these rock bands. And I think most of the people in rock bands that came after that benefited from those, those blues, I'll call them lessons — lessons in groove, lessons in in the soul within music and so on. God, if I listen to James Brown for a minute, I think I listened to him for a hundred years. I didn't get enough James Brown. So, yeah, not just the — I'll call it the Chicago or the Memphis bluesman, but also the R&B side, the great R&B musicians in America. Again, I think they are probably underrepresented in terms of —maybe it's not as good TV or press or social media to honor some of those people, but to me they're the ones that really deserve it.

"I still look at us as a bunch of young guys," Gil concluded. "We're just a bunch of kids that came along. And now we're not kids anymore. But I still feel that way. I look back and I say, 'These are the guys. It's not us. It's them.'"

Back in March 2024, several months prior to FOREIGNER's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, TRIUMPH guitarist/vocalist Rik Emmett was asked by Jeff Gaudiosi of MisplacedStraws.com if he thought he and his bandmates would ever get inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. He responded: "I think you're dreaming in Technicolor. And the reason is because — first of all, in Canada… I mean here's the truth about TRIUMPH in Canada: We never won a Juno Award. We did get to go in the Juno Hall Of Fame, but it was really because the Juno, the CARAS [Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which administers the Juno Awards] people kind of went, 'Well, they've stuck around and they lasted so long and they got back together again. And yeah, they did that. And the [Canadian Music] Industry Hall Of Fame took 'em… So, okay, we should give 'em a Hall Of Fame award.' So, we got that, and I think it was literally just for persistence, for living long enough. And the reason for that was because in the Canadian pool, in the early days, it was, like, 'Well, you're not gonna win. RUSH is gonna win.' Of course, RUSH is gonna win. And then it was more, like, the Canadian music business had shifted, and it was, like, 'Well, you're not gonna win. GLASS TIGER is gonna win.' 'You're not gonna win. PLATINUM BLONDE is gonna win.' Things shifted."

He continued: "Years later, I did a thing where I did a tour and I did an album with Pavlo and Oscar Lopez. It was like a guitar trio kind of a project, and we toured the country and we were up for an instrumental Juno of the year. And I said to those guys, I looked at the thing, and I said, 'We're never gonna win.' And they went, 'Oh, Rik, you're so pessimistic.' I go, 'No, I'm not.' I'm actually not. Professionally, I'm known as an optimist. 'The reason that I'm pessimistic about this is,' I go, 'there's a couple of people from ARCADE FIRE that did a little offshoot thing, and they have a voting block of a much larger label than the distributor for ours. We're never gonna even get close. We won't get within sniffing distance politically."

Emmett added: "In the United States, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame politically… I mean, we were on RCA Records, which was — of the seven major labels, they were number six. And then we sued them, and we lost, and then we moved to MCA, and they were the seventh largest. They were the smallest and they had the least impact of all the labels. Now, once they combined their publishing division with their record division, and then they went on this spree where they bought Motown and they just kept acquiring catalogs and they became — now the only game in town is Universal; most of the other labels don't even exist. But at the time, we were with these small labels — not small, but the weakest ones. So voting-wise, we were never that big, we didn't sell enough records, we didn't have enough of a commercial, industrial kind of impact to have it be that the people go, 'Oh, yeah. Well, I remember when they went quadruple platinum.' We never did go quadruple platinum. We struggled to get gold up to platinum, and it would eventually happen with some of the records, but not very many of them. And then you're in a world where there's JOURNEY. Well, they went, like, seven times platinum, 10 times platinum. Oh, there's FOREIGNER. There's some noise this year about FOREIGNER. I don't think there's probably nothing in their catalog that was under five or six times platinum. They deserve to be in there; they really do. There's a good reason why [Paul] McCartney is swearing [in producer Mark Ronson's compilation of videos from famous friends vocalizing their support for FOREIGNER's induction into the Rock Hall]… They should have been in a long time ago. But there was a huge prejudice that [Rolling Stone co-founder] Jann Wenner, it bled throughout the entire board of that thing, which was, 'No, we're only gonna recognize the truly great, and the thing that defines truly great is what I say is truly great.' And he thought FOREIGNER and RUSH and STYX and TRIUMPH, he thought all that stuff was crap. And he would hire writers to write stuff in Rolling Stone that would say, 'Yeah, these bands are shit. They're terrible. They're crap.' And so that became the sort of the standard thing of, 'Yeah, well, no, we're not gonna put them in the Hall Of Fame. They're shitty.' There you go."

This spring, TRIUMPH will reunite for its first tour in more than 30 years. The North American run of shows will celebrate the band's 50th anniversary, and feature support from APRIL WINE. The 2026 trek will kick off with two shows in Florida in early April, followed by series of dates in Canada, beginning April 22 in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and running through a May 8 show in Calgary, Alberta. From there, the band will hit the U.S. starting May 13 in Rosemont, Illinois, and wrapping up June 6 in Boston. In all, 10 Canadian and 17 American cities are included on the tour.

For the 2026 tour, TRIUMPH's classic lineup consisting of Emmett, Mike Levine (bass, keyboards) and Moore (drums, vocals) will be joined by guitarist Phil X, drummer and keyboardist Brent Fitz and bassist Todd Kerns. Phil X, whose real name is Theofilos Xenidis, is a member of BON JOVI and a former member of TRIUMPH, while Fitz and Kerns are both members of SLASH FEATURING MYLES KENNEDY & THE CONSPIRATORS.

Formed in Mississauga in 1975, TRIUMPH rose from playing high school auditoriums and rock 'n' roll bars to selling out iconic arenas, from Toronto's famed Maple Leaf Gardens to Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas. Their virtuosic musicianship, soaring vocals, and dazzling, high-production live shows helped define an era of arena rock. Blending hard rock power with progressive ambition, TRIUMPH has sold over 15 million albums worldwide and earned multiple gold and platinum certifications, building a global following through headline tours and landmark festival performances, including the 1983 US Festival before 500,000 fans. With hits like "Lay It on The Line", "Magic Power" and "Fight The Good Fight" — combined with pioneering stage productions featuring pyrotechnics, laser lighting, and theatrical flair — TRIUMPH became arena rock legends, securing a permanent place in Canadian and international rock history.

The band's return to the road follows a defining year honoring TRIUMPH's impact across generations. In June 2025, the band was celebrated with "Magic Power: All-Star Tribute To Triumph" (Round Hill Records, June 6, 2025),a 15-track tribute album featuring rock luminaries such as Phil X, Sebastian Bach, Slash, Nancy Wilson, Joey Belladonna, Dee Snider, Lawrence Gowan, Deen Castronovo, Alex Lifeson, Jeff Keith, Mickey Thomas and produced by the world-renowned Mike Clink (GUNS N' ROSES, MÖTLEY CRÜE, WHITESNAKE).

Further solidifying their celebrated status, TRIUMPH was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame in October, a prestigious honor recognizing their enduring influence, masterful songwriting, and contributions to Canada's cultural legacy. This induction adds to their long list of accolades, which includes membership in the Canadian Music Industry Hall Of Fame (2007),the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame (2008),and Canada's Walk Of Fame (2019).

Photo credit: Scott Braun