Only one thing could intensify the burnt reds and oranges dotted about the
autumnal panorama of St James’s Park, and Anvil’s permanently skull-capped
drummer Robb Reiner is holding it between his forefinger and middle finger.
“That’s immense,” he says, passing his first joint of the day to his
lifelong sidekick and Anvil singer Steve “Lips” Kudlow.
Ten hours from now, a year spent following the heat generated by The Story
of Anvil — the most celebrated cinematic depiction of a rock band since This
is Spinal Tap — will culminate at the Classic Rock Awards. In the Park
Lane Hotel’s Grand Room, Kudlow, Reiner and the bassist Glenn “G5” Five will
be up for their first ever award, seeing off Iron Maiden and the Rolling
Stones in the best film category.
At this time of the day Reiner is a man of few words. However, Anvil fans new
and old will know that the same can’t be said for Kudlow. When we walk back
into the hotel, my reaction to their success — not exactly “Didn’t you do
well?’ but not far off either — is set straight by the puppy-eyed
straggle-haired singer. I say that all this is a world away from the
now-legendary European tour planned for them by the hopelessly
out-of-her-depth European fan Tiziana, a farce of missed trains, badly
promoted shows in empty venues and overnight stays on airport floors. “But
the thing you have to understand is that we wanted to stay on those
airport floors,” he says. “Why check into a hotel and spend €200 on a room
when you have to check out again in four hours? We do it because it’s fun. I
don’t think anyone could comprehend how much fun being in a band is! Every
day is unpredictable!”
Perhaps the problem was that The Story of Anvil didn’t make it look
like fun. If the director Sacha Gervasi had wanted to make this a story
about a real-life Spinal Tap, he certainly had the material with which to do
it. To his credit, Gervasi — who, as a teenager, had been a fan of the band
— decided not to include footage of Kudlow running offstage in considerable
pain with his hands down his trousers. Gervasi explains: “He’d sung so hard
that his haemorrhoids had popped out. Then he ran back onstage and sang a
song.”
As it turns out, the tale that unfolded in the film was a more poignant one:
the diary of a band pursuing their musical dream when all circumstantial
factors — their advancing years, the lack of a record deal, the demands of
their day jobs, the sadness on the faces of their wives — suggest they
should cut their losses and give up.
Where did it go wrong? In the wake of the group’s second album Metal
On Metal in 1982, Kudlow — together with the vibrator he used to play
his guitar — appeared on the cover of the now-defunct music paper Sounds.
They sounded like Anthrax and Metallica before Anthrax and Metallica did. In
the words of their most ardent A-list disciple, Slash from Guns N’ Roses,
“everyone just sort of ripped them off and left them for dead”. Worse still,
there was no way of fighting back. The terms of Anvil’s deal wedded them
exclusively to a Canadian record company that refused to release their
albums in America.
It was lost ground they never recovered, though they blithely add that, on the
road, nothing was wasted. “We lived the rock’n’roll dream,” Reiner says,
“and for anyone who came along with us it was an education.” Thanks to key
Anvil songs from that period, it’s an education that leaves little to the
imagination. Inspired by an encounter in a car with a groupie who they came
to know as Jackhammer Joan, their 1982 song Jackhammer went: “Right
turn, left turn, got the boys in both hands/Playin’ in stereo like you do
with most bands . . .” When Jackhammer Joan heard about the song she took a
box of eggs to a show in Ottawa and threw them at the group.
One witness to these revels was the man who, over two decades later, would
hand Anvil a lifeline. Seeing Anvil in 1982 for the first time, Gervasi
underwent an epiphany. Kudlow remembers “a troubled kid, going through some
serious personal shit after the break-up of his parents”. Reiner adds that
“we became his surrogate family” .
One of the triumphs of Gervasi’s film has been the way it emphasises the
loving relationships that bind its main players together: Kudlow, Reiner and
the families who don’t have the heart to tell them that it’s over. When
Kudlow’s sister agrees to lend the group £13,000 to record one final album —
last year’s This is Thirteen — with their old British producer
Chris Tsangarides, we know why she’s crying. It’s not because she probably
won’t see the money again. It’s because her love for Kudlow supercedes all
of that.
Of course, by telling the story, Gervasi influenced its outcome (Kudlow tells
me proudly that his sister did get her money back). For Anvil’s doubters —
especially those shown in the film — the continuing postscript to the film’s
success has been humbling. Since sending out a rejection e-mail the EMI
executive Kudlow begged to put out the finished album has reappraised
Anvil’s merits. All the majors have followed suit. As Reiner recalls: “The
EMI guy came up to us after a Canadian screening and said: ‘Hi — I’m the
bottom-feeder you talked about in the movie.’ It didn’t change anything,
though. They’re still bottom-feeders. I just thought: ‘Right on, buddy —
you’re man enough to agree.’ ”
This year they supported AC/DC on three American shows, playing to a total of
160,000 people. In a parallel world Anvil might have gone on to achieve
comparable success, but watching it happen to AC/DC they seem relieved that
they haven’t. “There’s no friendship in that band,” says Reiner, before
Kudlow interjects: “Well, none that we found evident anyway. They don’t hang
out together, they all leave the gig in different cars. Aerosmith is no
different. Mötley Crüe. Not only do many of those groups have nothing to do
with the support bands, but they don’t have anything to do with each other.
The only place they meet is on stage.”
At the Classic Rock Awards table staff assiduously tend to the needs of rock
A-listers such as Iggy Pop, Brian May and Iron Maiden. At Table 29, Reiner
is talking about the interest he has received in his paintings since Gervasi
persuaded him to talk about them on the film. The 51-year-old has had
“countless offers”, but none are for sale. His Hopperesque street scenes and
the rendering of his drum kit (“That’s what will be left after I die”)
depict a soul who feels at something of a remove from the rest of humanity.
Reiner, whose Hungarian father moved to Canada after surviving Auschwitz,
explains: “I’ve always been a really, really lonely person. I mean, I have
tons of friends, associates. A loving family. It’s all good, but I’m still a
lonely guy.”
Dinner arrives. Reiner stares indifferently at his medium-rare breast of duck
and some green beans that have been neatly bundled in a “ribbon” made of
courgette. “Are you a vegetarian, sir?” the waiter asks . “No I’m not,”
Reiner says. “You can eat it?” the waiter ventures. “I can ... um, look at
it,” the drummer says. He pauses long enough for the waiter to move on.
“This is something you go to school to learn to cook,” Reiner says. “People
don’t actually want to eat it though. They’d rather have, I dunno, Mexican.”
As Anvil have been denied the material accoutrements of musical success for so
long, you would think they would be lapping this up. “Oh, we are,” Kudlow
says unconvincingly, “but it’s dangerous to confuse the accoutrements with
the success.” Was I expecting the composer of Hot Child and
Bondage to say anything quite as wise as this? Probably not — and he still
isn’t done. “Sure, if someone books me in here, I’ll stay. But I prefer
cheap rooms. You stay in places like this and they charge you for using the
internet. You get a bottle of pop and it’s £10. Walk a block away from the
hotel and it’s 60p.”
Easy as it is to look upon Anvil as heavy-metal Charlie Buckets finally given
access to the chocolate factory, sympathy is no longer appropriate. Indeed,
perhaps it never was. One story that didn’t make it into the movie is that
of Kudlow’s older brother, who — during the latter stages of filming — had a
degenerative brain disease diagnosed. Last month, Jeffrey Kudlow succumbed
to what the Anvil singer calls “the most debilitating, harrowing, slow
death. Until he realised he was ill he had everything, all the things that
people told me I was naive to forego in order to pursue Anvil. I mean, this
thing has just left devastation. In my own life though, I have absolutely
nothing to complain about.”
He’s in full flow now. “I’m serious, man. My son is 12. I’ve been there for
every single birthday of his life. If we had become rock stars, I wouldn’t
have seen that. I feel like the fairies have sprinkled fairy dust on my
f***ing life.”
At that moment, Kudlow receives a tap on the shoulder. His group’s name has
been called out. They’ve won. If he momentarily seems lost for words, that’s
hardly surprising. He has just said it all.
Anvil play Edinburgh Picture House tonight, the Hellfire Festival,
Birmingham NEC, tomorrow; London Koko, Sun; Nottingham Rock City, Mon; Leeds
Academy, Tues.
www.myspace/anvilmetal.com
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