TRIUMPH - Fried Alive!
By Martin Popoff
It was a hot, hot Memorial Day weekend in 1983, 50 torrid miles outside of L.A., as Apple's Steve Wozniak mounted a huge three-day rock extravaganza called the Us Festival. Surprisingly, the only bit of product documenting the thing is Triumph's new Live At The Us Festival, a separate CD and DVD set that contains the full Triumph setlist, plus, of course, much, much more on the well-appointed DVD. It seems that Triumph's contract with Wozniak had allowed the band to put out their power trio testimonial at a later date, and so, here it is.
"The night before, there was a lot of camaraderie," recalls Triumph bass player Mike Levine fondly, "But the day of, everybody just kind of kept to themselves. The night before, when I checked into the hotel - which was I guess a motel more than anything else; it was the closest place to where the park was - I had checked into my room, but outside they had set up a real nice patio and stuff and some heli-pads, whatever you call it where choppers land. And there was Mike Anthony yelling to me, 'Hey Levine, get over here, get over here,' so we started drinking and then Eddie came by and then Roth came by and a couple guys from Scorpions came by and pretty soon it was a party, and next thing I knew, it was two in the morning. I was pretty good in my day, but I certainly can't hold a candle to those guys. They put me under. Everybody was just hanging out. The L.A. bands arrived day of. I didn't see Ozzy. He might have stayed in L.A. and then drove to the heli-port, but we met briefly. There was a big press tent where a lot of us were hanging out day of. It was a hell of an event, let me tell you."
And where were you in your career? Were you in the middle of touring Never Surrender? How did all that work out?
"Yeah, we were kind of coming up to a break in the tour. We had been out since maybe April and this was Memorial Day weekend, the 29th of May or something like that, and then we were taking a couple of weeks off and then doing some more outdoor shows during the summer and then back indoors in the fall. So it was during the Never Surrender album."
