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Steve "Lips" Kudlow Gets Heavy in Anvil!
Photo by Brent J. Craig
He-Man headbangers beware: Anvil! The Story of Anvil will make you weep like a little girl. Screenwriter (The Terminal), first-time director and long-time Anvil devotee Sacha Gervasi’s amazing film follows metal band Anvil, the criminally overlooked fire-forgers from Toronto, Canada. Ultimately, the movie emerges as a tearjerker about enduring friendships and male bonding. In addition to having all of its audio amps cranked to 11, Anvil! is charged by some serious emotional wattage as well. It’s tragic, joyful, sad and hopeful—and possibly the most stirring look at this misunderstood genre ever made.
When we first meet Steve Kudlow, it’s 1984. Metal and big hair are king and Kudlow’s band, Anvil, provides both. We watch the quartet play a massive, neo-Woodstock festival with mile-long crowds that coat the surrounding landscape like some apocalyptic infection. As “Lips,” Kudlow’s onstage alter ego, this id-powered maniac uses a spongy white sex toy to pluck his guitar. “Metal on metal,” snarls Lips between bouts of marital-aid musicianship. “It’s the only way!” Behind him, drummer Robb Reiner brutalizes a double-bass trap set, while other band members lift and drop their guitars in carefully choreographed, twin-axe-attack sync.
Cranking out riffs at festivals with Bon Jovi, Scorpions and Whitesnake! Laying down a brain-impaling collection of albums, including Hard ‘N’ Heavy, Metal On Metal and Strength of Steel! Winning the adulation of cutting-edge peers like Anthrax, Metallica and Slayer! Anvil was going places.
Or were they?
Flash forward to the present. Something’s not right. While power-chord peers Metallica have racked up nearly 100 million records sold, Kudlow and Reiner still struggle. Day jobs include delivering coolers of food for a catering service and demolishing construction sites. Fame never came.
In Anvil! The Story of Anvil blood brother bandmates Kudlow and Reiner endure a horrifically jinxed European tour, in which crooked venue owners, missed trains and disappointing crowds spell out certain doom. At a Transylvanian metalfest booked at a 10,000-person-capacity venue, only 174 attendees show up. “How much more love could one person put into something?” asks a despairing Kudlow, to someone, somewhere. It’s like a plea to the Almighty for vindication after 30 years of relentless hard work.
Sound depressing? Well, here’s the extraordinary thing about Anvil!: Even though the band endures a hell of humiliations that would make Spinal Tap wince, they doggedly continue to wave the Anvil flag. While the assumed stereotype is that most groups with their experience and histories make tons of dough, Kudlow and Reiner are painfully aware of the reality that “99.9 percent of bands never get paid.” They treat playing as a privilege. “When we’re on tour,” proclaims Kudlow, “we’re on vacation.”
In it for the money? Hell, no; they have no money. (Kudlow’s repeated mantra is, “We aren’t getting paid!”) In it for the chicks? Are you kidding? Kudlow and Reiner might be the horny lyrical scribes behind “Motormount” and “Butter Bust Jerky,” but both are now married with children. Anvil! is inspiring because its heroes wholeheartedly believe in what they do—even after enduring a million reasons to lose faith.
Sadly, Anvil! also suggests the reason for their debt-ridden obscurity. Kudlow and Reiner are too damn decent for fame. One scene shows Kudlow trying his hand at a telemarketing job, but he’s too honest to hard-sell customers during cold calls. Meanwhile, Reiner’s ironclad allegiance to his emotional, sometimes-infuriating comrade is a far cry from the legions of musicians willing to cut-and-run following the lure of a higher-paying gig.
In the end, we’re left staring with admiration and awe at these two amazingly persistent, long-haired dudes. If ever there was a band deserving of an honorary lifetime achievement in heavy metallurgy award, Anvil is it. In the paragraphs that follow, Kudlow explains the emotional pull of the film and confirms the ongoing popularity of heavy metal music 30 years after Anvil initially unleashed their influential, skull-crushing hybrid of sounds.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by BJC on 4/16/09 at 12:50 pm
Anvil Photo by Brent J. Craig
- Comment by CREDIT: on 4/20/09 at 8:28 am
Anvil Photo by Brent J. Craig
- Comment by Bennito - linking park on 6/30/09 at 3:02 am
Thank you so much, buddy.
- Comment by Brian on 12/27/09 at 4:22 pm
Although I am not a Heavy Metal music listener, I just viewed the Anvil DVD. I kept wondering why the financially successful H.M. bands haven’t asked Anvil to open for them? Seems really shitty that, although members of Metallica, etc., expressed their admiration for Anvil, it doesn’t go any further than that. As well, at least one of the members of one of those financially successful H.M. bands, such as Slash, could have fronted, or given, the money to Anvil to produce their 13th album. They wouldn’t even miss the money because could write off the cost against their massive income taxes. Anvil should write a few ass-kicking songs about that bullshit!
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