Triumph is extending its Rock & Roll Machine Reloaded 50th anniversary tour, bringing the legendary Canadian rock band to more cities in 2026. Ahead of the new tour leg, frontman Rik Emmett is looking back at the band’s early days, including an “infamous” gig from 1979.
Speaking with Trib Live in a new interview, Emmett, 73, recalled a Triumph show at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh (now called the Benedum Center) on July 8, 1979, with British band The Babys as the opening act.
“(The Babys’) John Waite was not happy with the fact that we had chaser lights across the front of the stage and didn’t like the fact that we had all this production,”Emmett recalled. “I think he also felt like he had a hit record and he shouldn’t have to be opening for some Canadian band that he’d never heard of, so he started kicking at the bulbs of the chaser things. The stage manager went out and said, ‘If you keep doing that, man, we’re turning off the power,’ to which they became even more belligerent.”
“One thing led to another, and then the two crews were literally having a fistfight on the stage, and the curtain came down, but it didn’t make it all the way to the bottom,” Emmett continued. “So it was stopped about three feet from the floor, and you could see all of the scuffling of these legs and arms and guys punching each other out. It was something out of a Keystone Cops movie. And of course, the next day, the headline in the paper said, ‘Triumph spanks Babys.’”
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In August 1979, Record World posted a blurb about the Triumph-Babys incident, noting that the scuffle was a culmination of backstage tensions over stage setup and scheduling.
The outlet noted that after agreeing to cut their performance down to 30 minutes, The Babys’ singer Waite became “a little fried” over comments Triumph’s stage manager made to his band’s road crew.
“Waite kicked over a light at the front of the stage (one of Triumph’s lights), a Triumph roadie set it back up, and Waite kicked it down again,” Record World reported. “At that point….Triumph’s stage manager pulled the plug on the group. … One of Triumph’s roadies then tried to pull the curtain, The Babys’ road manager grabbed the cord away from him, another Triumph roadie jumped on the back of The Babys’ road manager, and then The Babys’ keyboard player joined the battle.”
RELATED: The Babys 1979 Classic Inspired the Opening Line of John Waite’s No. 1 Hit Breakup Anthem
Emmett later noted that part of the issue stemmed from band egos; Triumph was always going to be a headlining act.
“We had all the junk,” he told BraveWords in 2007. “We had the lights and the PA… one time we played in Pittsburgh, and The Babys opened for us. Oh man, John Waite did not like the fact that we had all these tracer strips; they were like chaser bulbs, all over, like in Las Vegas. He didn’t like that one bit. He kept kicking them off and breaking them. And then a huge fight ensued between crews. And in the newspaper next day, it said, ‘Triumph spanks Babys.’ Yeah, we always had the stuff, so we couldn’t be an opening act, because we couldn’t really see ourselves play without all our stuff.”
Forty-seven years after The Babys brawl, Triumph’s Rock & Roll Machine Reloaded will feature Emmett, drummer/vocalist Gil Moore, guitarist Phil X, bassist Todd Kerns and drummer/keyboardist Brent Fitz. Original Triumph bassist Mike Levine is not on the tour due to health issues.
Ultimate Classic Rock shares the full list of extended tour dates. The new leg of Rock & Roll Reloaded kicks off Nov. 17 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and runs through December 19 in London, Ontario.
And while the show will be just as explosive as ever, don’t expect to see another rock ‘n’ roll brawl when the band rolls into Pittsburgh this fall. Emmett promised TribLive that for the upcoming Rock & Roll Machine Reloaded show, this time at Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center on Nov. 22, 2026, “There will be no fisticuffs.”
“I guarantee you,” the Triumph frontman said. “We’re too old for that (expletive) now.”
Related: 1979 Rock Classic, Recorded by Power Trio, Remains a Timeless Anthem About Honesty 47 Years Later
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