Speaker Identification
Speaker 1 - Announcer / Show Voice
Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal
Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice
Speaker 4 - Music / Song Segment

Speaker 1 - Announcer / Show Voice:
This is Bringing the Darkness to the Light with Catherine Nadal, professional psychic medium. Today's guest is Carmine Appice. He is the legendary drummer.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
It is a pleasure to have you on, Carmine.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
Thank you. I think I'm more legendary than my brother.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Well, you definitely are legendary in the music business.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
We have fun with all this stuff.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Oh, yeah. Let me tell you, it is a pleasure. Your career is really astounding. Your music goes back a long way. When I told a lot of my friends that I was going to speak with you, they literally jumped out of their shoes. They were like, "Vanilla Fudge? The Vanilla Fudge?" That is really how many of them remember you getting into the scene. So that was probably a big break for you. Did you want to go back before Vanilla Fudge?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
Well, I was a guy out of Brooklyn who played. When I was 17, I bought a brand-new 1964 Chevy Super Sport with the money I made from playing. I was always playing gigs. When I graduated high school, I did not know what to do. I did not want to go to college. I really did not want to be anything except a player, so I went to a vocational school in Brooklyn called Grady. I went there for a year and I was in the band. I was always in the band and the orchestra in school because I studied drums and knew how to read music. I did that all through my teens.

After I graduated, I just kept playing. I went to school, but I did not like it. I left Grady, went to New York High School of Music, and everything was about music all the time. My dream was to be like my drum teacher. He lived in Brooklyn, had a nice house, had a Cadillac, and had a room that he rented to other people. I said, "That is fine with me." I played all the clubs in New York.

I played one club opposite Jimi Hendrix, when he was called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. We both played half an hour on and half an hour off. At midnight, they played records, and both of us had an hour off. Then we played until four in the morning. This was on the Upper West Side, when the Upper West Side was like the movie Panic in Needle Park. During the break, we went up to an apartment and smoked some pot. Jimi looked out the window and said, "Man, I want to make it." I said, "What do you mean, make it?" He said, "I want to make it. I want to be a recording star." I said, "Wow." He said, "What about you?" I said, "I don't care. I just want to make money, have a house, and have a Cadillac."

When I did make it, I went to England with Vanilla Fudge. We were the talk of the town. I saw Jimi in a restaurant at a club where everybody played. Jimi was in the restaurant and I went in. I knew Jimi Hendrix was Jimmy James because he played with his teeth. Nobody else did that. I went up to him and said, "Hey, Jimi." I looked different, and he looked different. I said, "Remember me? I played with you at the Lighthouse." He said, "Yeah, I remember you." I said, "So you're Jimi Hendrix?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "What happened to Jimmy James?" He said, "Well, Jimi Hendrix is my real name." He asked what I was doing there, and I told him I played with Vanilla Fudge. He said, "Wow, I love the Fudge." That started a career of knowing him in the business. We did a lot of shows together, recorded at his studio, and did all kinds of things.

I joined Vanilla Fudge after being in another group. Mark and Vinnie came in and said, "We heard about you. You're a killer drummer, you're technical, you have a great foot, and you sing." I said, "Yeah." They said, "We'd like you to join our band called the Pigeons." I said, "I don't know. I'm doing good here. I'm making $300 a week." Back in 1966, $300 a week was good money, and I was always working. They said, "We're going to try to make it with a manager who will pay $100 a week whether we work or not, just to work on songs so we can record and try to make it."

I was married to my first wife at the time, which ended up being annulled pretty quickly. It was one of those things where I married the girlfriend I went to school with. I told my parents before the wedding that I did not want to get married, and they said, "You have to marry her, son. You are getting married in the church and having a wedding and a reception." I said, "Okay, I'll get married." It lasted about nine months. I was working a lot with Vanilla Fudge and out of town a lot.

We were still called the Pigeons at the time. I went to check them out and they were great. I said, "Wow, I have never really played with a bass player that good." Most of the bass players I had worked with were mediocre, and some of my bands used left-hand bass on a keyboard or organ. When I played with Tim Bogert, I said, "Man, this guy is unbelievable." Mark Stein's voice was unbelievable, the keyboard playing was unbelievable, and Vinnie was a great guitar player with great rhythm. They all sang great. I fit right in because I used to sing doo-wop in Brooklyn subways. I committed to doing it, and nine months later we had a hit record on the charts.

We knew "You Keep Me Hangin' On" would be a hit record because whenever we played live, the whole first album was pretty much our show. Whenever we played a club, people tried to dance to Vanilla Fudge, but that was not really dance music. The only song they did not try to dance to was "You Keep Me Hangin' On." When we started playing that, everybody came up to the front of the stage and watched us. As you can see on The Ed Sullivan Show, we were a bit wild and crazy.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Yes, I have seen that clip.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
You know what I'm talking about. All the other bands on Ed Sullivan would just stand there and play. We were crazy. We recorded the demo in one take, mono. We played it and sang it all at once, and that was the song. That was the actual performance that was on the hit record. Seven and a half minutes changed my life.

My brother was 11 years younger than me. I was 20 when I was on The Ed Sullivan Show, so Vinny was about nine. Seeing his brother on television all the time influenced him. I had drums at home, and the next thing I knew, I went home one time and he was playing drums. We did an album together and I wrote a song called "Brothers in Drums." The famous words from my mother were, "What did he do to himself? How did he learn this?" She said, "He's in there all day long, driving me crazy like you did." I used that in the song. I told them he had talent and should go to my drum teacher, so by the time he was 13 or 14 he would be great. We sent him for lessons, and I have been steering his career ever since he was eight years old. Then he made it on his own, especially with Rick Derringer.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
That is amazing. You and I had mentioned Rick Derringer before we started recording today. Did you want to tell the audience about that?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
Rick was an old friend of mine. I knew him from before Vinny knew him. We had known each other for many years and played gigs together. Then he and I did a solo record together in 1982 called Derringer and Appice. We did some wrestling material together and a lot of other things. Vinny played with him in a group called Derringer. Later they broke up, Rick went on to do other things, and then I played with him.

He died last year, and we were good friends. I was on the phone with him the night before he died. I had done a recording with him in 2022 called "United States." I played on it and loved the song. It was never really released in a way that people knew about, or if it was released, nobody knew. I have been talking with his wife and trying to help business-wise.

I talked to the video guy who made my "Back Door Man" video, which is like a movie. I said, "Look, dude, I want to do a quick video with this. Do you think you can do a quick video with Rick? It is pro-America. I am pro-America." He said, "Yeah, I can do that." He put the video together quickly, and little by little we fixed it. It took about two days. Now I am trying to figure out how to promote it, using the same people who promoted my "Back Door Man" video. In about 10 or 11 days that video had around 114,000 views. I said, "Can you do something with this just this week? It cannot be next week. This is the 250th anniversary of America." Everybody did it for free just to support America. Now I am emailing it to everybody. I have some friends in Washington, and I sent it to Ted Nugent because he knows people in Washington. I just want people to see it. When I put it on Facebook, 30 or 40 people commented and loved it. They said it was beautiful.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Yes, I will promote it. This is a very big week, especially here in New York City and Washington, D.C., and also around the world because everyone is aware of what America stands for. I really appreciate that.

I do want to get into your collaborations. I looked at probably only half a list of all the people you have collaborated with and worked with over the years, from Paul Stanley to Rod Stewart to Jeff Beck to Ted Nugent, Pink Floyd, and others. It is remarkable.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
One of the craziest things I have done was the Guitar Zeus album. That album alone had about 25 guitar players who were name players: Brian May, Slash, Yngwie, and others. There were so many names.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
I saw that online. I also looked at your website. You have a lot of things on your website, a lot of public appearances coming up. You have a master class. You are doing something with Gene Simmons around September. You have convention appearances and rock-related events. Can you talk about that?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
There are these events where people go and sign autographs. Gene Simmons is involved with one that is like a rock and roll version of the horror and nostalgia conventions. My brother is doing it too. He said to me, "I do not expect to make a lot of money on this because there are a lot of rockers on it." But it should be fun to go to Vegas.

I am also looking to promote my Rod show, which is a musical about Rod Stewart. I have the sax player who played with Rod for 14 years, and she is in it. We played the Bergen PAC and other places, including the Suffolk Theater on Long Island. It is a great thing for me to go to Vegas and maybe meet someone who can help put it there. When Rod is not doing his own show, maybe we could do a couple of weekends and see if it works.

I started doing the Rod show myself in 2013. I had The Rod Experience and we went to China and other places. But I could not find anyone to book it, so I blew it out and did other things. Then I tried to do it again. I saw Rob Connolly, who has been doing Rod Stewart for 20 years. I went to see him and said, "This guy is great." He asked me to come on and play some songs with them. I did five or six songs with no rehearsal, and the audience went nuts. He came off stage and said, "Let's be partners." I said yes. I wrote a lot of those things, played on them, helped produce them, and did vocals with Rod. I did background vocals.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
So your Rod show does not have Rod Stewart in it. It is more of a celebration of the music?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
It is a musical. It celebrates the music and legacy of Rod Stewart. I told Rod about it, and he said, "Wow, I'm honored." It is not just a tribute. I am in it. I played with Rod for 14 years, so how could it be just a tribute? I told Rod I did not want to call it a tribute, and he said that was great.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
You are also still doing things with Vanilla Fudge. Your website shows that, too. Can you tell the audience about that?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
There are still three out of four original guys. We lost Tim. People love it. We go to 300- and 400-seat theaters and sell out. When we do "You Keep Me Hangin' On," they go crazy. We do "You Keep Me Hangin' On" in my Rod show too because we did it with Rod. We do it differently. Any way you play that song, people love it. It has been used in Tulsa King, The Sopranos, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and other places. We also have a new version that sounds like the old version, but we own it.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
I want to move on to your most recent project. We are going to talk about certain songs, so do you want to tell the audience about this new project?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
This one is the second album. It is called Temple of Blues II. We did Temple of Blues I. It started when my label said, "Why don't we do a record that shows the influence of Cactus on all these musicians, with them playing on Cactus songs again?" I said okay. We were going to call it Influences and Friends. Then I noticed that a lot of my friends were on the Billboard blues charts, like Slash, Robin Trower, Foghat, and others. I said, "We have a market. Let's say it is blues." So we called it Temple of Blues: Influences and Friends.

We did a whole album with different Cactus songs. I got Joe Bonamassa on there, Billy Sheehan, Dee Snider, Ted Nugent, and others. It broke at number three on the Billboard blues charts. The label said, "Let's do another one, Temple of Blues II." So I started calling around and putting out feelers. I said, "Let's do three Cactus songs, but the rest of them, let's do real blues."

I went back to albums I loved. Jeff Beck had given me an album, and Jimmy Page had given Jeff Beck the album. Both of them took ideas from that music for Led Zeppelin and Jeff Beck. We took "Evil," one of our biggest songs, off that album. I went back and listened to it again and said, "There are seven songs we could take off this album." We had 10 songs on the LP, and the eleventh song came from another Cactus-related source. I loved the drum sound and drum parts on that record. The drummer, Morris Jennings, was fantastic.

The way I record is that I start in my studio in my guest house, Realistic Rock Studio, named after my drum book. I put a click on, engineer the drums myself, and do the riff with my voice. I do the whole arrangement like that, then put a vocal on top, my vocal. Now I have something to play to, and then I play drums. Then I send it to my guitar player, Artie Dillon, and he puts guitar and bass on it. We send it to Eddie Terry, who puts a vocal on. Now I have a demo. Nobody on that album is in the same room. I have been doing that for years.

I gave tracks to people and let them pick. One picked "Little Red Rooster." I went to Ted Nugent and said, "I have this song that really fits you. Do you want to do 'Spoonful' with Bob Daisley from Ozzy on bass?" Then we got my singer to sing it, Eddie Terry. It came together great.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Why don't we listen to "Little Red Rooster"?

Speaker 4 - Music / Song Segment:
"Little Red Rooster" plays. The automated transcript captured partial lyric fragments and instrumental passages, but this portion is a music segment rather than spoken interview content.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
The Doors did that song too, but they did not do it like this. This version has a lot of musicians, with me and Artie Dillon playing some rhythm. We did it and it was fantastic. When I did the track the way I explained it, I said, "Man, I really want to hear those guys." It has a 6/8 feel. At the end of part one, I added a part two. I said, "Why don't you play on that part?" He thought I left that for the drums, and I said, "No, that is for you to kick butt." Then I gave it to Billy Sheehan. Usually I do the bass first, but Billy was so awesome. He played some of the solo parts together with Eric. When I got it back, it was a surprise. That was a great surprise to hear.

It was the same thing with the Dee track. He did the demo. Certain things had to be on there, like a wah-wah pedal, which Artie did. Eddie Terry sang it. Artie did the basic rhythm track. I needed a lead player who was really bluesy. The label suggested Tracy G, and I said, "Yeah, good one." So I called Tracy and got him on it. I also got a local guy to play harmonica. He plays little blues clubs around here and he was fantastic. Then I needed a great bass player, and my friend Jimmy Haslip, who I brought into the business in the 1970s, was perfect. He played with Yellowjackets and is a phenomenal bass player. There were two bass breaks and I knew he would do them great. That is how everything was put together.

I had a spreadsheet of songs and a spreadsheet of names. I would slowly put them together and say, "This would be cool, this guy playing with that guy." Doug Pinnick singing with Richard Fortus from Guns N' Roses was great. Phil Soussan from playing with Ozzy on bass was fantastic. Every track had its own little story.

The craziest story is Melanie with Cactus. She had already died. The owner of Cleopatra Records said, "I just bought the rights to Melanie's vocals, and there is a version of 'Purple Haze' that she did. I want you to hear it. Let me know if you can do 'Purple Haze' with Cactus and Melanie singing." In my head I was thinking, "Isn't this the woman who sang about the roller skates?" When I heard it, I said, "Wow." She sounded like Janis Joplin with the screams she was doing. I never expected her to sing like that. I sent it to my engineer and asked if we could put it to a click. He said yes. Then I put the drums on first, gave it to Artie, and he put the guitar on it. My bass player was busy, so I gave it to Tony Franklin. He said, "Yeah, I can do this," and put bass on it. When it was done, I said, "Wow, that sounds great." Pat Regan, my co-producer and mixer, mixes all this stuff and makes it sound amazing.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Now that we have mentioned "Purple Haze," we are going to play it.

Speaker 4 - Music / Song Segment:
"Purple Haze" plays. The automated transcript captured partial lyric fragments and repeated vocal sounds, but this portion is a music segment rather than spoken interview content.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Another song I wanted to bring up was "300 Pounds of Joy." Tell me how that song came about.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
That was interesting because we did the demo with Eddie Terry, my singer, who has a tremendous voice. Eddie did the rhythm guitar and the bass. Before we gave it to Ty, we gave it to my bass player, James Caputo. He said, "Look, Eddie did a great job on the bass. I cannot do any better. You have a great bass on there. Just leave it." He said the same thing to me on the song "Mona," which is slow and simple at first, though it gets more complicated by the end. I played bass on that. I could play something that was easy enough for me, and I came up with the arrangement on bass. So we left Eddie on bass for "300 Pounds of Joy."

On the list, I said, "Who would play this?" It is real blues, and maybe it needed slide guitar and great guitar. I called Ty, and he did it. It is amazing. The drum sound when the drums first start is ridiculous. Pat mixed the hell out of it. That is why we may do the next video on that. My video guy said, "Let me come up with an idea." He came up with the idea that 300 pounds could be like a wrestler. He had me as the wrestler at first. It looked like my face, but my body was huge. I said, "I do not want to be the wrestler." My wife said it looked a bit egotistical, me being the wrestler. So I said, "Let's make Eddie the wrestler." Eddie is the singer, and now he becomes the wrestler. He gave me a little sample and it was cool. It ended with two girls and a limo. It is typical of that 300 Pounds of Joy idea. We have not gotten to it yet. We are going to wait until "Back Door Man" stops.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Well, I cannot wait to see that. That is something to look forward to. We are going to play "300 Pounds of Joy" now.

Speaker 4 - Music / Song Segment:
"300 Pounds of Joy" plays. The automated transcript captured partial lyric fragments and repeated musical passages, but this portion is a music segment rather than spoken interview content.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
The last song we are going to play is "Back Door Man," the one that has been promoted for the video. You also have Eric Gales and Billy Sheehan on that. Do you want to speak about that?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
I told you how the song was made. Now I will tell you how the video was made, which was crazy because the video is like a movie. The video engineer sent an idea to us, like he did with "300 Pounds of Joy," but this one was longer. He said the main character was a witch doctor. I said, "No, he is a ghost, man." So when we sent it to Eric, Billy, and me, they all said, "I do not understand what it is about." I said, "Neither do I, but we will by the time we are done with it."

I went back to Dom Esposito, the video engineer, and said, "Look, the guy has to be a ghost. He has to be walking around showing everybody why he was thrown out the window. He is not a witch doctor. Let him walk through cars, walk through walls, and at the end he dissipates into dust. He is a ghost." He said that was good. Then I said we had to get live footage in there and different people in it.

The pizza guy in the video is the Rod Stewart guy in my Rod show. He kind of looks like Rod when he has a hat on. The guy reading the newspaper is Jorgen Carlsson from Gov't Mule, the bass player. The guy who gets the glass thrown over his head and hits the glass is my producer, Pat Regan. The guy eating chicken and beans is the guy who put up a lot of money for us to do the release. He helped us do a big show in Illinois at the Arcada Theatre. We had Billy Sheehan, Eric Gales, Doug Aldrich, Doug Pinnick, Tony Franklin, Bumblefoot, Pat Travers, and others. The guy from my Rod show was the emcee for the whole show. It was all for the Tunnel to Towers charity.

Little by little, we kept changing the video to make it understandable that the guy was a ghost going through all these scenes to see why this guy was such a bad guy. He is a gambler, a drinker, he is fighting, and he is stealing his friends' women. That is why he got thrown out and got killed. It came out great. We were trying to decide what to call it and ended up calling it an urban ghost story. When I saw the whole thing, I said, "Wow, this looks like a movie. Let's make a movie poster." Then we made a movie poster with the ghost and all the characters, and me as a cop.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
What about you as a cop? That is New York.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
Yes, it was funny. Here is another one. Being from New York, you remember the movie The Warriors?

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
You remember the woman on the radio with the lips telling everybody what was going on?

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
Yes.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
I said, "We have to do that." We put that in because this is like a crazy New York Warriors kind of story. Only people who know that movie would know that.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
I thought you were in a police window, so you are not the only one. You used to be a cop?

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
No, I was not a cop. I was in the Army.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
I am sorry. It could be considered similar in a way. That is a classic reference to New York City.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
People looking at this will see it is like an MTV video with a story. The song appears on the billboard and it says, "Cactus: American Led Zeppelin," which is what we were called in 1970 when Led Zeppelin had just come out.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
It is amazing just to speak with you. Number one, it is an honor. Number two, to reflect on your wonderful career and your talent, and even how you are still inspiring others with your master class and all these projects and collaborations, it really impacts the audience. Not just the fan base, but also the young musicians.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
Thank you. I wrote a drum book in 1971 that came out and has now sold over 450,000 copies. Ludwig was my company, and they said, "Look, you have a book out now. You have to do clinics like the old jazz guys." So in 1971, I did the very first rock drum clinic. A big part of my career was education. I did symposiums on my own, I did Ludwig symposiums, I did clinic tours in Europe and all over the world, and I got awards for the biggest attendance in different places. In Paris I had 1,800 people at a clinic. In Japan I had 2,000. In Australia I had 2,000. It went beyond a clinic.

Joe Morello, who was a great jazz drummer, said, "Make them laugh, teach them, and play well, and you will always have a successful clinic." I did that to the extreme. Sometimes I did crazy things, like disappearing drum solos at clinics. I made the clinic something new and exciting. I wrote the drum book to make education new and exciting and to teach people.

There are videos now about drummers who should have made it big but were never with a giant band, and they mention Carmine Appice. It is true that many famous drummers were in giant bands: John Bonham, Neil Peart, Stewart Copeland. I was never with one giant band for my whole career. I always had to do different things.

I gave my drum book to Fred Astaire and got a letter back from him. Gregory Peck talked to me about that. He and Fred Astaire came to see me at a Rod Stewart show. I was doing my solo, and Gregory Peck said Fred Astaire told him, "This is the best drum solo I have seen since Gene Krupa." That blew my mind because Gene Krupa was my idol. Then Gregory Peck came up to me at Rod's wedding party and said, "Hi, I know who you are." He told me that Fred wanted to learn to play rock drums and did not know how. I said, "Well, I have a book." I gave him the book and said, "Good luck, Fred. I hope it helps you out." He sent me a letter back. I have it framed in my studio and in my autobiography, Stick It: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock 'n' Roll, which is pretty wild. Everyone who reads it says they love it and that it is one of the best rock-star books they have read. Rod Stewart wrote the introduction. I talked about meeting Fred Astaire. How about that? A kid from Brooklyn hanging out with Hollywood royalty.

Speaker 2 - Catherine Nadal:
That is amazing. It has been a pleasure to have you on, Carmine Appice. I look forward to everything you are doing, and I will continue to promote you. You really are legendary, and a big thank you from the world of music. Your impact on so many people is incredible.

Speaker 3 - Carmine Appice:
I am very pleased and honored to hear that.

Speaker 4 - Music / Song Segment:
"Back Door Man" plays. The automated transcript captured partial lyric fragments and repeated musical passages, but this portion is a music segment rather than spoken interview content.

Speaker 1 - Announcer / Show Voice:
You have been listening to Bringing the Darkness to the Light with Catherine Nadal, professional psychic medium, Dream Central Station, LLC. My audio editor is Al Hemberger at Loft Recording Studios in Bronxville, New York. This is WNEW 102.7 FM Radio.