CARMINE APPICE
T & A/Vanilla Fudge drummer
www.carmineappice.net

(Winter 2005)by George Dionne

Carmine Appice has been in the music business for over thirty-five years and counting. He stated his musical journey in the late sixties behind the kit for the experimental rock outfit Vanilla Fudge. From there he went on to form Cactus with Tim Bogert which later morphed into the formation of [Jeff] Beck, Bogert, and Appice. Never one to take a break Carmine joined the Rod Stewart Band and even co-wrote of their biggest hits, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”. By the time the eighties came around, he was part of Ted Nugent’s band, formed King Kobra (read CD review)and Blue Murder (read CD review). He even toured as Ozzy Osbourne’s drummer during the Bark at the Moon tour. Add all of that to numerious studio sessions, collaborations, and a handful of instruction books, you have your self quite a career.

Currently Carmine has been splitting his time between Vanilla Fudge and his good pal Pat Travers. Last fall they released It Takes a Lot of Balls under the T & A monikor through SPV Records. The duo will be taking their live act out on the road for the Station Family Fund Relief Concert on February 25th in Providence RI (For more info: click here).

RIL: How did you get involved with the Station Family Fund Benefit concert?
CA: Actually, I did a charity event [in Rhode Island] a couple of years ago with somebody else. I was just shocked about what had happened there. I had done a charity event earlier this year in San Francisco with Pat Travers and the guys from Tesla. I’ve know those guys for a long time. We started talking, and they mentioned they were doing this charity event out in Providence and wanted to know if I could maybe bring Vanilla Fudge. I thought it sounded like a good idea, so we agreed to do it. Unfortunately we had a problem with the date. I think originally it was going to be around February 15th. One of the members had a problem with the 25th date; I think he had a family reunion planned. So I was like, what do we do now? I called up Troy and suggested instead of Vanilla Fudge, how about me and Pat Travers coming down? He said it would be cool. So Pat’s bringing his bass player who knows all of our songs, and we’re going to do our T & A set. It will include hits of mine and hits of his as well.

RIL: You and Pat Travers are working on a new CD aren’t you?
CA: Yeah, we don’t know what we’re going to call it yet. We’re doing some of the songs from our set. We did a studio version of “Boom Boom”, “Snortin’ Whiskey”, and “Crash & Burn” from Pat’s career, and we did “Evil” from Cactus, two Beck, Bogert, Appice songs. Tim Bogart actually came in and sang on “Superstition”. The other song is “Living Alone”. We’re cutting “Last Child” from Aerosmith with Bobby Kimball from Toto singing. We’re looking at someone like Ted Nugent to play on it well. We’re doing “Politician” by Cream, plus four new numbers. The new ones are “Babylon Baby”, “Misfortunate One”, “Stick Man”, and “How You Disappear”. “Stickman” is based a lot around the drum parts. “How You Disappear” has sort of an Indian vibe to it.

RIL: So the new CD is going to be mostly covers, with a few new ones.
CA: Yeah, sort of a good mixture. It’s coming along great. We’ve got Tony Franklin (Blue Murder) playing on six of the song I believe. We also have Chuck Wright from Quiet Riot playing on the rest of it. They’re both tremendous. We had a really good bass player the last time, but he was a young guy, not so much as experienced as us. Things have been going great.

RIL: Would the new songs be similar to the sound of your latest CD It Takes a Lot of Balls?
CA: Yeah. I actually think that it will be a better sounding record this time. We had a few problems with the after product of that album. We went to this one studio to do some after dubs and there was a young kid that was there doing it. He messed up some of the files on the pro-tools equipment, so we lost a few things. Then it took two weeks to get the files back in shape before we started mixing. The mixing process was a lot longer than it should have been. This time we’re mixing it in the same studio we recorded the tracks in.

RIL: Do you and Pat plan on touring for the upcoming album or for the current one?
CA: We did a couple of dates in America. We’re actually looking at a couple of dates in Hawaii, maybe a few more here. This new CD isn’t going to be out for a while. We do have a DVD coming out in April that should be pretty cool.

RIL: Is the DVD just the live show, or do you throw a bunch of things in there?
CA: It’s going to be the live show and some interview stuff.

RIL: You’re still doing the Vanilla Fudge thing, right?
CA: Yeah. There’s a DVD coming out with Vanilla Fudge that was done live with an orchestra. Hopefully it will be out by summertime.

RIL: You contributed to Italian guitarist Mateo Filippini’s next CD Moonstone; can you talk a little about it?
CA: How do you know about that?

RIL: I read a few things here and there. Stuff like that gets around.
CA: Well there’s not much to talk about. I played on one track that was sent to me. It was actually a favor for Tony Franklin. To tell you the truth, I don’t know that much about the project.

RIL: You’ve collaborated with many different artists throughout your lengthy career, is there someone you haven’t collaborated with that you’ve always wanted to?
CA: Yeah, Led Zeppelin (laughs).

RIL: I think every drummer is looking for that gig.
CA: I wouldn’t mind being the drummer for Led Zeppelin.

RIL: When it comes to the writing process, do you and Pat write together, or do you come up with idea on your own and share it with the other?
CA: On this album there’s a guy named Lanny Cordolla that came up with some ideas with Chuck Wright and me. Pat came in and threw some of his ideas in, so where splitting all of that. When Pat and I write, I usually have a part of a song and he has the rest of it, or vice versa. On the first album we all worked together on different parts of the songs. It’s group effort. Even if somebody has most of the song idea, we usually share the writing credits. That way it’s not like, you have more songs than me, you’re going to make more money. That’s always a problem in bands. With some of these bands that don’t share, one guy drives around in a Lamborghini and the other guy drives around in a Volkswagen. It’s not really fair.

RIL: Did you see a lot of that in the bands you were a part of over the years?
CA: Not really, because of situations like that, we felt it was only fair to share the writing. You see that in other bands. Look at Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant did all the writing, so they were wealthier than the other ones. The Beatles were the same way with Paul and John. It’s easier to keep it all even, and you end up with the best product possible.

RIL: Do you find that there’s more pressure putting out an album when you’re on a major label or when you’re putting it out yourself?
CA: There’s more pressure on a major label. Right now we have no one breathing down our necks. It’s nice to be able to do a record that we’re producing ourselves. With a major label, all they’re looking for is hits. They’ll go through the material saying that’s not a hit, that’s not a hit. Anything is a hit if you put the money behind it. That’s the bottom line. We like doing it this way because we have no one to satisfy but ourselves. If we enjoy something, and we get the energy from it, than our fans are going to go out and buy it.

RIL: On the flip side of that, do you find it tougher getting a record out there on your own, with a big label backing?
CA: Without a doubt. The last record Pat and I did [It Takes a Lot of Balls] was a killer record. It’s one of the best records I’ve done in a long time, but nobody heard it. Some people heard it. I have a few radio stations that I call every week we do this feature called “Where in the World is Carmine”. It’s a weather report piece. I call them from where ever I am; it’s like a reality radio show. I’ve called them when I’m with Pat, or with some of the guys from Mountain. I even called in one time when I was with Rick James; I even put him on the phone to talk to them. The stations that I call into have actually played some of the T & A tracks. The station in Hawaii is playing the hell out of it. A promoter down there called and said he wanted me and Pat to go down there to play a few shows. Other than that, the label didn’t even send it out to radio. They didn’t do any interviews either. We put aside a few days to go to New York to do interviews, but they only did two of them.

RIL: Really?
CA: It was ridiculous. Its selling drips and drabs, we might have sold a couple of thousand in three months. That’s ridiculous; I sold more drum books in that time. I probably sold three times the amount of books in that time than I sold records, and it’s usually the other way around. It’s hard. You don’t expect to sell a lot when you put out these albums now. We’re doing this next one for Cleopatra, but there good at like catalog releases. So they might end up selling 15-20 thousand units of a piece of product.

RIL: You’ve contributed to a couple of those Cleopatra tribute albums, do you make out well there?
CA: They do. Everybody gets the same flat fee. Pat and I just did a tribute to Sonny and Cher that they’re doing. We did “Bang, Bang”. It’s pretty cool too. The tribute albums do really well for them. I heard the other day that their Metallica tribute album sold a couple hundred thousand. That’s pretty wild considering it easy to do these tribute albums.

RIL: In all honesty, some of them come out good, but some of them are really bad.
CA: I did the Alice Cooper one, and I did the first Queen one. I think they sold well with both of those. The good thing about them is that you never know who you’re going to play with. It was me Mike Inez, Slash, and Roger Daltry on the Alice Cooper one. That’s quite the array of people.

RIL: So do they just throw people together that can show up on that particular day?
CA: They have a rough idea. Basically I’ll go down and play with this skeleton bass player and guitar player, which is usually Bob Kulick. Then they take the track from there. They’ll check and see who’s available to play the rest of the parts.

RIL: I’ve got to ask you a question about Blue Murder. Whose idea was it to have you guys dressed up as pirates on the back cover of the debut record?
CA: I’m not sure whose idea it was, it might have been Geffen’s. You know, thinking about ‘screaming blue murder mate’. It had like a pirate vibe to the whole project.

RIL: It’s still one of my favorite albums.
CA: It is a great album. We’re actually talking about doing something at the end of the year together. We talked about it last year, but Sykes has gotten really busy with Thin Lizzy and his solo career in Japan. I’ve been busy with Vanilla Fudge and Pat. Tony isn’t even in the business per se. He’s an A & R guy now. He’ll do a few sessions and tour dates here and there. As far as the whole Blue Murder thing goes, you never know. When Sykes is down and tired of doing Thin Lizzy songs, he’ll want to do Blue Murder. When they get a big tour with big money, then he’ll go do Thin Lizzy again. That’s cool. That’s the way we all are. We’re just trying to do the best we can at making a living.

RIL: Are there any current rock bands out there that you like?
CA: My son listens to this band called Avenge Sevenfold. They’re really great musicians. One of the guys that sings is a great singer, but then they have one of those guys with the horse-like vocals that just ruins it for me. I like that group Jet, they really impressed me. To tell you the truth, I don’t listen to a lot of radio. What are you gonna listen to? It’s either gonna be rap or somebody whining. I really liked the Tommy Lee solo album.

RIL: The rap one or the second one?
CA: The rap one [Methods of Mayhem]. I thought it was really, really good. I surprised it didn’t do anything.

RIL: Yeah, that’s the one I liked two.
CA: Well, it did do something; 120,000 units. For a major record label though, that’s nothing.

RIL: Do you think that’s what’s missing from rock music today, the lack of a frontman that actually sings?
CA: It’s all homogenized. Somebody makes a hit record doing something, then all these record companies follow suit. They all want to sell five million records, they don’t want to try and build anything anymore. Even older acts aren’t getting heard anymore. Phil Collins, The Who, and Robert Plant can’t get their new stuff played on the radio these days.

RIL: What about satellite radio? Do think that might be a good market for artists that have been around for a while?
CA: There’s so many stations that play an array of stuff, which one are they gonna play it on? There’s like twenty rock stations to choose from. My girlfriend is on Sirius, she The Radio Chick. Have you heard of her?

RIL: I don’t have satellite radio.
CA: She was in New York for six years, she sort of a female Howard Stern. She was on two stations in New York and was rated just under Howard’s show. She got a satellite radio set up for us here and I listen to her show everyday. When she’s finished we put other things on. It’s great when we’re on the road because you can hear it anywhere. When we were on the road we put on the blues station and I heard stuff that I didn’t believe I was hearing. I heard stuff that Led Zeppelin ripped off and old blues guys that have been out there forever. I don’t particularly like blues, but I found some of the stuff interesting. I don’t know if satellite is going to get to the point where radio was, where it’s going to break somebody.

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