Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to former BLACK SABBATH, DIO Drummer VINNY APPICE who on October 27 will be releasing the album with his brother Carmine Appice entitled Appice ‘Sinister’.
Watch the interview here:
Vinny Appice spoke about how he joined Black Sabbath the recording of The Mob Rules album, the Live Evil controversy and how he and Ronnie James Dio left, recording Holy Diver, the last in Line, Dream Evil with Dio and his time playing with John Lennon.
When asked about when he was asked to possible join Ozzy Osbourne’s band during the Blizzard of Oz period (10:16)
“Right before Sabbath a couple of months before I got a call from Sharon Osbourne and she was just starting to manage Ozzy and Ozzy wasn’t doing anything except partying.
Sharon asked me if I wanted to go to England, I guess they heard my drumming somewhere and go meet Ozzy. hang out and see how it goes and possibly join the band. But I was like 20 years old. So I asked my brother (Carmine) I knew Ozzy was not the average guy, but Ozzy didn’t have a solo career yet he was the singer they fired from Sabbath. Carmine said that the last time he saw Ozzy was at the Rainbow and Ozzy was eating spaghetti and Carmine turned around to talk to somebody and then he turned back to Ozzy and there was Ozzy sleeping in the spaghetti bowl. Who knows what would have happened if I joined? I always think I might have been on that plane that crashed with Randy Rhodes if I joined Ozzy. Who knows cause I knew Randy before we were friends.”
When asked about the controversy surrounding the departure of Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice during the producing of the Black Sabbath Live album Live Evil (16:20)
“I think the engineer (of Live Evil) liked to party at that time I just remember that me and Ronnie would show up around 2pm that was the call and the rest of the band didn’t show up till later on. I didn’t understand why, I loved the band I loved everybody in the band. Then it came out in the press that Ronnie and I went early into the studio to turn up the drums and vocals, why would we do that?”
When asked his opinion of guitarist Vivian Campbell being fired from Dio (24:40)
“Vivian is a monster guitar player. There were some business problems within the band we were promised to be sharing and things we gave it up for the first album and tour cause it costs a lot of money to launch a band and Ronnie was putting in his money. Then it never happened we were doing tours and arenas back then one of the tours grossed 8 million dollars but we got nothing out of it, just salaries. What was promised never happened and Vivian really called management out on it. So that really became bad blood with Ronnie but we all felt the same way. Ronnie and Vivian did not see eye to eye and then Ronnie said to me I am going to fire Vivian, I’m like WHAT? I was just in shock. I kind of mentioned that was not a great idea cause of the sound of the band. Ronnie decided he could go on without him. When ever you got something that works in a band, magical with the people in it you don’t do that. ”
When asked about him playing on Lennon’s last live performance ever (52:00)
“Our producer friend Jimmy Lovine he loved our band at the time BOMF and wanted to produce us brought us into the studio in New York Mahatten to record some demos the owner heard our band and singed us to a management deal . One night Jimmy called us up and asked if we could come to the studio to do hand claps, we said sure, we go downstairs and their is John Lennon in the room . We ended up doing hand claps for the song ‘Whatever gets you the the Night’. Couple days later Lennon came to our rehearsal room to check us out. We smoked a couple of joints with John, it was very cool. John would come back and hang out with us a lot. He felt safe with us. He asked us to do three videos with him. then we asked us to do a live performance with him at a TV show on ABC. then about three years ago i see a magazine that says big page with that picture in it I am right next to John and it mentions me and Lennon and it says this was John’s last performeance, I’m flattered WOW. I played on John Lennon’s last performance ever.”
