Carmine Appice has helped pave the way for the evolution of metal. His drumming talents have graced concerts and records of bands such as King Kobra, Ted Nugent, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd, Blue Murder, Rod Stewart, Vanilla Fudge, Cactus and many more. Cactus’ new album is Temple Of Blues II. In this interview, amongst other things I ask Carmine about the Kiss connections, the Ozzy adventure and the Led Zeppelin springboard before the interview comes to an abrupt end (more on that later). But, bizarrely, our conversation starts off with a discussion on the semantics and various phonetic interpretations of his name.
Carmine Appice: I go by Carmine ‘Uh-peace.’
Chris Galea: Okay then, sorry for mispronouncing it.
No, it’s okay, it’s the old way of saying it, and it’s been a problem all throughout my career. When I joined Rod Stewart’s band, he said, “let’s agree on one way to say your name, because you’re like five different people.” And we came up with Carmine ‘Uh-peace.’ So since 1976, I’ve been Carmine ‘Uh-Peace.’ But so many people still call me ‘App-uh-see’ or even Carmen.
Anyway, let’s talk about music now. Specifically, Temple of Blues II, the recent album from Cactus, the band you co-founded back in 1970. The songs on this album are reworked material from Cactus’s past repertoire. Can you give more details on the album’s contents?
We did the Cactus Temple of Blues number one [in 2024]. It was called “Influences and Friends.” It started out as musicians that were influenced by Cactus. Then we changed the name to Temple of Blues because it was mostly blues rock stuff. And we ended up on the Billboard Blues charts at number three the first week of release.
And we’re still on the Amazon Blues charts at number 60 out of 100 with the first album, which is a year and a half ago, which is great. So anyway, we said let’s do another one. And the first time we did all Cactus songs. On the second album, I wanted it to be more blues oriented. So we did three Cactus blues songs that we didn’t do on the last album. And one song with Melanie doing “Purple Haze,” which is kind of bluesy. And then we did seven other songs that came from Howlin’ Wolf’s Electric album [from 1969], which is an album that I love. In 1971 we had done the song “Evil” from that album.
Dee Snider [Twisted Sister, Widowmaker] had covered that song, right?
Dee Snider sang it on the previous Temple of Blues album. With Cactus, we had covered the song back in 1971. I loved the drum parts of that Howling Wolf album as well as the arrangements. So I said, well, I need seven more songs to make this complete project. I’m going to go for the songs on that album that are real blues. So we did.
Willie Dixon [who wrote the songs for Howling Wolf] is a great blues writer. And now it would really be Temple of Blues 2, because it’s really a blues album now. But we did it in the style of Cactus. Dee Snider sings “Little Red Rooster” in the new album. There’s also me, Billy Sheehan and Eric Gayles doing “Back Door Man,” another classic blues number. All these songs are classic blues songs, and the way we did them they came out fantastic.
Willie Dixon had once started a label called Cobra Records. Was that from where you got the name for your band King Kobra in the mid-1980s?
No, I got the name King Kobra just from the fact that I was looking for a name that was strong and metal-sounding. Cobra Snake is strong. King Cobra Snake is even stronger. But I changed the C to a K. There’s two Ks. So we were able to have a cool logo too. And we had our own image with the band. I try to never put out crappy albums [laughs] but King Kobra was really a great band.
Were the Mississippi blues a significant part of your musical education?
Not until I started playing with Cactus. Before Cactus, I was with Vanilla Fudge which was not a blues band. It was mixed with symphonic arrangements. But I played rhythm and blues all my life when I was a kid, in clubs and stuff. So when Cactus became an entity, we played blues rock, like that fast song called “Parchman Farm.” It was one of the fastest songs around at the time. I thought we wrote it, but it was a blues song. When we would jam, my singer would jam with us, and that’s how we wrote songs.
So I was turned on to the blues with Cactus. And that started me into the blues. And all the bands after that were blues-based R&B or blues or rock blues or blues rock or however you want to say it, throughout my whole career. But the Cactus records were really more blues-oriented than any of my previous albums.
On Temple of Blues you have various guests which get together and record these blues songs…as you were describing earlier. But how much were you willing to give them freedom to leave their own imprint on the songs?
Full freedom. I had the arrangements done. I started with my drums. I organized the drums, put the arrangements. And then I sent it to my guitar player and he puts the bass and guitar, my singer puts the vocals. Now we have a demo of what the idea is. So within that demo arrangement, they can do whatever they want. And making different, weird combinations with people like Alex Skolnik from Testament playing “Tail Dragger” with Rudy Sarzo and me and my singer with a harmonica player. I don’t think he’s ever played with a harmonica player in Testament. Probably not. So it’s a cool combination.
And then there’s “Bad Stuff” with Steve Morse [Deep Purple] and Joe Lynn Turner [Rainbow, Yngwie Malmsteen] and Tony Franklin [The Firm, Don Dokken] and Derek Sherinian [Dream Theater]. Again, a cool combination of people. Keyboardist Derek Sherinian had a solo that’s long. So I gave a longer solo to Steve Morse because I knew Steve’s playing and he would build it into an amazing solo. Sometimes I got surprised, which was fantastic.
You mentioned “The Little Red Rooster,” which Dee Snider sings on. If I’m not mistaken, there is Jimmy Heslip who plays bass on that track. In fact, you’ve often worked with jazz bassists such as Jimmy Heslip, Stanley Clarke, Jeff Berlin over the years. How come? Are you into jazz?
I’m into jazz rock. I love jazz rock. I had a group in the ‘70s that never came out, the band Astroport. We had guitar player Ray Gomez. [Ray Gomez played with musicians such as Bunny Brunel, Stanley Clarke, Jack Bruce and many others]. It was Ray Gomez, Jeff Berlin and a keyboard player from Bloodrock. And we played stuff kind of like Chick Corea but with vocals, but the album never came out. I had brought Ray Gomez to America and I got Jeff Berlin right out of Berklee College.
Will that recording ever be released?
I have it on my computer. I can put it on YouTube or something, but it was never really released. And it was good material.
Keeping on the subject of Temple of Blues, you mentioned the cover of “Purple Haze.” You toured with Jimi Hendrix, right? What do you remember of that?
I knew him before he was Jimi Hendrix, when he was Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. We used to play clubs together in New York City in 1963 before he made it, before I made it.
Wow. What type of person was he?
He was always very talented, amazing. Already he played with his teeth. So later on when Vanilla Fudge started to achieve success, I saw this guy with long hair playing with his teeth. I said, that’s Jimmy James…Jimi Hendrix. And next time I saw him was in England, I said, how are you doing? He didn’t know I was in Vanilla Fudge. I said, man, from the days when we played the clubs, you really made it like you always wanted to do. He goes, yeah, what are you doing here? I said, I’m here with Vanilla Fudge. He goes, I love the Fudge. So, yeah, we went on to do a lot of things with Jimi…as Vanilla Fudge. Like a two month tour in the fall of ‘68. When we had a single in the top five, he had top ten records too….and we were doing arenas.
What do you remember of his playing? What were your impressions of him playing guitar in the early days?
I thought it was great. There was like three guys in New York that played like that. It was him, my friend Ronnie Leejack who played on some Cactus albums, and this guy called The Wizard, who was a session guy. They all played the bluesy like Hendrix. But, Hendrix had the whole package. He had the image, he had the singing, he had everything. When we talked in New York before we made it, he was smoking a joint and he said, I really want to make it. I really want to make it. And I said, what do you mean make it? He says, I want to make it, be a recording star.
He said, what about you? I said, I don’t care. I mean, I want to make a living out of it. I want to be like my drum teacher, an Italian, Dick Bennett, Beneducci, and I said, he has a Cadillac car, he has a house, he has a padded drum room, gives lessons, wakes up on the weekend and makes money. I said to me, I just want to do that. I never even thought about being in a hit record band in those days. But yeah, Jimi did achieve what he wanted.
I’d like to speak about some of your many collaborations over the years. In 1978, you played drums on one track of Paul Stanley’s solo album. But I have the impression that there were some other tracks you recorded, which didn’t make it to the final version of the album. What do you remember of those, let’s call them ‘discarded’ tracks?
Paul Stanley’s album…yes. I was staying at Rod Stewart’s in those days. I flew in from Thailand or something like that. I was really fried and I went right to the studio. And I think I played on maybe three tracks. But they only put one track of what I did on the album. Honestly I don’t remember the other songs. Maybe they weren’t as good. I don’t think it had anything to do with my playing. In those days we used to overcut songs. If you needed 10 songs, you would cut 15 songs and you’d pick the best 10. No matter who’s playing on it, they have to be good songs.
Around that time of that album, Kiss were starting to distance themselves from their original drummer, Peter Criss. So I was wondering if you were ever invited to join Kiss.
We talked about it back then. I was managed by Bill Aucoin, who was also the manager of Kiss. But as Gene said, they wanted to get somebody new and I had too much history. So when they get the makeup on, it’s a new face. I understood that and we were still friends for many years.
You mentioned Gene. I have the impression you’ve got some gigs scheduled with his band later this year, right?
It’s like an autograph convention. We’ll have a table, me and my brother set up near each other. And we have t-shirts and we sell autographs. We sell albums, we sell drumsticks, we sell all kinds of stuff and we autograph it. So you buy a pair of drumsticks for $30 and we autograph it, now it’s $50. And Gene Simmons is putting on this convention for the first time. It’s happening over three consecutive days. You make a lot of money there.
So you’re not actually playing with his band?
No, I’m not playing. Well, there might be some jamming going on. We won’t know until we get there. It’ll be spontaneous if it happens.
You also have another indirect connection with Kiss because in 2016 you were invited to play drums in the comeback of Vinnie Vincent. Those gigs didn’t happen. Why?
Man, Vinnie Vincent’s out of his mind. He’s crazy. I had him in my group called Carmine and the Rockers in 1982. And just as we were going to sign a record deal, he freaked out and said I want all the writing [credits]. He didn’t deserve all the writing, we all participated and made the songs great. [The music] was kind of like new wave, kind of heavy new wave kind of stuff. And so he blew the deal for us. So that was the end of Vinnie Vincent and me. He wasn’t called Vinnie Vincent back then. His name was Vinnie Cusano. That’s his real name.
So then a year later, I got a call from Gene and Paul and they said, we’re thinking of using this guy Vinnie Cusano in Kiss. What do you think? I said, he’s a great player, good writer, but he’s trouble. He’s trouble. I said, but it’s up to you. So they took him in and they did a great record with him, Lick It Up. He’s a great player. He was great songwriting with them. But then he screwed them. He sued them. I told Paul, I told you. He said, this guy is nothing but trouble.
Then he disappeared for 20 years. But a couple of years ago I get a call from this guy I didn’t know named Derek. He said, I’m putting on a Vinnie Vincent show. I said, you are? He said, yeah. I said, I haven’t heard from Vinnie in 20 years. He had also done the Vinnie Vincent Invasion. I thought it was terrible. There’s all the guitars but there’s no drums, no bass, it’s all guitar. Horrible. And he’s trying to be vain. He’s this great blues rock player, like he played in Kiss. But the Vinnie Vincent Invasion had horrible guitar playing as far as I’m concerned. I’ve worked with the best, all the best, 40, 50 of the greatest guitar players in the world on Guitar Zeus, on Cactus, on other different projects. But that [Vinnie Vincent Invasion]…man, I know he could do better. He was trying to be, you know, with his stupid look. He disappears for 20 years and when he comes back he looks like a woman. Have you seen his recent look?
Yeah, I have.
So this Derek said we were talking to Vinnie about maybe who could play with his band and he mentioned me. I said, look, I have no grudges. Sure I’ll play. He said, what about bass? I said let’s get Tony Franklin. Okay, so we got me and Tony Franklin and Vinnie and a singer. I forgot who the singer was supposed to be. So he gave us a deposit, he said you’ll make X amount of dollars and here’s the deposit. Deposit for Tony, deposit for me. He gave Vinnie a big deposit. And then Vinnie didn’t do the gig. Cancelled the gig. I said, I’ll give you the money back. He said, no, no, keep it. You put the same time, same with Tony. I became friends with this guy.
Vinnie at that point said, you’ve got posters. I’ll sign the posters. You can sell the posters for $200 a piece and make up the money. $200 a piece for a poster with Vinnie Vincent? What are you, crazy? Now his latest thing, you see his latest thing? He’s releasing a new album, which I don’t know if it’s new or not. You can buy the whole album and own the rights for $2 million. That is crazy. Who’s gonna do that? Or you can buy one track for $200,000. We laughed. They said, come on, where do you live? You live in your head?
It’s a shame really because the fans really want to hear him.
It’s really a shame. If he comes and plays like he did with Kiss and with my band, I would put him on a Cactus album. And maybe even go out and do some gigs. But man, to play with a crazy man that looks like a woman now…you know…something’s wrong.
You also played live with Ozzy’s band around the time of Bark at the Moon. What was life on the road like with Ozzy?
It was good until Sharon [Osbourne] fired me. She said my name was too big. She signed a contract with my manager to give me my own merchandise. And then I would do masterclasses, teaching every day in each market, which created a bunch of money for me. I got the cash and I gave it to the tour account to put it in the safe. Sharon didn’t like it. I had my own PR person too because I was giving the money to charity and I got a lot of press and she didn’t like it. They were pushing Jake E. Lee and I was getting a lot of PR and she didn’t like it.
And she tried things on stage. She cut the faces off my T-shirts. You know, I don’t know if she did it personally but my roadie said, look at this. I had my own tech. He said Look at this. All your T-shirts had the head cut off. So I asked the tour manager, I said, who did this? He said, go talk to Sharon. So what does that mean? It must have been Sharon that had it done, no?
It looks like it.
The day she fired me, we had such a great gig that we were all backstage saying, wow, what a killer gig. And the tour manager said, Sharon wants to talk to me. So I go see Sharon and she fires me. And I sued them. You know, it’s stupid. Ozzy told me, you need to start your own band. So I started King Kobra. King Kobra did pretty good. It wasn’t huge, but it did pretty good. But when I did King Cobra, I had a motor home. Ted Nugent said, buy your own vehicles. Don’t rent the vehicles. It’s too expensive on the road when you rent. [Carmine played drums with the band of Ted Nugent around 1982.]
So I bought a motor home. I bought a truck and we were painting everything white while we were at the studio…a rehearsal place that I used to use. And Ozzy was there. He was there auditioning drummers. This is when he got Randy Castillo in. So he said, hey, Carm, what are you doing? He said, Carm, I hope we can still be friends. I know you and my wife are having a problem, but I hope we can be friends. I said, no, I know it ain’t you, Oz, no problem. Then I got Ozzy on a little stool and he helped me tape up the windows of the motor home so we could paint it. I thought it was funny. And then I said, we’re going to rehearse. We’re going to do my King Kobra band. So he was the first one to come into the studio and see the band. But I would never be able to open for Ozzy because Sharon hated me. I haven’t talked to Sharon since 1984. I’ve spoken to other people who have dealt with her and they’ve all told me similar stories. When Tommy Aldridge joined Ozzy’s band, he said that he had to change a few things with the drumming of Lee Kerslake.
Had you changed the drumming parts of Aldridge and Kerslake?
No. You hired me, you get me. You won’t get me copying Tommy Aldridge, copying Lee. I mean, I would listen to the original, see where the drum fills were and all that. But not play exactly like them. As a matter of fact, this week…you know who Captain Kirk is from Star Trek?
Yes, of course.
So he [actor William Shatner] does spoken word events. In other words, instead of singing he talks. So he’s doing a thing called Metal Odyssey. He’s got all these different rock and heavy metal people playing different songs. I’m going to play “Crazy Train” today.
For his event?
For his album. He’s going to be talking in it. And I don’t know who else they’re going to have on it, but he’s going to have other rock people like myself on there. I remembered this because we were talking about Ozzy because I’m going to play “Crazy Train” in my studio sometime this week.
That’s interesting. I believe also your brother Vinnie had played drums with Ozzy in Black Sabbath. Did you two ever compare notes about Ozzy and the way he was managed?
Actually, Ozzy had first asked Vinnie to join him before Ozzy even had one [solo] album out. He asked Vinnie to join the new band that they were putting together, Blizzard of Oz. But they took on Lee Kerslake instead. Vinnie had told me that they called him. I said, forget about Ozzy. He’s not going to do nothing. At the time I would go to the Rainbow in LA. Once I sat in a booth with Ozzy. I was talking to him, then I turned around to a fan. Then I turned back. Ozzy’s head was in a bowl of spaghetti because he was so out of it. He was so stoned and fucked up. So I said to Vinnie, that guy’s going nowhere. He can’t even eat a bowl of spaghetti. Where’s he gonna go? I was wrong, of course. And I myself ended up playing with him.
And what was funny is that when Vinnie played with Ozzy, I had already played with him. And his wife told my brother, oh, you’re so much nicer than Carmine. I didn’t do anything against her. She just didn’t like the fact that I was more of a businessman than my brother. And I had my name out there. When Vinny was playing drums with Ozzy, Ozzy would ask him [Carmine puts on a hilarious imitation of Ozzy]…so what do I say [to the audience] when you do a drum solo? Is it ‘a-piece’ or ‘appicee’? What is it? So Vinny said, ‘appicee.’. So the time comes in the show, he does a song and then Ozzy goes, that’s Vinny, apa….a…apit….apithy… on stage.
It was so funny, you know, when he told me that I really laughed. I love Ozzy. He was a good human being, man. I loved him. He wanted to be an actor instead of a singer. But he did become an actor because I mean he didn’t believe in all that devil stuff. It was all an act, that ‘Prince of Darkness’ stuff.
Yeah, it had nothing to do with the members of Black Sabbath. I understand that in the early days that imagery had started from the label.
Cactus had played with Black Sabbath. They weren’t heavy metal. I think they were hard rock, just like we were. We even had the same amplifier set-up.
When was this?
1970. It was their first tour of America and we had played with them. That’s when I met Ozzy. We almost had a fistfight over a bag of marijuana. And us being from Detroit and New York, and them being from Birmingham, two really rough towns, we were ready to fight. And then the promoter got in the middle. When I was with Ozzy years later, we both laughed about it.
Another band you toured with early on were The Yardbirds. What do you recall about playing with Jimmy Page?
He was a quiet guy, introverted. A great player and didn’t ever hang out with everybody else.
Did he ever tell you that he was planning to start a new band….which would of course be Led Zeppelin?
Not when we [Vanilla Fudge] toured with the Yardbirds, no. We had the same lawyer that he had. And later on the lawyer gave us the record of his new band called Led Zeppelin. So we heard the album before it even came out. And we said, wow, this band’s great. And I loved John Bonham playing on there. So they said, we want you guys to take them on tour. The first gig was in Denver with Vanilla Fudge and another band. It was sold out. So we didn’t need them on the tour. But my agent and our lawyer and their manager and everybody kept working with the promoter. I said, I’ll tell you what, they want $1,500 for Led Zeppelin to play? Unbelievable, right? I said, you pay $750 and Vanilla Fudge will pay $750. So we paid $750 to Led Zeppelin for them to open up for us on their very first show.
They got booed off the stage a little bit. And then we did more shows with them and then they played places like the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. And then when the first album came out, it went gold immediately. And then the next summer, which was six months later, we played with them on an equal bill. By that point they were as big as we were. John Bonham had the same drum set as mine, after I talked to Ludwig about him. We became good friends. Last year there was a Led Zeppelin documentary called Becoming Led Zeppelin. I’m in it. I talk about how I got John Bonham and his drums and we were good friends and how Vanilla Fudge took them under our wing and helped them. It was also a good boost for Vanilla Fudge and for me.
Excellent. I’ve gotta make sure I see that documentary.
[Note: A couple of days after this interview I did manage to see the aforementioned Led Zeppelin documentary. On Led Zeppelin’s first U.S.A. shows, Jimmy Page says: “We were supporting the Vanilla Fudge to begin with and they were the only group that took us under their wing.” Robert Plant: “Carmine and John Bonham picked up such a repartee….they used to watch each other and mimic each other. It was a great exchange of energies between everybody.”]
You also briefly recorded with Pink Floyd. You recorded one track with them, I believe. I was wondering, were you given any precise instructions on what to play when you entered the recording studio?
No, not really, because the producer, Bob Ezrin, I already knew. And one day I came home and I used to have an answer machine, and Bob had left me a message. He said, hey, Carmine, it’s Bob Ezrin, I’m producing an album with a band that is screaming for Carmine drum fills. So that means they really wanted me to be me. So I called him back and said, who is the band? He said, Pink Floyd. I said, where’s Nick? Because we know those guys. He said, well, Nick has been racing his Ferraris and his calluses are soft and he wanted to bring some new energy to it. So I want you to play this song called “Dogs of War.” I never heard the song before…so I spent 12 hours in the studio with them doing that track. I never got to hear the song until it came out. I was in Canada doing a movie and a movie soundtrack, and I had to go buy the cassette to hear it. And when I heard it I said, wow, that sounds fantastic.
This is the same Bob Ezrin who produced many albums for Kiss, right?
Yeah, Bob Ezrin. He did a lot of stuff. He did albums with Alice Cooper; he worked with a lot of people. He was a great producer and I thanked him for the Pink Floyd job even though I didn’t get paid a lot of money. But it was the idea that I’m going to play with Pink Floyd that made me do it. Then later that year, I saw Pink Floyd doing their shows on MTV, Big Deal, and they did “Dogs of War” and Nick was playing my parts. I thought that was cool.
Another one of many albums you did was with Jeff Beck and Tim Bogert in 1973, which is still a highly regarded album. Why did only one album materialize from that collaboration?
Jeff Beck was very talented, but he was also super paranoid and a little introverted. We had new tracks but we did the second album twice. And he never liked it. Then we recorded it live at the London Rainbow, which came out recently as a box set. It came out a year and a half ago. It was live recording in Japan plus a live recording at the London Rainbow, redone with near packaging, posters; a really beautiful package. And not until then did we ever get those songs that were going to be on the second album released. Otherwise, they came out as bootlegs all over the world. Those are just bootlegs of that second album but unfortunately we never got to do it properly. I turned Jeff Beck onto jazz rock. I used to listen to jazz rock all the time: Mahavishnu Orchestra, Billy Cobham, Chick Corea in the car whenever we were driving.
He loved it. He had never heard it before. We did a song called “Jizz Whiz” and “Solid Lifter,” which was instrumental, which are on that live album, which is very much a blow by blow record. I was on the original recording of what should have been the second album but it didn’t work out so I had to come off. And I was very mad that I came off, especially when the recording came out.
It sold two million records. It really pissed me off. But then I realized if I was still with Jeff Beck, I would have missed the opportunity to be with Rod Stewart, which was an even bigger thing for me. It really lifted my career up, way up, much more than being with Jeff Beck did. With Jeff Beck we were all equal: Jeff Beck, Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert. So my manager said, you can’t go on a Jeff Beck album and be a side man. You couldn’t do that. So I left.
Which were the most complex albums to make? The two Temple of Blues albums with Cactus or the two Guitar Zeus albums?
The Guitar Zeus albums were all original music. So they were harder to put together, whereas with the Cactus albums, the first one was all written with Cactus music, and the second one was Cactus music and blues that were already written. So we didn’t have to write the songs, something which takes a lot of time when making an album. The Guitar Zeus records, that whole project was amazing. I listened to it the other day on the plane. I was coming from California to Florida. It was a long trip. They had no internet so I spent the time listening to all of it.
Unfortunately at that point the Zoom meeting got disconnected and our conversation came to an abrupt end. Pity. I was hoping to delve deeper into Carmine’s experience with Rod Stewart’s band, about Blue Murder: Carmine’s band with the late guitarist John Sykes (Whitesnake, Tygers of Pan Tang), chat more about Vanilla Fudge…. Remember to check out the new Cactus album Temple of Blues II.
(interview published May 17, 2026)
