Carmine Appice – CACTUS
By: Lori Smerilson Carson | Photo: Courtesy of Cleopatra Records
Blasts from the past are so soul soothing and TEMPLE OF BLUES II definitely falls into the category of losing yourself in music. Headed by world-renown Drummer Carmine Appice who in 2013 was inducted into the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame and in 2014, the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. In addition, his resume includes Vanilla Fudge, Rod Stewart, King Kobra and Blue Murder. Now, he along with CACTUS are continuing their incredible bluesy rock sounds with their latest album just released in April.
Catching up with Appice, he revealed some details about the album, some past experiences, and what fans can look forward to with TEMPLE OF BLUES II.
SFL Music Magazine: What inspired you to make TEMPLE OF BLUES II?
Carmine Appice: Well, I did the first one because the label president, I consider my label Cleopatra, I knew the owner since he started the label in 1992. He said, “you know, it would be great to do an album. You think you can do this, an album of people that were influenced by CACTUS?” I said, yeah, I think I could do that. So, we did the first one and it hit the Billboard Blues charts at #3 the first week and it stayed on the charts and did pretty well. Then like six or eight months ago, maybe a little longer, he said, “what about, we should do another one? He said, “but this time, don’t make it so long. Make it like ten songs, then eleven songs. One extra for the CD, and then we can do one with the record instead of two LPs.” I said, ok. So, then I started thinking about this one, what to do and which songs to do and then who to play on it. Who’s available to play on it and all that stuff. Takes time.
SFL Music Magazine: You have some amazing artists on the album. On “Bad Stuff” and “Tail Dragger” you have Steve Morse, Joe Lynn Turner, Derek Sherinian, Tony Franklin, your old bandmate, and Rudy Sarzo. On the first single release “Back Door Man” you have Eric Gales, Billy Sheehan with that bluesy rockin’ sound and the pickup at the end. What inspired that song?
Appice: Well, all the songs that we did, all the blues songs are all on an album called Howlin’ Wolf’s electric Album. I was given that album by Jeff Beck who was given to him by Jimmy Page, and you could hear some Led Zeppelin and some Jeff Beck group on both those albums. In ’71 when I got it, I took a song called “Evil” off of that and did it with CACTUS. It was fantastic and I always loved that album. I loved the drumming. Morris Jennings, a fantastic old drummer. He did some unbelievable drumming on that album. So, we got three CACTUS songs, one song with Melanie which was amazing! That’s ten songs. So, I need seven songs to make eleven songs. Ten on the record and one for the CD extra. There was only like eight or nine songs on the record and I did “Evil”. The only one that we left off was “Smokestack Lightning”. The rest of them are all on that record and it had really interesting drum parts, really interesting drum sounds, and really interesting versions of the songs like “The Little Red Rooster” and as you heard, “Back Door Man”. The Doors did “Back Door Man” but not like that. We just played a live gig Friday night. It was a charity gig and we introduced the album. It was the album release party, kind of thing. We had almost six hundred people in the venue and we raised money for the charity; we gave them a lot of money. We played that song live and it was unbelievable! When we first played it at rehearsal, we were going to do all the songs with Eric Gales on it which was “The Little Red Rooster”. I picked different people to do different songs. So, I had “Back Door Man”, “The Little Red Rooster” and “Spoonful”.
SFL Music Magazine: With Ted Nugent?
Appice: Yeah. Then once we did “Back Door Man” you couldn’t follow it. It was so good. So energetic and kick ass and he played amazing! Billy Sheehan and me just rocking. Very hard to follow, so we tried to follow with “The Little Red Rooster” which is a great song. My singer with my Rod show, his name is Rob Caudill. We celebrate Rod’s music, and he came up to me after we did it, he said, “man, I don’t think we can follow that song.” So, I moved the song to the end of the show, so the only thing we did after that was a boogie which you can follow. That has a lot of energy. That’s what we did and when we played it the audience went frickin’ crazy. It was so good and like I said, we played three songs from the CACTUS record. We played a couple well known CACTUS songs like “Evil”, “Parchman Farm”, “One Way… or Another” and then the rest of it was all the new stuff and the new stuff went over fantastic!
SFL Music Magazine: With an album like this, different artists can put their influence like with “The Little Red Rooster” Tracii Guns played slide guitar, amazing with great riffs, and Dee Snider, I never saw him sing bluesy rock almost Jimi Hendrix style. He was outstanding!
Appice: Yep. I’m hoping that this isn’t the last new recording we hear from him. He’s great! On the last album he did “Evil”. You should look that up. He sings his ass off. You will love it.
SFL Music Magazine: Tell me about the video.
Appice: I got the people to do it. I directed it with the guy who did all the editing and the story. We came up with the story idea. I wanted it to look like the old blues in the south, and black and white in the fields and then playing in front of a shack. Then he came up with Dee driving that car and that’s all AI.
SFL Music Magazine: Really? Who was the lady in the video?
Appice: AI. The only thing that was real was the band. I came up with this guy and my guy said, “oh let’s make the rooster turn into a red head.” I said, yeah but the rooster’s a male. Let’s put a sign on, ‘Gender Change’ but I didn’t want any politics bullshit. So, I probably should have put it in there. We’d get some press I bet. He said, “well how about we call it a specialty make-up change?” I said, that’s good. AI rooster walked in there, the woman in there was AI, so let’s make it look like Frankenstein. It goes in there and there’s sparks and all that stuff. It comes out a beautiful redhead, but then it says, “temporary.” Notice that? The results are temporary. Then at the end he’s got to turn back into a rooster. So, he turned it back into a rooster in the car and I said, well if you’re doing that, you’ve got to have Dee’s face go like, wow! Then when it was done, I said, now I’ve got to send it to Dee to see if he likes it because if you don’t like the AI of Dee, screw it! I sent it to him, I waited. He text me back, he said, “it’s fuckin’ amazing!” I said, yeah! Then everybody who’s seen it afterward loves it. It’s really one of the best ideas for videos that I’ve done.
SFL Music Magazine: The bonus song “Feel So Good” with Billy Sheehan and Britt Lightning.
Appice: And Tommy Thayer. My guy from my Rod show, he’s singing it. Then later on, I did all these drummers on there playing stuff, but we EQ’d them so it doesn’t sound like drums. It sounds like effects. Then you’ve got Todd Sucherman from Styx and he’s playing forks and spoons on a table which is crazy. I wanted it to be kind of like Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, that end part where it goes through all the crazy stuff, and that’s what we did. We got this guy that funded the charity. His father had an amazing foundation, he funded it. We’re doing an album with him where he does spoken word backed up by rock players including myself and Tony Franklin and Eric Bloom. Just a bunch of people. You hear a voice going “feel so good” real low.
SFL Music Magazine: Yes, I heard that.
Appice: That’s him. All kinds of vocals and the theremin, woo, woo. Then Billy Sheehan every eight bars he does some crazy playing. I’m playing on my little snare drum; it’s over to the left. It really came out good. You’re the first one of all the interviews I did that mentioned that song.
SFL Music Magazine: Oh, I’m glad I did.
Appice: That’s cool, I love it! That’s an old CACTUS song, “Feel So Good”. I used to do a drum solo in that, but I didn’t want to do a drum solo today. I’ve done so many drum solos on record I didn’t need to do another one. So, I said to my guitar player when he put the track down, I said, I’m going to give you eight bars of drums. Give me eight bars of a groove on top of that we’re going to do a guitar battle with Tommy and Britt. That’s how it happened. Then after they finished it was like four bars each, then two bars each, one bar each they played together then it breaks down hit a gong, then it goes to the next part.
SFL Music Magazine: As for your drumming, I noticed you played different styles on the songs. You have your steady hard rock and bluesy influence, but some songs like “The Little Red Rooster” was a little different.
Appice: Those drum parts came from that album. I just duplicated him and did them a little bit my way. That one and “Spoonful” and “Tail Dragger”, they have different rhythms going which I took and made it my own. When I recorded this stuff, I started with the drums. Then we put everything on top of the drums. I would put a song to a click, and I would hum the melody with my voice or the riff like bum bum bum dah, bah dum dum. Then I’d put my voice on it, so I know where I am. Then a couple of them I play bass on it. Then I’d put the drums on it. So, I would arrange everything and then I’d send it to my guitar player and then he’d put the guitar on it. He put the bass on it, and my singer would sing it, and then I had demos to send to everybody.
SFL Music Magazine: On “Moanin’ At Midnight” Pat Travers is featured.
Appice: That’s the one I played bass on the most and my bass player (James Caputo) said, “leave it on there. It sounds good.” Come on dude, I’m not a bass player. I said you do it. So, he did it, but he played what I played kind of, but he did it properly.
SFL Music Magazine: How did “Purple Haze” with Melanie come about because she passed away?
Appice: That was my label’s idea again. They said, “look, she had just died. We got the rights to her voice and everything from her family. So, we found this in her tapes, and it was her playing “Purple Haze” and singing, playing with an acoustic guitar with some people in the background going “who, hah” like a chanty thing. So, “you think you can take her voice and put CACTUS to her?” I said, let me hear it. Yeah, we can do that. So, my engineer Pat Regan and co-producer took her voice and put it on a tempo. I gave him a good tempo, and he took her voice and stretched it on a click. Then we had that on a click. I did the drums first to her vocal. Then when we wanted a breaker, we went up tempo. We stopped her voice for eight bars or whatever we needed and then we started it again. Then we put it together and it came out great! Our bass player James was out on the road, so we got Tony Franklin to play bass. A couple of times when my bass player couldn’t make it Tony Franklin played with CACTUS. So, he knew all the songs. He knew the feel. Me and him together, we work great together. So, I got him on there and then we started doing the effects like at the end. It was like very psychedelic, (he sang) “excuse me why I kiss the sky, sky, sky” and all that kind of stuff. In the middle we did a breakdown. It came out fantastic! I never knew she could sing like that. It’s a long way from the roller skate song (“Brand New Key”) that she did. She had that voice and that scream she did, sounded like Janis Joplin. It blew me away. I said yeah, we got to do this when I first heard it.
SFL Music Magazine: She performed at the Isle of Wight Festival with CACTUS, correct?
Appice: She was there. It was 1970. Like fifty sixty years ago. We never met her then because she sang that roller skate kind of stuff. We weren’t into that. We hung out mostly with Jimi Hendrix, and acts like that.
SFL Music Magazine: You have worked with many world-renown artists. My publisher found his KGB album.
Appice: On my God, I love him.
SFL Music Magazine: As you said, you worked with Tony Franklin and also played with him and John Sykes in Blue Murder. What would you say you took away from working with all of those other artists?
Appice: Rod Stewart. He taught me more about image, about making things events. Like this release of the album instead of just releasing the album, we did a charity event as a listening party for the album. Make the album more known for the release. If I did clinics, I gave money to charities or if I did clinics, I’d make them more of a production. I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot about image, about dressing, making your image cool so people would remember not just some guy with long hair. I had black and purple hair for a long time. Then when I changed it, I did it like this which is white with black streaks. Make you memorable.
SFL Music Magazine: He had something to do with the pronunciation of your last name too?
Appice: He said, “what do most people call you because you have five different names?” I said, most people call me Appice (ah-peace). He said, “well let’s go with that. We’re playing for twenty thousand people a night and you do a drum solo; I want to say Carmine what! So, I’ll say Carmine Appice, great!” Then Ludwig, I have it on the wall here, I did an ad in every rock magazine that said,” Everyone Wants a Piece of Appice.” It’s a good ad, black and white, really moody ad.
SFL Music Magazine: You’ve mentioned charities. Do you have particular ones that you favor?
Appice: Well, we gave the most on the last one to Tunnel to Towers. We also gave to MUSICARES and Music Will. My singer Rob Caudill, when he broke his leg, MUSICARES gave him a bunch of money and they paid his rent, and they paid his phone bill. They paid things for months. Music Will used to be Little Kids Rock. Little Kids Rock I was involved in. I used to be on the board of directors where I would go into bad neighborhoods where kids would be in gangs. If they weren’t going to this Little Kids Rock event and learning music every afternoon instead of hanging out with gangs. Tunnel to Towers they take care of people that were in the army and wounded, couldn’t make a living. They would buy them a house and stuff like that. It’s fantastic. Then we did St. Jude’s Hospital (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) too for children. Then we did the Italian sports charity in Chicago. I think they help out kids in sports. We did those four and we gave a considerable amount of money to them plus we had a QR code on the screen at the show. We told everybody there’s a QR code and you can donate to any of these. I don’t know how many people did that but there was about 600 people so a few of them must have done it and gave some money, so that helped too, I’m sure. I like doing that. I like helping people. I’ve done drum clinics. I’ve done stuff at schools. I’ve done all kinds of stuff like that.
SFL Music Magazine: When I interviewed your brother he explained how you influenced him, but what would you say influenced you to become a drummer, a musician?
Appice: Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. They were my idols. My cousin Joey had a set of drums, so whenever we went to his house, I would get on the drums and play. Then I’d bang on the pots and pans, and little toy drum sets. So, finally my parents bought me a decent drum set for like fifty bucks, I think it was one hundred bucks at the very first Sam Ash store. On my father’s side of the family there are seven drummers. I was number two. I was the only one that really made it, but the other ones, they played on weekends and some different bands and stuff. My son plays too. When me and Vinny my brother were working on the Drum Wars show, we rehearsed at my house, and we went downstairs to the kitchen to get some water, and all the sudden we heard somebody playing. I go, who the hell is playing? I go upstairs, my son’s playing. He wasn’t into it, playing for a living. He just plays for fun. I left him a drum pad and books. He never studied it. He’s in medical, interventional radiology tech in the operating room. He did that for a while. Now, he’s with a company that makes those little things that go up your veins, catheters and stuff. He just had a baby, my first grandson. He’s Nicholas Carmine so he named his baby Luca Carmine.
SFL Music Magazine: It’s ok to put his name in?
Appice: Yeah. Make him famous before he’s one month old.
SFL Music Magazine: Speaking of being famous, what would you say is the key to success and longevity?
Appice: Purpose. My wife had a podcast called A Life’s Story. In it she interviewed people who are like one-hundred years old, a hundred and two. She said,” what is your secret to being so old” and they said, “purpose.” If you don’t have purpose, there’s nothing to live for.” Wow! I always got purpose (he laughed) I never stop. I never stop coming up with crazy ideas.
SFL Music Magazine: Is that what you would recommend to a new musician?
Appice: Well, it’s different today. I recommend, if you love it, go after it. Play all kinds of music. Don’t just try and be like a musician that’s going to be on Spotify because you don’t make any money on Spotify. You make money playing in a wedding band. A lot of money playing for bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteen parties. A kid up the block, he’s got a band, they go out and play on the weekend. How much did you make? “Well, I didn’t make nothing.” Ok, that’s great. When I was his age, I was making a hundred and fifty dollars a night playing weddings, bar mitzvahs and all that. Now they make more. A wedding band now makes ten grand a night. So, if you’re playing in a wedding band that’s a four piece, that’s twenty-five hundred dollars a piece. That’s where they go when they’re trying to make it to be a rock star, it’s difficult. All these bands that are big now, it took them ten years to make it. I was in Vanilla Fudge nine months; we were on the charts. Nine months I was on The Ed Sullivan Show. Fifty million people watching. That don’t happen no more. It takes forever. I don’t even know any of these bands today because I don’t sit around and look at YouTube. I used to drive in my car and hear new bands. It’s different now. It’s totally different. A lot of the bands they’re great musicians. Some of them are tremendous musicians, but a lot of them sound the same. I do like Papa Roach, but they’re not new. They’ve been around for a while. I saw them at a concert last year. Papa Roach was awesome! They were frickin great! I went out and I bought ten songs on iTunes. I don’t do Spotify because they rip us off so much. I won’t touch it. But I bought ten songs for a dollar each, and they made money. You know how much you make on Spotify? I bet you don’t. .003 cents. Three hundred downloads make you a penny. So, figure it out. Figure out how many downloads you got to make to make any money. I think three million you make ten dollars. Something like that, but they make all the money because people pay them fifteen bucks a month.
SFL Music Magazine: You wrote a book Realistic Rock Drum Method and Ultimate Realistic Rock. Are you writing any more books?
Appice: I’ve got seven books on drumming. That one was my big one, sold over four hundred thousand. Stick It! My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, that’s the autobiography. I keep selling it little by little, probably fifteen, sixteen thousand. I was told whenever you release a book if you’ve got anything over five hundred, you’re doing good. So, I guess I’m doing good. We just re-released Realistic Rock book. We just call it Classic Realistic Rock Book.
SFL Music Magazine: Is there anything else you would like readers to know about the new album?
Appice: It’s a great album and everybody that played on it did a great job! Tell your friends to go out and buy it, don’t Spotify it. That’s a good slogan, I like that! I just came up with that. Buy it, don’t Spotify it! I’ll have to use that.
