For as meteoric as Vanilla Fudge’s late ’60s rise was, their fall came nearly as fast. In the span of roughly three years, the band released five groundbreaking albums and proceeded to influence everybody from Deep Purple to Uriah Heep, before calling it a day in early 1970. Without hesitation, the rhythm section of Tim Bogert (bass) and Carmine Appice (drums) went on to form the equally influential Cactus, whose heavy blues rock sound influenced too many bands and artists to name, many of whom are featured on the band’s latest album, Temple of Blues. On this all star outing, Appice is joined by a slew of friends, co-conspirators, and proteges, all united in paying homage to these heavy ’70s heroes. We sat down with Appice yet again, this time for an exclusive discussion on the fuzzy past, thrilling present, and unpredictable future of the mighty Cactus!
Greetings Carmine and welcome back to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing this afternoon?
Carmine Appice: I’m good, thank you so much! I have a question for everybody. When did the words “heavy metal” start to describe the music?
That’s a good question. Historically speaking, I believed it was first used to describe Humble Pie’s As Safe as Yesterday Is in a Rolling Stone review of said album. That said, a friend of mine brought to my attention that it was used even earlier to describe an Electric Flag album, so I’m not sure.
CA: Well, I don’t remember all that. I remember all those bands were hard rock. All through the ’80s, all the bands, Whitesnake, King Kobra, all those bands were hard rock. I think, personally, when heavy metal became heavy metal, with that razor guitar sound, was with Metallica. That sound, to me, could’ve been the proper start of the term heavy metal. All of those other bands were hard rock. King Kobra was hard rock. Ted Nugent was hard rock. Ozzy was hard rock. Blizzard of Ozz was a hard rock album. Black Sabbath was hard rock. I toured with Black Sabbath in the ’70s and they were hard rock, just like Cactus is hard rock.
How I see it is, up until a certain point in the ’80s, the terms “hard rock” and “heavy metal” are pretty interchangeable. As Lemmy said, at the end of the day, it’s all rock n’ roll.
CA: It’s all rock. I consider rock n’ roll to be Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, those are really rock n’ roll. In the ’60s with Vanilla Fudge and Cream and Jimi Hendrix and that era, then it became something else. Then, after that, it just became, “We rock! You rock!” You know? “You rock n’ roll!” We’d say, “You rock!”, like in Cactus. “You rock man! You guys rock!” People would go “Man, *gives horns* You’re rock n’ roll!” *laughs* And all that. It’s interesting where the terminology came.
It was for sure a natural evolution. I see you’ve noticed my Whitesnake shirt. Were you ever in the running to join them?
CA: Not exactly. I knew Whitesnake before they were big, when Ian Paice and Jon Lord started it back in ’78 when they left Deep Purple. They hadn’t had a hit record yet. Then, when John Sykes and Cozy Powell joined them, it became something else. Slide It In was great. John Sykes was an awesome player. For that big giant album (Whitesnake ’87), they asked me to do that album and I couldn’t do it because I had King Kobra. In those days, when you were signed to a label, you couldn’t just jump ship to another label and another band, so I was bummed out after it sold 27 million album *laughs*. That’s life.
It was just like when I had this group called KGB, in between BBA (Beck, Bogert & Appice) and Rod Stewart, I was asked to join Rainbow before Cozy. I couldn’t do that because I was signed to MCA Records with a group called KGB with Mike Bloomfield, Rick Grech, myself, and Barry Goldberg who wrote a lot of big hits. I couldn’t do that either, so I was bummed out about that. Either way, I would’ve ended up with Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart was a big career change for me. We toured with Rod Stewart with Cactus, Rod and the Faces. We did 30 shows and we had a great time.
That’s when we changed Cactus from what it was back then into more of a Rod and the Faces kind of band, which was our ‘Ot ‘n’ Sweaty album. We had Pete French, who was an English singer, Duane Hitchings on keyboards, a new guitar player (Werner Fritzschings), and it was just me and Tim (Bogert). That was more of a hard rock band. The original Cactus was more of a blues rock band like it is today on the album that we’re releasing on Friday. It was more of a blues rock outfit and we’re marketing it as a blues album because that’s what it is. That’s what Foghat’s doing today. All the blues rock bands from that era are being marketed as blues rock bands. Joe Bonamassa is a blues rock guy.
One of the best.
CA: One of the best. He’s on our album. I’ve known him a long time, since he was young, when he was a prodigy. He was always great. We almost put a band together, him, me and Tim Bogert, called Bonamassa, Bogert & Appice. We didn’t do it because his manager said he had bigger plans for him, which he did. We have a video we did at the NAMM show. We did “Superstition” with Joe and Tim. It’s on YouTube. A lot of people don’t know about it because nobody promoted it, but it’s done 250,000 views over a period of time.
When I went on to Joe’s podcast, he started telling me that Cactus’ “Parchman Farm” blew his brains out. He said it was amazing. I said, “Look, we’re doing this new record.” I explained it was a tribute and everybody was gonna play on it. I’d love for him to play “Parchman Farm”. He said, “I’m in.” So that’s how he got on there. It took me a year to do this record.
Indeed, we’re mere days away from the release of the new Cactus album, Temple of Blues, which is an absolutely star studded tribute to the band if there ever was one. When did the idea for this album first come about?
CA: Well, believe it or not, it was the record company owner, Brian Perera, owner of Cleopatra Records. He came up to me and he said, “I think we should do an album.” We had Tightrope and a couple other albums on Cleopatra that did well. He said, “I think we should do a tribute to Cactus. We should get all these different people who were influenced by Cactus. Do you think you can do that?” I said, “I think I can do that!” Years ago, I did this Guitar Zeus record with all these great guitar players on it, so I said, “Yeah!” I said, “I’m gonna need a budget!”, so we got a budget.
I started off in my studio here. This right behind me is my drums in the studio, with all the gold records which people don’t get anymore. I was lucky I had that. Those are worth more now because you can’t get them anymore *laughs*. So I said, “What am I gonna do? How am I gonna do this? Maybe I should start in the studio with my drums.” Well, I did. First song I did was “Parchman Farm”. That song in 1970 was the fastest double bass drum shuffle. I took the tempo from the original album. It was pretty fast, 247 BPM. If you’re a musician, you know how fast that is. It’s pretty damn fast.
So I said, “Well, how am I gonna do it? I’ll put a click on it at that tempo and in my head I’m gonna sing the song. I’m gonna sing the intro and go into the song. *sings* “I’m sitting over here on Parchman farm.” *hums guitar and drum parts*” I did the whole song like that. Then, I did this other song called “One Way or Another”. It’s the second song. We just did that. Ted Nugent’s on that song with dUg Pinnick singing it and playing bass. So I said, “I’m gonna do the same thing.” After I did those two songs, I said, “I can’t do 12 more songs like this.”
I wanted to be able to freeform and play to the song. What am I gonna do? So I put the clicks on, let’s say “Evil”. Dee Snider just sang “Evil” in the video. *hums riff and drum fills to “Evil”* I did the whole song like that. One of my interviews said, “You should release that as a scat album!” *laughs* That would be funny! But I did the whole album like that and it was really unique to play to myself singing. Then, I sent it to our singer, Jim (Stapley). He sings and plays guitar and harmonica and has a studio. He put guitar, vocal, and harmonica on the track. Then, I got my bass player to put bass on it. Now I had a demo. So whoever I wanted, I’d say, “Ted, what song do you want to do?” He said, “One Way or Another”. I said, “I’ll send you the demo so you can get the feel. Then, I’ll send you the stems.” You know what stems are?
Yeah, all the different instrument tracks.
CA: Exactly. They’re not the full tracks. With the drums, there’s 14 tracks and we mixed it to 2 tracks. So we did that and Ted would play to that song, send it back, and I think I had dUg Pinnick on there first before that. dUg Pinnick sang, so then Ted just had to play. Everything on the track was him. We did that with a lot of the stuff. I think there were a couple of unique things. In the beginning of a song called “Let Me Swim”, the intro went *hums guitar riff*. You know “Eruption” from Van Halen?
Of course.
CA: “Eruption” was that intro because they were big Cactus fans. It was a song called “Let Me Swim” extended. They hit the chord, then Eddie (Van Halen) hit all these things, then they went *hums “Eruption” riffs* and stopped. That was the song. It wasn’t really a song. So on this album, I said, “I’m gonna extend it a little bit. This way, people can actually see where it came from.” So I extended it and said, “I need a great Eddie Van Halen kind of guitar player to do this. Who do I got? Who do I know?” I called Doug Aldrich of Whitesnake.
I explained that to him. I said “”Eruption” really came from here, so I want you to just play whatever you want. Harmonics, whatever you want. Do the chord structure and then down to the chords.” He said, “Cool!” So when I heard it back, it was phenomenal. He’s such a great player. I’ve known him since the ’90s. Then, I said, “I need a great bass player.” So, Marco Mendoza, also from Whitesnake and Ted Nugent. I knew Marco from L.A. We used to have a jazz trio. I saw him all the time. These were my friends.
Some of the friends, like Doug and Marco, I didn’t realize were influenced by Cactus. I thought they were just friends. That’s why we call it Temple of Blues – Influences & Friends. Another one like that was Steve Stevens. I didn’t know he was a Cactus fan. He’s a great player. He’s my friend. He said, “Oh man, I’m from Brooklyn. I loved Cactus growing up!” I said, “Wow!” There’s a lot of that happening and I thought it was very unique that it was happening. That’s how it all came together. I made calls, “What song do you wanna play?”
Billy Sheehan, a big Cactus fan and a big Tim Bogert fan. Tim was his mentor. He told me after Tim died, “Anything you wanna do to celebrate Tim or Cactus, I’m there.” So he did “Parchman Farm” with us. Jim McCarty, the original guitar player, played on “Parchman Farm” and Bonamassa did the solos. Our singer sang it and played harmonica. I said, “You wanna play another song? Play “Oleo” which had Tim’s bass solo in it. You can emulate Tim’s bass solo.” He goes, “No problem.” He did that and when I heard the solo, it put a tear to my eye because it was just like Tim.
If there was a guy to do it, Billy would be the guy! I know there’s been some personnel changes for Cactus since we last spoke. Can you tells us bout those and what the fans should expect from this new lineup in the future?
CA: Well, we had a lineup for the record of all of the band. Artie Dillon played guitar on “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover”. He’s a great player. I played with him in my Slamm show. I played with him with my brother Vinny. I knew he was a great player and he’s a Cactus fan. He knew all the songs. As we were doing this record, our last guitar player, Paul Warren, got really ill. We toured with Paul a couple years ago with our new singer. I said, “I need somebody I can depend on. I know I can depend on Artie.” So Artie’s in the band.
It’s the same bass player (Jim Caputo), except on this little tour we’re doing. Next week, we’re doing a little three day run. He, the bass player, Jim Caputo, is out with Blondie as a tech. He couldn’t play, so I called Tony Franklin. Tony Franklin’s gonna play with us and he played with us when we went to South America and the same thing happened. Tony played with us before, so I called him and he was available, so we got Artie and Tony. Now the singer that’s on the album, he’s gotten really busy. He’s making a career. Cactus isn’t a kind of band that plays all the time or you can depend your living on it. He started doing other things, so he wasn’t available.
I got another friend of mine who played in a Led Zeppelin tribute, the greatest one I’ve ever seen. Great singer, great harmonica player, looks great, so he said, “I would love to do those Cactus shows.” So now it’s gonna end up, he’s gonna be in Cactus from now on because the other singer is too busy. Whoever’s in it, I always make sure it’s gonna be great. Look at all the bands today. Foghat, who we’re playing with, Roger (Earl) is the only original member. Once you put together a good band and you’re playing the songs to the best of your ability and recreating the songs the way they used to be, people love it.
The first single off this album, “Evil”, features one of the best Dee Snider vocals I’ve ever heard. I know he covered the song with his band Widowmaker back in the day. Did he jump at the opportunity to sing it again with you?
CA: Yes, when I called him, I knew he did it with Widowmaker because the drummer in that band was one of my students, Joe Franco. He was talking to me and he always told me how much of a fan of Cactus that Dee was. So I called him and said, “We’re doing “Evil” with me, McCarty, and dUg Pinnick.” That’s what kicked him in the ass. He had to be great because the track was smoking. My drums were kicking him right in the ass and dUg Pinnick’s bass was fantastic. I love dUg. So when I called him and said, “We’re gonna do this. I’d love for you to sing “Evil”.” He said, “I’m in!” He didn’t even think about it. That’s how long it took.
When I sent him the track…funny story here. Jim McCarty, our original guitar player, I said, “We got Dee Snider. He played with Twisted Sister.” He said, “Ohhh, that guy?!” He was thinking about the makeup and all of that. I go, “Yeah! This guy’s really good man! He’ll sing this song like Rusty (Day), our original singer, trust me man.” Dee sounds very similar to our original singer, but better! When I played it for him (Jim), he says, “Who’s that signer?” I said, “I told you who’s that singer!” “Is that the guy from Twisted Sister?” “Yeah!” He goes, “Wow! He sounds great!” “Didn’t I tell you?” I knew he would sing great.
Twisted Sister’s a different animal. He (Dee) loved Cactus. He’s from Long Island and he can play blues. He can sing R&B. Twisted Sister was a different animal. It was like me playing with King Kobra. It’s a different animal than Cactus or Vanilla Fudge even. He did a great job. Then I said, “Look, we’re gonna do a video.” He says, “I’m in!” I didn’t even get it out and he says, “I’m in!” So I said, “Unbelievable. Thank you so much! I owe you. You want me to play on something of yours? I’m there.” So we did the video and the video came out fantastic.
Actually, I was a little disappointed in my performance. I do it here in my studio. I don’t know what was going on in my head, but I was a little laidback. It’s so weird. When I’m doing videos, it’s very hard for me to do because a lot of the bands today, they play exactly on the video exactly what they played on the album. Everything note for note is the same. I never played like that. Before videos were happening, I always played what I felt, like all those videos I did with Rod Stewart back in the day. It wasn’t too bad because they were always on Rod. I knew fills at certain parts I would actually do and they would pick that up.
Then, from when I did the Rick Derringer and Appice album in 1983, I started having to learn what I played up until now. “Evil”, there’s all these drum fills in it. I had to write them down and it’s just difficult having to look over and decide which fill is which. It really affects my playing. I just did the new video for “One Way or Another” with Nugent and dUg Pinnick. Nugent’s a crazy fucker, man. He’s just *makes crazy faces and airs guitar*. I swore I was gonna make some faces and everything, but then I had some problems with the computer. I thought it was the computer.
I sit here, my computer’s there, and my green screen is around it, so if I needed to fix something, I have to lift up the green screen and all that. So I put a screen over here where it’d be easier to operate. I was operating and things were good for the first take. Then, everything froze. I said, “Oh man!” We kept doing it and it kept freezing, so it kept taking my attention way. Ends up I needed a new battery in the wireless mouse. Anyway, I did a much better job I thought in this one. The video is really cool. At the end, I did some playing the grooves and slipping the stick, stuff I was known for. He caught a lot of the good fills and it looks good.
The only problem is the label had this guy do it and he said, “I have a concept for it.” He told me the concept on paper. I said, “Dude, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Let’s leave it out.” So we did two versions. I said, “Maybe we should make it a performance lyric video.” So he did a performance lyric video which looks really good except the printing was too stock. I said, “Make it a little more exciting.” Then, he did his concept video which I liked too because it had these four really good looking chicks in it.
It was like the old days. You just had videos and you got chicks in it. He did his storyline. I don’t understand it, but I thought it was cool because it had good looking chicks in it. They’re drinking and smoking and snorting and putting on makeup, smearing the lipstick *laughs*. You see some cleavage. I said, “Alright! I like it!” Cactus’ audience are a lot of guys, so I figured the guys would like the chicks too. We’re gonna release the lyric video too.
We’re half way done with “Parchman Farm”. I don’t know if we’re gonna get Bonamassa to do the solo, but we might have photographs of him and maybe some other video he’s done and we’ll slow it down and just show him. He’ll be in there. Either way, whether it’s with the photos or whatever, he’s on the tape and it smokes. We’ll have everybody else. Billy Sheehan is back on Friday. He’s gonna do his video coming back on the 10th from my little tour, and my new singer’s gonna do the vocals on that video, so we’re gonna introduce him to the people. He wasn’t in either one of the videos yet.
Ted Nugent lays down some heavy guitar licks on “One Way or Another”. I know you have quite the history with him, sharing bills together as far back as The Amboy Dukes days and playing for him in the ’80s. When did you first meet Ted and what are your favorite memories of him?
CA: Well, I met Ted in ’67 when we did gigs with Vanilla Fudge and The Amboy Dukes. I have a couple crazy stories. When I played with him, we went to his house on the 4th of July and he had a hill that he used to take his guns and he’d hand them out. “Here, have this gun! Shoot it at the hill!”, on the 4th of July. Bam, bam, bam! *laughs* It was crazy. He had a big giant safe filled with guns. I think he even had a bazooka in there. He’s wild.
The other one was the first time I was there hanging out with him. When I was playing with Rod, we did the American Music Awards TV show and Ted did it too. He said to me, “When you’re done playing this wimpy rock and wanna play a man’s rock, give me a call.” So when I left Rod, I gave him a call. Next thing I know, we’re playing together. So I went to his house and he’s a hunter and all that. He had a beautiful girlfriend at the time, Pele (Massa).
I said, “What are we gonna do tomorrow?” He said, “I’m gonna get up tomorrow and I’m gonna go hunting.” I said, “Maybe I’ll go with you!” I don’t hunt. There were people at my house here trying to hunt iguanas. I kicked them off my land. He said, “Let me tell you what I’m gonna do. See if you still wanna go.” “OK.” “I’m gonna get up at 4 in the morning, put on my khaki outfit, and I’ll leave by 5. I’m gonna go into the woods. I’m gonna find a hole filled with leaves. I’m gonna get in the hole, put leaves on top of myself, wait there with my gun and bow and arrow until something comes by and I’ll shoot. Wanna do that?” I said, “Hmm…you know what? I think I’ll stay home and have breakfast with Pele.” *laughs* We were friends for so long. I just did his podcast. It was so much fun. He’s gonna do some interviews for this album for me.
Speaking of great guitarists, I know Jim McCarty appears on this album and continues to contribute to the band in a writing and recording capacity. How has he been doing lately and how would you describe your creative bond after all these years?
CA: Me and Jim are close buds. We’re like brothers. He hasn’t been on an album…on Tightrope, we had a song that he started but we finished, so he was involved in the writing on that. He’s involved in the writing on this album because they’re the old songs. Me, Jim, Tim, and Rusty wrote those songs, except for the covers, so he’s involved in that. He didn’t want to tour anymore. He can’t do it. He’s a guy that likes to go to bed at 5, 6 in the morning after a gig and wake up at 3 in the afternoon. When you’re on the road, you can’t do that.
We’ve got pictures of him on the road where he got up to leave at 10 and he’s sleeping in the van with his mouth open. We’d take pictures of him *laughs*. We both agreed that he can’t do the road no more. He stays in Detroit and he plays local gigs, comes home at 2 in the morning, stays up until 5, goes to bed, does this for the weekend. Next weekend, same thing. That’s his life. He still has an apartment that he’s lived in for many, many years. He’s really glued to that lifestyle. Me? I like to play in front of audiences. I like to keep this legend, the legacy of Cactus, going.
I did a King Kobra album last year and the two guitar players (Mick Sweda, David Michael Philips) didn’t want to do it. They said, “Nobody hears it. Nobody buys it. Why bother doing it?” I said, “To keep the legacy going! We started something. Let’s keep it going.” They didn’t want to do it, so I did it with Carlos Cavazo and Rowan Robertson from Dio. It was a great album, but they’re right. Nobody hears it. The difference between that album and this one is this one was the record company owner’s idea. We got all these guys on it and they want to make sure it’s successful.
The fact that we’re marketing it to blues, it’s easier. He told me if we sell 1,000 units in the first couple of weeks, we’ll be on the Billboard regular charts and we’ll be high up on the blues charts. I just bought 100 CDs and 30 albums to take on the road. With that, it’s gonna add to getting on the charts. We’re doing whatever we can to get on the charts because it’s so star studded. Everybody loves these people and they’re really pushing it. We’ve got three videos so far. I always used to do one. With King Kobra, we did one. With my instrumental album, we did two because I paid for the second one. The Appice Perdomo album, that was a great record instrumentally. It was real heavy. We had Billy Sheehan on it, Derek Sherinian, Bumblefoot, but it wasn’t promoted as much.
If all the names and associates featured on this album, was Rod Stewart or John Sykes ever approached or considered for Temple of Blues?
CA: No, Rod doesn’t sing like this anymore. John Sykes, I believe, is out of the business. That’s why you haven’t heard nothing from him. I was told, I don’t know who told it to me, that he doesn’t like the way the business is. I don’t blame him. The business sucks now. That’s why in all these interviews I tell the fans if you want to get the record, don’t Spotify it. Buy the record from iTunes or a store because us musicians, we don’t make anything on it. On Spotify, we make .003 cents, which means to make 10 cents, you gotta download it 3,000 times.
I’ve been pushing that and it really helps the bands stay in business. Financially, I’m fine. You can do all the Spotify you want. If I don’t make money on this, I’m OK. I already made money from producing it. Not a lot. I probably made 5 cents an hour, but at least it’s something. It’s better than Spotify *laughs*. It’s better if people buy the record. When you get a CD, you get all the…it’s called Temple of Blues. It wasn’t called that originally. It was called Influences & Friends. When I told the owner, Brian, we should market it as a blues album, he said, “Let’s call it Temple of Blues.” I said, “Wow! Good idea!” Influences & Friends also, so we did the whole thing.
When we did the original cover, I told the guy, “I want it to be like Sgt. Pepper’s with all these people on the front of the album.” He thought I really meant Sgt. Pepper‘s, so he had everybody in Sgt. Pepper outfits. I said, “No, no, no! Take those outfits off! I just want the people there.” So when we called it Temple of Blues, I said, “Now, we can make all those people, but put them in a temple environment all through the album artwork.” So we did that. Now in the video with Ted Nugent, it’s in the temple environment too. It’s really developing into something that I never thought it was gonna develop into when I started it. I thought we were gonna do the album and that was it. “Oh, let’s do the cover like that.” Then, Temple of Blues, “Let’s do the artwork!” “You’re a fan of Cactus? I didn’t know that!” It was a good trip along the way.
I cant emphasize your sentiments on physical media enough. I know that I’ll be picking up my copy this week to join these bad boys right here *shows original Cactus vinyl*.
CA: Yeah man! You see the cover of the first album?
Yep!
CA: Look at it. Now we had, the original cover, it looked exactly like a penis and two balls. Exactly! It had the curvature and everything, but Atlantic Records wouldn’t let us release it because it was too phallic. At that time, you’d have Macy’s and JC Penney, they used to sell records. I don’t know if you remember. You’re young. But they used to put it on the shelf and they wouldn’t put it on the shelf if it looked like that, so we added the picture that’s on there now, the cactus with three or four cactus balls around it. It still looks a little phallic, but not like the other one. The other one was exactly like a penis!
That album was really amazing. Two days ago, a friend of mine said, “Look what I found!” It was from Yahoo!, a huge website. They did music news and it said, “Everybody has to have this album in their collection.” And it was the first Cactus album. I was blown away. I said, “Wow!” Now we’ll see if maybe Atlantic Records royalties go up. Those are the ones that you see royalties on: Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, BBA. We just released a BBA boxset. It was killer. The energy on that, in those days, nobody played like us. Jeff (Beck) died just before we finished the artwork, but I’ve had a blessed career.
What year are we in, 2024? In three years, it’s gonna be 60 years. Oh my God! *laughs* I remember what my father used to say when he was my age. He’d say, “I don’t know man. My brain feels like I’m 17, but my body…” I get it now. My brain is still pumping away on different ideas. I wanna do this. I wanna do that. But my body’s saying, “You’re too old to do this!” *laughs*
I want to go back in time to the beginning of Cactus. At what point during Vanilla Fudge’s demise did you and Tim Bogert conceive the idea for the band and were there any musical ideas for Cactus that were initially considered for Vanilla Fudge?
CA: When we heard Jeff Beck’s first two albums, Truth and Beck-Ola…when we came out, there was a lot of organ based music. By the end of ’69, there was a lot of guitar music. Blind Faith came out with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. There was Mountain, Crosby, Stills and Nash, a lot of supergroups. All that stuff was coming out. When we played a gig in Long Island, there was a gospel group called the Edwin Hawkins Singers. They sang “Oh Happy Day”. Then, there was Ten Years After, Jeff Beck Group, and Vanilla Fudge topped the bill.
When the Jeff Beck Group was on, Led Zeppelin went up and jammed with them. We had to follow that! It was like, Beck Group and Zeppelin, two hot new bands, and we were the headliner. It was difficult to follow that. We had done a commercial for Coca-Cola and Jeff Beck played with us because our guitar player (Vince Martell) was sick. We had the same attorney and we needed somebody. It was good paying money. So our lawyer said, “Jeff Beck’s in town. Let’s send him over.” He wasn’t big yet. He was just coming out. He played with us and played wah wah and was really great. It was either BBA with Mark Stein or Vanilla Fudge with Jeff Beck *laughs*. It was awesome!
Me and Tim were listening to him play and we were saying, “Wow! We’d love to play with him.” After that big show I was talking about, John Bonham came over to me and said, “Jeff Beck wants to play with you and Timmy.” He gave me Beck’s number. That started it. We started talking. We went to England with Vanilla Fudge shortly after that. Me and Tim hung out with Jeff and jammed with him at this place called the Speakeasy. Little by little, all three of us started thinking about playing together more. We said, “Maybe we can bring Rod in too and have a killer band.” That was the idea.
Me and Timmy are still on the road in ’69 with Vanilla Fudge and we saw in Arizona, this big drive-in theater, with giant letters on top, it said, “Cactus Drive-In”. I said to Tim, “There’s the name of the band. That’s a strong name.” A cactus lives in the desert. It’s strong and got thorns. Don’t go near it. So we decided that’s what we were gonna call it. Jeff liked the name. Well, Rod didn’t wanna work with Jeff. And then, just before Jeff was coming over, he got in a car wreck. For 18 months, he couldn’t do anything. Me and Tim were looking at each other, “What are we gonna do for 18 months?” I said, “We’ll have to do it without him.”
Like I said, he wasn’t big yet. He was as big as us. That’s why when we came out, it was Beck, Bogert & Appice. It didn’t come out as “The Jeff Beck Group”. We said, “We gotta do something. Who else do we like?” We always liked Jim McCarty with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. He was like an American Jeff Beck. Once we got him, he recommended Rusty Day from The Amboy Dukes. Ted repeated that on his podcast the other night. Now we had the band. We already had a record deal because we were on Atlantic where Vanilla Fudge was. Now, it was just a matter of rehearsing and coming up with songs.
It was easy! The three of us jammed everything. It was great. I didn’t know “Parchman Farm” and “Can’t Judge a Book” were blues songs by old blues players because I didn’t follow blues. If you take the song “Parchman Farm”, it wasn’t about the lyrics of the song and the melody. It was about the aggressiveness of that song and the speed of that song that nobody had played like that. We wanted to be faster than Ten Years After’s “I’m Going Home”. That was the idea of that song.
When it came out and it said “writing by Mose Allison”, I said, “Who’s Mose Allison?!” I didn’t even know who he was! That could’ve been anything. Rusty was a master of lyrics. On Restrictions, we had a song called “Token Chokin”. It was, “Token chokin’, heavy on the jokin’, your best friend’s don’t care. Run up, throw up, hope your brains don’t blow up, notice that you’re losin’ hair.” *laughs* Funny, but real lyrics. “One Way or Another”, all those songs, we just played and we played and we jammed. When we were in the studio, we just played. We didn’t do any overdubs. We just played.
The energy that was captured was unbelievable. Most people love that first album. King’s X, they loved all the albums. Van Halen loved all the albums. I told Eddie one time, “We’re putting Vanilla Fudge back together.” He said, “Fuck that! Put Cactus together!” Even “Hot for Teacher”, the template for that was “Parchman Farm”. It had the same tempo and same kind of double bass drums. It was “Parchman Farm” and a song that Billy Cobham did, but Billy Cobham was lighter. Cactus was heavier, about the same tempo, but the drum sound was kickass.
Prior to Rusty’s passing, was there ever an attempt to get the original lineup of Cactus back together?
CA: Not really. By then, I was with Rod Stewart. I was creating #1 records *laughs*. “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Young Turks” I co-wrote. He did “You Keep Me Hanging On” because of me. “Hot Legs” sounded like I wrote it. The drums were so up front on that. I loved playing with Rod. I learned so much about songwriting, image. I used to do drum clinics then. He said, “Make an event out of it.” And I did! I made events out of it and it was great. We did some cool songs on that first album (Foot Loose & Fancy Free). There was a song on it called “You’re Insane”. What a great groove!
That’s one of my favorites.
CA: I love that song. When I did my Guitar Zeus record, I did a song called “Stash”. If you go on YouTube, look up Carmine Appice’s “Stash”. If you like “You’re Insane”, you’ll love this one. Tony Franklin’s on it. The bass and drums are just killing, and the vocals. We got Stevie Salas who used to play with Rod playing the solo and it’s got all these crazy time signatures in there. It’s real progressive and really cool. That whole record, I loved it. One guy who mixed it said, “With all the time signatures, I need a calculator for this album.”
That was before Dream Theater and Tool and all that stuff they do today. It’s really off the wall. I can’t believe that they actually have an audience for this stuff because it’s so complicated. It’s mostly a guy audience. I saw Mike Portnoy the other day. He learned the Tool song “Pneuma”. That was an amazing thing to play. It was like bar 5, bar 5, bar 9, bar 3. It’s crazy. I texted him and said, “Man, that was awesome that you did that.” He said, “Thanks man!” I’ve been friends with him since 1992, before he was in Dream Theater. We both played Mapex drums. We did clinics together. I told him, “Since I’ve met you, you’ve improved so much.” He’s grown into such an amazing drummer since 1992. He’s incredbile.
He’s kind of like me, playing with this guy and that guy, but that’s what drummer’s gotta do. Buddy Rich told me on his dying bed, “The singers play Madison Square Garden. The drummers play a 500 seater. We get screwed.” I said, “Wow, I never thought of it like that.” I live it now *laughs*. It’s cool. You know what? I’m not envious. I’m happy. I had a great life. I have a great life now. My autobiography did well. All my albums in the past did well. I played with so many great people. I got respect from so many great people. I’m happy.
All those drum books, I did the drum clinics. I was the first rock musician to do a clinic. Ludwig Drums forced me to do it. After I wrote the drum book, they said, “You gotta do the clinics to make the drum book sell!” I said, “Oh really? That’s how it works?” They said, “Yeah.” So they started booking clinics. The first one was at Sam Ash in 1971. Up until that point, no rock drummer had ever done a clinic. No rock guitarist or bass guitarist had ever done a clinic. Somebody told me, “You’re the first rock musician to do it.” I said, “Oh, I didn’t realize that.” I knew I was the first drummer, but I didn’t realize I was the first rock musician to do it.
Who was doing clinics back then? Jimi Hendrix? No. Ritchie Blackmore? No. Eric Clapton? No. Jeff Beck? No. The Doors guy (Robby Krieger), he wasn’t doing clinics. I said, “Wow, that’s interesting.” I’ve been using that in interviews *laughs* because it’s interesting! I got a whole other career when my drum book came out, a whole education career that was a whole other part of my career that I never planned for. I’m happy that everything I did did well and I’m happy that I did it when I did because making it now is difficult.
It’s funny you mention that about moving around from artist to artist. I just picked up that new Black Sabbath boxset, Anno Domini 1989-1995, covering the Tony Martin years. In the liner notes, they have quotes from Tony Martin, Tony Iommi, and of course, Cozy Powell. At one point, Cozy actually mentioned you. He was asked about being in Sabbath at this point in his career and he said something to the effect of, “When you’re like me or Carmine Appice or Aynsley Dunbar and you’ve been around for as long as we have, you don’t stay in any one place for too long.” And that was back in the late ’80s.
CA: You know, when Zeppelin opened up for Vanilla Fudge, people don’t even get the fact that they were unknown. Jimmy Page was known, but Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones were unknown. I got to be good friends with Bonzo. I got him a drum set like mine. We were friends. Like I said, he gave me the number of Jeff Beck. We were all friends. When he came back off that tour, they weren’t big yet. They were just opening up for us. Their album wasn’t even out yet.
There’s a book called Thunder of Drums. It’s about Bonzo and his life. He came back off that tour and he was friends with Cozy. He said, “What was it like seeing Carmine?” Bonzo said, “Wow man! He kicked my ass! He got me an endorsement with Ludwig!” They were both like little kids. I read the book and said, “Wow, I can’t believe this!” There was a time where I couldn’t talk about this. When Zeppelin were huge, I’d say, “I influenced John Bonham.” They’d go, “No way dude!” Tommy Lee said that. I had to show him some videos of Vanilla Fudge before Zeppelin was around and prove to him who was around first.
That book came out and it set everything straight. Since then, in England and in Modern Drummer, they’d say, “Here’s Camrine Appice, the man who influenced John Bonham.”, like a headline in a guitar magazine. Modern Drummer said, “The man who created heavy metal drumming before John Bonham, before Ian Paice, before anybody.” I didn’t say that. The magazines were saying it. I just learned it now. Different magazines like that, Rhythm in Europe and Drum in Europe, Modern Drummer over here…I got in the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. It’s good. I had a good career. I’m not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I don’t think it should be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It should be the Music Hall of Fame because they’re taking in rap and country. I’m in the Long Island Music Hall of Fame with Vanilla Fudge, but I’m happy.
I got a letter up there from Fred Astaire. I gave him a drum book because he wanted to learn how to play rock drums when I was with Rod Stewart. They came to the gig with me, him and Gregory Peck. I met Gregory Peck at a party. He came up to me and said, “Fred Astaire said to me that’s the best drum solo he’s seen since Gene Krupa.” I said, “What?! Fred Astaire said that about me?!” I’m thinking to myself, “Gregory Peck is telling me this.” Then he started telling me how he (Fred) wanted to learn rock drums, but he didn’t know where to start. I said, “Hey, I got a book.” He said, “Oh man, give me the book.” I wrote something nice in the book. “Dear Fred, I hope this book helps you, blah blah blah…”
Gregory Peck lived next door to Rod Stewart at the time, so he said, “The next time you’re at Rod’s, knock on my door.” Yeah, his “door”. They were big giant gates. Some door! He comes to open the gate. I go to his house and give him the book. Two weeks later, there’s an envelope at Rod’s house for me. I open it up, rip up the envelope, threw it away, and I read the letter. It says, “Dear Carmine Appice, Thank you for the book with the lovely message inside. I’ve enjoyed your work many times. Lots of love, Fred Astaire” I read that and I said, “What?!”
He had beautiful handwriting. It’s up there on my wall. I framed it. It’s been in this frame for 40 years. It’s one of my prized possessions. I didn’t realize that until now People would ask in these interviews, “What’s your prized possession?” I didn’t even think about that. That’s it. There it is. I put that in my autobiography. I said, “I was so blown away and proud. Here’s a kid from Brooklyn that made it to the point where he’s hanging out with Hollywood royalty.” Some people say, “Who went through your book that’s famous?” How about Andrew Dice Clay? He did go through the book. He’s a drummer. He ended up being a friend of mine. I gave his kids lessons and I gave him some lessons. I’ve had a crazy career. It goes all over the place. Thank God!
If your autobiography Stick It! were to be turned into a biopic, who would you want portraying you and why?
CA: Some people have asked me that. Dave Grohl, he’s a good drummer. I met him a few times and he told me the stuff I did with BBA left a very memorable impact on him. Neil Peart told me that one time, the same kind of thing. It’s great. It’s a great feeling to know that these people, you influenced them somehow. My old friend Joe Morello, the great jazz drummer, he played on Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”. He was the first one to play in a time signature with a solo that was a hit single. He told me, “Nobody has it all. We all steal from each other. Remember that.”
He was right. I stole from him, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Max Roach. My brother (Vinny) stole from me, Bonzo. It was the same thing. It goes down a line. Guys that listen to Tommy Lee stole from Tommy Lee who directly stole from me who stole from Gene Krupa *laughs*. Gene Krupa was the first guy to bring drums out front and make them entertaining. That’s what Tommy Lee did. That’s what I tried to do all my career, bring the drums out front, bring the attention to the drums. I think I achieved that to a point. One thing I didn’t achieve that I always wanted was a hit drum single. Cozy beat me to that in England. I was always pissed off at him for doing that *laughs*.
I never achieved that, but I’ve had solo albums, been in movies, wrote stuff for movies. I did a movie called Black Roses. I produced for Roger Daltrey and Denny Laine. I’ve done so many things, some things I forget about! That movie, I forget about it. Vincent Pastore, Big Pussy from The Sopranos, that was his first movie. I was in it too. It was a terrible heavy metal move in the ’80s, terrible! It wasn’t a B movie. It was like a C or a D. But I was happy I did it. it was a new experience. I was an actor in there for a minute. I played drums in it. I turned into a monster which helped my daughter. She had a picture of me being a monster. My daughter loved it so much that she went into special effects makeup. She still does it today.
It’s just weird turns of events. I was on the Jeff Beck album, Blow by Blow. When he couldn’t get a deal together, I helped him write songs. I was on five songs. I have them on my computer, but we couldn’t get a deal together. When it came out and sold a lot and he was out touring, I was kind of mad that I wasn’t out there touring and I wasn’t on the album. In the long run, if I was out touring with Jeff Beck, I would’ve never been with Rod Stewart. We had a small percentage of the Rod band on the road. I made more money with that than I did with the BBA thing. If I was with Jeff, I wouldn’t have been with Rod. I wouldn’t have wrote “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, “Young Turks”. I wouldn’t have been on “Hot Legs”. I wouldn’t have played in front of hundreds of thousands of people all the time. It worked out.
At the time, I didn’t know. I didn’t know why that happened, but then in the long run, I see God put me here in a certain place to be there in a certain place. God has strange ways of doing things. I even wrote some Christian songs a couple years ago. There’s a church down here in Florida that are gonna do one of them. I said, “Wow!” They wanted me to play drums there and I couldn’t do it because I’m gonna be doing my Rod show in July.
It’s called Tonight’s the Night with this guy that looks, sounds, and moves like Rod. It’s a great band. I jammed with them one time and the audience response was amazing, so he said, “Why don’t we be partners in this?” I said, “Great!” We have the female sax player who was with Rod. She was with him for 14 years and I was with him for 7, so when I come onstage after an intermission, I say, “She was with Rod for 14 years. I was with him for 7. There’s 21 years of Rod Stewart on this stage tonight.”
It’s fun because I was heavily involved with those albums. “Hot Legs”, “Sexy”, “Passion”, “You’re in My Heart”, “You Keep Me Hanging On” that we did with Rod, he does those songs and I said, “I don’t get to play these songs anymore.” I jammed with this guy and he said, “Let’s be partners.” So I said, “Let’s go.” If you go to my website, you’ll see all my shows. I got a lot of shows with that and they get a lot of people. I’m having a good time with that. I’m playing with Cactus, Vanilla Fudge, the Rod dates. Who else did I miss? Ozzy? I used to play his music with my brother. We did a Drum Wars Tour, the Appice brothers. I used to do Blue Murder and Ozzy in that show. We did Vanilla Fudge and we did “Evil” by Cactus, so I really got to play my career for the last few years, which is great.
In closing, of the albums released during Cactus’ original run, which are you most proud of and why?
CA: Well it has to be the first one. We were green. We just came out of Vanilla Fudge for two years and got everybody in there. We were full of energy. Cleopatra released the very first show of Cactus with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I couldn’t believe how fast all these songs were. The energy was off the hook. It was ridiculous, but it was pure energy. We did a lot of cool gigs with a lot of cool people. In those days, you did an album and you toured. Everybody was friends. It wasn’t even a business yet, not like today. Today, it’s a business. BBA took Foghat on tour and now we’re opening for Foghat with Cactus. It’s all full circle.
The new Cactus album, Temple of Blues – Influences & Friends, is available now on Cleopatra Records. For more information on Cactus, visit www.cactusrocks.net. For more information on Carmine Appice, visit www.carmineappice.net.
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