The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Legendary drummer shares rock ’n’ roll stories
Stars from the rock era of the 1960s always have cool stories about wild parties or concerts where upandcoming bands performed. Can you imagine being part of a hot group with a soldout gig coming up, and then inviting Led Zeppelin (which was new at the time) to open your show?
Drummer Carmine Appice says that scenario unfolded in 1968 when he was performing with Vanilla Fudge, the band known for such songs as “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” and “Take Me for a Little While.”
“We put them on the show ...” he said of Led Zeppelin. “The promoter didn’t want them because it was already sold out, but we knew they were very talented.”
Back in the day, Appice was also friends with Jimi Hendrix. Later, Appice cowrote, with Rod Stewart, the bestselling song of Stewart’s career — “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
The drummer/vocalist, educator and music historian will share such stories and more when he appears
at Torrington’s Warner Theatre in “The Carmine Appice Speaking Experience.” The show is billed as a night of “storytelling, Q&A and rock ’n’ roll, and takes place in the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre on Friday.
Although many of Appice’s stories appear in his 2016 memoir, “Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock ’n’ Roll,” this is a chance to hear them live. You can also find out more about the ways in which Appice influenced drummers such as Zeppelin’s John Bonham.
“When I met John Bonham, nobody knew who he was,” Appice said, in a phone chat. Bonham told Appice he really liked his Ludwig drum kit. “He said ‘Man, can you help me? I would love to get a kit like yours.” Appice put in a good word for his new friend, telling Ludwig it should endorse the band because, “I think they’re gonna be big,” and Bonham wound up with a duplicate set. But even when the two bands toured together, each drummer played his own kit.
The Torrington event will be moderated by radio host Leslie Gold, who is known as The Radio Chick and is also Appice’s wife. He said he and Gold have been splitting their time between homes in Fairfield and Manhattan, but the Fairfield house is up for sale now and they recently bought a place in Florida, so they can escape the cold.
Getting back to the show, Appice said, “We’re gonna have (a multimedia presentation) on the screen and basically compare my career to what was going on in the music business at the time, the parallels. We’ll talk about other bands that came out then, and Jimi Hendrix and my association with him.
“He was Jimmy James (in his early years) and we played gigs together,” Appice said. “Later, when I saw photos of him playing with his teeth, I said, ‘Wait a minute. That looks just like Jimmy James.’ Then, when I met up with him in England we were talking about some of the things we had done together and he asked me what I was doing. I said ‘I’m with Vanilla Fudge.’ He said, ‘I love The Fudge.’”
Appice grew up in Brooklyn and majored in music in high school. Another tale he’ll share is about how his brother Vinny, also a drummer, played with John Lennon
for a while, and how Lennon wound up having some of their mother’s lasagna. Of course Appice’s mother then wanted to know how Lennon like her lasagna.
“I won’t give away the punchline, but it’s a really funny story,” he said. “It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
After the stories, Appice will take questions and sing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Additional musicians will be onstage. Stewart wrote the lyrics, while Appice wrote the chords. “I thought it was a cool idea,” he said, of the tune. “At the time he was the greatest frontman and a sexy guy, so it kind of fit the image of everything.”
Appice said he looks forward to greeting fans after the show and said those who feel as he does, that Vanilla Fudge should be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, should watch for the December opening of a new website, www.vanillafudgehalloffame.com. “There will be a petition to get Vanilla Fudge into the Hall of Fame,” he said. “We have influenced so many bands and we took so many bands on tour with us, we should have been in there 20 years ago.”