HELLO GOODBYE
It began with luxury cars and a killer band. But rumours and weirdness led to a crash. HELLO AUGUST 1976 GOODBYE SEPTEMBER 1981
Carmine Appice on his years with Rod Stewart’s Sex Police.
“MY MANAGER SAID ‘LOOK, WE DON’T WANNA BE ASSHOLES, BUT…’”
I was in Los Angeles, just coming out of playing with Mike Bloomfield, in a band called KGB, with Ric Grech. I ran into a friend of mine, drummer Sandy Gennaro. He said, “I just auditioned for Rod Stewart’s new band, I didn’t get it. You should try out.” He gives me a number and it was Pete Buckland, the Faces tour manager – [Appice band] Cactus had just done a tour with them. I knew Rod for years, we had the same attorney. I call Pete and say, “Rod’s looking for a drummer, and you don’t call me? ” So he called Rod and told me the band is at Rod’s house in LA, here’s the address. So I drove my De Tamaso Pantera there. When I pulled up to the gates of Rod’s house – an amazing 1920s, 10,000sq ft mansion with a pool and a tennis court, next door lived Gregory Peck! – I said, “Oh my God, I didn’t know Rod was that successful.” A Lamborghini, a Porsche, a Bentley, all kinds of amazing cars are in the circular drive. I found out why: the band were rehearsing in the six-car garage. The band was set up around the drums, a PA system, small basic stuff. I knew some of the guys, Phil Chen [bass] and Jim Cregan [guitar] and we had a play and it sounded great. Two days later I went back and we played with Rod, Maggie May or something, maybe a Chuck Berry song, and at the end Rod comes up and said, “If you wanna do it, we’d love to have you.” We put a little one-page agreement together, of basically what the deals were. He was a very fair guy. We rehearsed at Gower studios in Los Angeles, for six weeks straight. Rod really wanted his band to be killer. We recorded the Tonight IÕm Yours album, and I was supposed to get a co-production credit with Jim Cregan. Then all of a sudden, Rod, through his manager Billy Gaff, said they were blowing out my production credit. I was upset, because I considered him a friend. Looking back, I think they were just drinking too much and doing too much coke. I read Rod’s book, and he said he was out of his tree a lot, then. After that, you got to go back to 1980 when we were on tour. John Bonham passed away and there were rumours I was supposed to join Led Zeppelin. Rod said, “Let’s keep ’em going, I have this rumour going that I’m retiring, maybe we’ll sell more tickets.” So I kept it rolling. Now we’re finishing the album, and my manager got a call from Billy Gaff saying Rod’s going to use [drummer] Tony Brock on the tour, ’cos Rod thinks Carmine’s going to join Led Zeppelin. Now I was really pissed off. I knew how much I was going to make off the tour, and at the time people were selling stories about Rod to the papers, so my manager said, “Look, we don’t wanna be assholes, but we need some sort of settlement. If you don’t we have no other choice than to sell a story to the Daily Mail or something.” They said, “OK we’ll work something out.” It was weird. I had a solo album coming out on Rod’s label, and I was signed to Rod’s publishing company. I was on tour and he’s promoting the Tonight Iõm Yours album – which had my picture on the first 500,000, after that they put Tony Brock’s head on my body, he-he! – and we were going at it a bit in the press… but I didn’t want to turn it into a Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart thing where they really hated each other! In 1983 I did People Get Ready with Jeff Beck and Rod. We became friends again pretty quickly. He wrote the introduction for my book, and said, “I fired Carmine, God knows why.” And that really tells it, ’cos there was really no reason for it.
Carmine's Stick It! My Life Of Sex, Drums And Rock ' N ' Roll is published by Omnibus.