Detritus
Mini-Issue #398.5 - February 16, 2007
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*** CAST OF CHARACTERS ***
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Patrick Brower, Editor
patrickbrower@...

Sean P. Gahgan, Editor
lof@...
http://www.lakeoffire.net/

Tim Wadzinski, Owner
tsw512@...

Steve Shumake, Co-owner
vongoober@...
http://www.vongoober.com/

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*** LET IT BE KNOWN ***
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-Happy Friday! Let's celebrate another upcoming weekend with a cool
Vinny Appice interview, shall we?. - Tim

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*** SPECIAL REPORT ***
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by Neal Woodall (MysticX9@...)

-Interview w/ Vinny Appice
February 3, 2007

At this point you are probably well aware of the upcoming Heaven &
Hell tour, an event reuniting the MOB RULES-era Black Sabbath
consisting of Tony Iommi, Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Vinny
Appice. What you may not know is that Vinny also has his own brand new
band called 3 Legged Dogg featuring some real heavy hitters in hard
rock and metal: Jimmy Bain, Carlos Cavazo, Chas West and Brian Young.
In addition to discussing 3 Legged Dogg and their debut album FROZEN
SUMMER, I was eager to speak with Vinny about the incredible Heaven &
Hell tour and his many side projects and collaborations; thinking
about the classic albums Vinny has played on is enough to get any
metalhead excited, as they really are the stuff of legend: MOB RULES,
HOLY DIVER and LAST IN LINE to name just three of my absolute, all-
time favorites. So read on, and discover just what a treat you are in
for this year!

DETRITUS: Between Heaven & Hell, 3 Legged Dogg, the Hollywood
All-Stars, George Lynch and playing on projects like Powerzone and
Lana Lane, you've got to be busy as hell!

VINNY APPICE: Yeah, sometimes I need two of me! (laughs)

D: Are you pulling your hair out trying to coordinate it all?

VA: Well, actually is hasn't been bad because it's not any one project
that is going on the road for a long time, except now Heaven & Hell
will be; funny thing a lot of time with these things, everything seems
to fall on the same day you know, they'll call up and say "Hey, can
you do some shows with us?" -- and it's the same day something else
happens, it's weird...

D: Little in the collective background of 3 Legged Dogg would make it
easy to predict what FROZEN SUMMER came out sounding like; how would
you describe the sound of the album?

VA: I would say it's got an old style feel to it, in the attitude, and
then the actual songs tend to be more modern, with the old style
incorporated in there. We just basically wrote all these different
songs and we didn't intend on it sounding like any specific thing,
like Audioslave or Velvet Revolver -- we just wrote them and that's
the way it came out.

D: Yeah, I was going to ask if you purposefully went for a more
alternative sound; I've heard it described in reviews as modern and
alternative -- what is your reaction to that?

VA: No, we didn't intend on doing anything like that on purpose, it's
just the way everything happened to come out. A lot of us have
listened to some of the new stuff that's going on and that might have
made it sound a little bit more modern.

D: I like that the album has only eight songs; seems to be a trend
these days with artists releasing albums with 14 plus songs on them...

VA: I know, and then what happens is you've got 14 songs and you like
six or seven of them...

D: ...and the rest of them aren't very good! (laughs) I'd rather hear
eight or nine great songs.

VA: Well, what happens with the 14 songs is you're in your car and
you've got to skip through them so it's actually dangerous for
driving, so we wanted to make an album that was safe for driving!
(laughs) It's a "safe for driving" album, it's approved for driving,
there are only eight songs and they are all good songs so you usually
won't have to skip through too many of them.

D: (laughs) There you go! Did you write any of the songs on FROZEN
SUMMER?

VA: Yeah, they are written by all of us, the whole band, and then we
had an outside guy Greg Hampton co-produce some of the songs and he
had a hand in writing five of the songs.

D: I like the whole album, I wasn't sure I was going to get into it
after the way it was described in the reviews I had read but it's
really good, really good songwriting...

VA: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's something we all felt, it's nothing
contrived so the songs came out the way we wanted them to. We're all
happy with it.

D: "Rain On My Parade" is one of my favorites, very melodic.

VA: Cool, yeah, that's great!

D: Were there any you were particularly happy with?

VA: I like 'em all, I listen to them all and what I like about them is
each song has kind of a different texture to it, different tempos and
different feels to them, rather than three songs that tend to be in
the same groove, they're pretty different from each other.

D: "One Good Reason" sounds like a pretty good pick for a single,
great riff on that one.

VA: Yeah, "One Good Reason" is definitely more on the single side.

D: I love your drumming all throughout the album -- "Wasted Life" and
"Long Way Back From Hell" in particular, they have a great groove to
them.

VA: Oh thank you, yeah, we tried to keep... It was originally written
at my house in the little studio that I have, and we made demos at my
house and the feels on the original demos were great so we made sure
to carry that over onto the actual recording when we went into the
real studio. We made sure the tempos were exactly the same, because
those tempos seemed to work great and that's important, you've got to
have that feel. Sometimes you don't have that stuff on hand you tend
to do the song at a different tempo, maybe a little faster or a little
slower and it doesn't quite feel the same, you know?

D: Yeah. I can hear "Left For Dead" going down really well live.

VA: Yeah, "Left For Dead" would be a good rocker.

D: Have you been able to play live with the guys yet?

VA: We haven't played live yet, we've been playing with the Hollywood
All-Stars and when we do that we play "Frozen Summer," throw that in
the set, and that goes over well.

D: You're working on a video this month, right?

VA: Yeah, we're planning a video, should be in about a week to 10 days
and when we do that it means we can have that going around the
Internet while I'm off on the Heaven & Hell tour, we've got to keep
the buzz going.

D: What song will that be for?

VA: I think it's going to be "Give And Take Away." I think that's the
one we're going to do.

D: I know your background with all the guys except for Brian Young;
how did he get involved?

VA: Jimmy found Brian, he met him somewhere and knew him from a little
while back, and we were looking for possibly two guitar players and
Jimmy suggested Brian and I found out he lives right near where I live
in California, so he came down and we started writing with Brian and
it went just fantastic! He played with David Lee Roth last year, he's
been with David for over a year, he does a lot of different sessions
and things. He's never been in any real big bands except for David so
he's looking to make some noise.

D: Jimmy always finds great guitar players, doesn't he?

VA: (laughs) I know, he found Vivian Campbell to work with Dio. Yeah,
he's good at that!

D: How did you get hooked up with Perris Records?

VA: Well, we had a deal on one of the major labels and when we started
negotiating they wanted too many things, they wanted part of
everything and we didn't like that; it couldn't get worked out so we
just basically said "You know what, let's move on" and somebody
mentioned Perris Records, and I contacted Tom [Mathers] and sent him a
CD and he loved it, he was all excited so we did a deal with Tom and
it's been selling good, we've got complete control over it because we
own it all, you know? A lot of times with major labels bands get stuck
in -- first of all -- writing 100 songs to satisfy what they think is
a single, and then once they do get the album released, they don't
promote it, it dies and that's the end of it.

D: Yeah, that's unfortunate.

VA: Whereas with this, we own the masters, we own everything, it's
basically just licensing it out. It's a different way to do it, it's
worldwide because it's on the Internet. Now it's going on iTunes, it's
going to be available for download and stuff so you can hit a large
market that way.

D: Right. You need to put a few more songs on your MySpace page,
you've only got two up there!

VA: Ahh, yeah -- on the 3 Legged Dogg site?

D: Yeah.

VA: Check my personal space, Vinnie with an "ie" (
http://www.myspace.com/vinnieappice ). We got a couple more songs on
there. I switch 'em around now and then.

D: I know you have the Heaven & Hell tour to do, are you going to be
playing live extensively with 3 Legged Dogg after that?

VA: Well, the Heaven & Hell tour is going to take up most of the year,
and we're going to try to do some gigs with 3 Legged Dogg in between
because we may have a break here and there, so we'll try to squeeze in
some gigs and keep the thing moving...

D: Well, I hope I get to see you live with that!

VA: Yeah, both things are going to be awesome!

D: Mind if I ask you about some of your other projects?

VA: No, go ahead, whatever you want.

D: What is this Powerzone?

VA: Powerzone was a project for Italy, we were contacted by Powerzone
Records, they wanted me to play on like, some sort of metal thing they
were doing, so they sent me some of the songs and I thought they were
OK -- they were a little '80s sounding -- so they asked me to put some
other people together, so I got Carlos on guitar, Carlos Cavazo from
Quiet Riot and Jeff Pilson on bass, and we did it at Jeff's house and
we did it in a couple of days, did all the tracks, and we basically
played how they wrote the songs, they sent us the songs, we learned
the songs, put a little spiral on it and recorded that way, we didn't
really change it around or start re-writing or arranging it. So it was
just a fun project, you know, it came out in Italy and they had a
little excitement there about it so it was cool, we enjoyed doing it.

D: Yeah, I heard a clip that sounded really good.

VA: Yeah, some good stuff on there, more in the '80s style.

D: Are you still playing with George Lynch?

VA: I went out with George last year, we did like a two month tour, we
did some gigs here and there -- nothing in the future, I'm going to be
tied up anyway with Heaven & Hell -- but it was fun playing with
George, I've known George for a long time and never got to play with
him, but I really enjoyed it, he's just a power player man, wow!

D: Yep, one of my very favorites!

VA: Yeah, he's a monster guitar player so we might do some stuff in
the future.

D: I really liked your playing on the Mark Boals album, are you going
to do anything more with him?

VA: Oh, thank you! Actually, I haven't heard from him in a long time.
I thought that album was really good, I thought the vocals on it were
good and I don't know what happened to him, you know, I never heard
anything since, he never did any gigs and I never heard any follow
ups.

D: Well now, the Heaven & Hell tour, that's the tour of the year I
think!

VA: Yeah, I think so.

D: I'm really looking forward to that!

VA: Yeah, amazing response from all the fans and all the buzz going
around.

D: Please tell me that you are going to film that for a DVD!

VA: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is in the works, it's so easy to do now
and I believe once the tour gets going we will start filming some
shows and put it out as a DVD, yeah.

D: What's the set list going to look like?

VA: The set list is going to be from the MOB RULES album, from HEAVEN
AND HELL, from DEHUMANIZER and then we wrote three new songs for a
"best of" album that is coming out -- BLACK SABBATH: THE DIO YEARS --
and that will have three new songs included on it, so we'll probably
do a couple of those new songs also.

D: Man, that will be great! Did you have to do a lot of rehearsal?

VA: We haven't started rehearsal yet, we start in two weeks and we'll
rehearse for two weeks and then we will be off on tour.

D: How many U.S. dates will you be doing?

VA: Right now I know we are doing 11 shows in Canada, one in New York
which sold out, Radio City Music Hall which sold out in 45 minutes,
and then we are going to do down in South America, then Europe and
back to the States, then Russia and some other exotic places.

D: Excellent!

VA: Yeah, it's going to be quite a world tour.

D: Do you have any plans for a full album after all this is done?

VA: Right now we don't know, I don't know, right now there's been
nothing said about doing an album, we'll just have to see how
everything jells and see what everyone wants to do -- definitely not
ruling the possibility out -- so we'll have to wait and see. Where are
you?

D: I'm about a hour and a half south of Atlanta, so I'm pretty sure
I'll get to see you there. If not, I'll take a road trip, I won 't
miss that! (laughs)

VA: Right, thanks!

D: I was listening to MOB RULES last night; your drumming on that is
so good it's scary! "Sign Of The Southern Cross" and "Falling Off The
Edge Of The World..."

VA: Actually I've got to start listening to that album, I listened to
HEAVEN AND HELL the other night just to relearn songs, get a refresher
on them, now I've got to listen to MOB RULES too.

D: Have you kept in contact with Dio over the years?

VA: Well, since we split up I have been in contact with Ronnie, I've
seen him around L.A. at some shows, different things that were going
on in town -- he was on tour a lot so I didn't get to see him -- but
yeah, on and off we're in contact but I haven't seen him in quite
awhile since this reunion and then when I went over to England to
record these songs with him I got to see everybody. Like a big family
reunion, it was great.

D: If I were to put together a "best of" CD of your drumming, what
would I put on there?

VA: I would put on there a song from a band that I was with called
Axis, there was an album that we did called CIRCUS WORLD,the song was
called "Armageddon," that's a good drum song; I would put some stuff
from MOB RULES on there and then DEHUMANIZER is one of my favorite
albums, then I'd put on some WWIII and some Dio HOLY DIVER, "We Rock"
especially right there.

D: An awesome collection!

VA: Yeah, a total drum album!

D: Do you ever see any of the guys from the Rick Derringer days?

VA: Actually I just saw the bass player, Kenny Aaronson, he played in
town a couple of months ago, we went to see him and it was great to
see him, I hadn't seen him in years, and he was playing his ass off,
he was really good. The funny thing with Derringer, some promoter in
Sweden offered a lot of money for the band to come play some festival
there, so we all agreed that that woud be cool, that would be fun,
and... I always speak to Danny Johnson. I'm always in touch with him,
and we got in touch with Kenny Aaronson and he's always in touch with
Rick so we all talked and decided we would do it; but then, one by
one, we were always getting blown out by schedule problem, you know,
and that was even before the Heaven & Hell thing so it might happen
next year, who knows?

D: That would be interesting!

VA: Yeah.

D: You've played with some of the greatest musicians in rock, even
John Lennon! Anyone you'd like to work with that you haven't had a
chance to yet?

VA: I wouldn't mind playing with Eddie Van Halen a litlle bit, talk
about a monster player!

D: Oh yeah!

VA: Some other people who would be fun to play with, Jimmy Page,
people I grew up on -- that would be fun.

D: I've got to ask you one question, I keep getting into arguments
about the pronunciation of your name -- you probably get asked this
all the time but I've heard it pronounced "ap-pih-see," "ap-pih-say"
and "a-piece," so which is correct?

VA: I say "ap-pih-see," the way my father said it.

D: That's the way I've always said it.

VA: Carmine says "a-piece." He used to say "ap-pih-see" and then he
changed it to "a-piece" because it was easier and when he was playing
with Rod Sterwart he started calling him "a-piece." And our older
brother says "ap-peach-e," and that's like the Italian pronunciation
of the last name, 'cause we're Italian.

D: Ahh, OK, kinda confusing!

VA: Yeah, three different ones. I've even been called "apache" one
time!

D: (laughs) Oh man, "apache!"

VA: I thought, all right, that's a new one.

D: You've heard every variation on that.

VA: Yeah, it's unbelievable.

D: Well Vinny, anything you want to add before we finish up?

VA: I hope to see everybody on the Heaven & Hell tour and keep an eye
out because I will be doing a bunch of drum clinics, going along with
the tour. We've got a bunch of clinics in Canada at the beginning of
the tour and then there will be some within the tour also, so if
anybody wants to come down and shoot some drums, I'll be doing that.

D: Well I'm looking very forward to seeing you on the Heaven & Hell
tour, thanks a lot for calling!

VA: Alright, well nice talking to you, I'm sure we'll hit Atlanta too
so you come on down!

-Thanks to Vinny Appice and Chip Ruggieri for the interview.

Relevant links:

3 Leggd Dogg
http://www.myspace.com/3leggeddogg

Vinny Appice
http://www.myspace.com/vinnieappice
http://www.vinnyappice.com/

Black Sabbath
http://www.black-sabbath.com/

Rick Derringer
http://www.rickderringer.com/

Dio
http://www.ronniejamesdio.com/

Heaven & Hell
http://www.myspace.com/heavenandhelllive

Hollywood All-Stars
http://www.myspace.com/hollywoodallstars

Lana Lane
http://www.lanalane.com/

George Lynch
http://www.georgelynch.com/

Perris Records
http://www.perrisrecords.com/

Powerzone Records
http://www.powerzonerecords.com/

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*** OUT ***
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