Carmine Appice
Heaven Can Wait

29.08.2026

Mentioning only the fact that Carmine Appice played in a band that influenced Led Zeppelin (not the other way around!) should be enough to give you an idea about how important his role in the history of rock and metal is. But Vanilla Fudge (that is how that band is called) was only the starting point of Carmine’s colossal drumming career. Over six decades he has played with Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, Rick Derringer, Pat Travers, etc., and this list keeps growing even today. Yes, you get it right - at 79, the drummer is still active in music. He has recently released a new album with his band Cactus, and this album, “Temple Of Blues II”, is a collection of covers that features a diverse array of other superstars such as Dee Snider, Steve Morse, Ted Nugent, Joe Lynn Turner… and let’s stop here before we end up with another endless list. I сaught Carmine one morning in his studio (with his drumkit and a wall with golden and platinum records serving as a backdrop for our Zoom conversation), and the living legend spent 40 minutes of his time sharing priceless insights about his latest and classic recordings, his family and the way the music business works these days. It’s a pity we only covered half of my questions within that timeframe… 

It’s been a few months since the release of “Temple Of Blues II”. Are you satisfied with the response to the album? Did it live up to your expectations?

Well, today I don’t have any goals, record sales and all that. I did get a lot of views of the videos, the second video especially, that was really successful. People I had working the video have expanded my Instagram, the Cactus channel, so I guess in that way it was successful. We sold thousands of CDs and about a thousand LPs, I don’t know if that’s good today. It’s ridiculous today, you know. 

When working on the album, did you have a kind of master plan from the beginning, something like “We want this singer for this song and that player for that song”? Or did the album grow and develop as you were progressing with it?

Yes, that’s how you have to do this kind of stuff - just have an idea who you want on what song, I always did this with every album like that I have done. I knew I wanted Eric Gales and Billy Sheehan on “Back Door Man”, I knew that. I knew I wanted Dee Snider on a blues, he picked up “Little Red Rooster”. I knew I’d have certain people on certain tracks. It worked out really good.

You already had a project with a huge number of guest stars 30 years ago, it was called Guitar Zeus. Can you compare the way you worked on Guitar Zeus and the way you recorded “Temple Of Blues”? What has changed and what remains the same? 

With Guitar Zeus, we actually recorded the tracks with everyone in one room - me, Kelly Keeling (vocals) and Tony Franklin (bass). On these albums, nobody was ever in the same room, everybody did that in their own studio all around the country, all around the world. That’s the difference. It starts in my studio, which I have behind me, I start with the click, I hum the melody with my voice, I sing how the vocal will go, and sometimes I do a little bass on it. Then I put drums on it. Then I send it to my guitar player Artie Dillion, he would put the guitar and sometimes replace the bass, and we send it to our singer Ed Terry who would put the vocal on it. Then we have the demo, and I send the demo, like I sent three songs to Dee Snider, and he picked one. On “Spoonful” I knew I wanted Ted Nugent, because he’s an old rocker, and Bob Daisley, and my singer sang it. That’s how it develops.

More than half of “Temple Of Blues II”  are the songs originally performed by Howlin’ Wolf. Why so many? What makes Howlin’ Wolf that special for you?

I loved his album that we took those songs from, “Howlin’ Wolf’s Electric Album”, the drumming on that was fantastic. Originally that album was had by Jimmy Page who gave it to Jeff Beck, and Jeff Beck gave it to me years ago. We took “Evil” off that album, and we did it with Cactus, and we got great reactions (back in 1971 - ed.). Like I said, I love that album, I love the drum parts, Morris Jennings was the drummer on that album. It’s all blues, real blues, and as we were gonna do the “Temple of Blues” album, let’s do real blues. So we did the real blues and recorded very similar to the way we did “Evil” - we made the song heavier, but still blues, you know. 

For the vocals for “Purple Haze” you used pre-existing recordings of Melanie which she did in the mid-90s. Is it the only part from long ago, or was anything else on the album pre-recorded as well? 

Well, my label owner, Brian Perera, he owns Cleopatra Records, he comes to me with weird things like - it was his idea to do “Temple Of Blues 1”. We didn’t call it that at the time, we called it just “Cactus - Influences & Friends”. As I’d seen all my friends - Four Gang, Slash, and all the guys like that on the blues charts in “Billboard”, I said, “Let’s make it a blues album, let’s promote it as a blues album”, and he did. And I said, “Let’s change the name to “Temple Of Blues”. We did that, and it did well, it got to number three on the “Billboard” charts, blues charts. That they don’t have anymore, blues charts, from what I understand, but the new album did just as well. He also gave us the voice of Melanie that he had, I said, “Is this Melanie? No, it sounds like Janice Joplin”. He said, “Can you put Cactus as a backup to her?” I said, “Yeah!” We did that, and it sounded great. It started with her voice, a click and my drums, and then we added Tony Franklin to it, and we added Artie Dillion, and it came out fantastic. You’d never know that was Melanie. I loved it, it came out great, so we put that on the record too.

So that track is unique in that sense, nothing else on “Temple Of Blues II” came from a long time ago, right?

Yes, it and it wasn’t a long time ago, it was only a few months before I started working on this, to me it was all very recent.

Original Cactus guitarist Jim McCarthy played on the first “Temple Of Blues”, but why isn’t he on “Temple Of Blues II”? 

He didn’t wanna do it. He has no studio, and it’s a big hassle for him. He lives in Detroit where he plays on weekends with his band, and that’s all he does. I asked if he wanted to do it, and he said, “Man, I think I’ll pass”. I said, “OK, it’s up to you. Are you sure?” He said, “Yeah, I’m sure”, so he didn’t do it.

By the way, did you succeed in getting everyone you wanted for the two parts of “Temple Of Blues”? Or have you saved anybody for a potential part three?

There could be a part three if the label wants to do it. I don’t know, I would have liked to get Steve Stevens again, but he was busy touring. I never asked Brian May, I could have got him, but I pretty much got everybody. I got Alex Skolnik, which I wanted for the last one, Steve Morse which I didn’t have last time, Joe Lynn Turner wasn’t on it the last time - we got a few new ones. I didn’t want to do the same album with all the same people, so someone I couldn’t get, but I got other people. 

I’ve checked your official website, and at the moment the list of your upcoming live dates lists your solo appearances, shows with Rod the Show (a Rod Stewart tribute band - ed.) and shows with Vanilla Fudge, but no Cactus shows…

Well, that’s the manager’s fault. We did one big show in April with everybody who’s on the album. Have you seen the video for “Back Door Man”?

Yes I have.

The live stuff on that video was from the live gig we had, where we had Eric, we had Billy Sheehan, we had Tony Franklin, we had Doug Pinnick, Pat Travers, Bumblefoot, Doug Aldritch, and my singer from Rod The Show, he was the MC. And the singer from Rod The Show is the pizza guy in the video. We did that gig on April 1, and the manager was supposed to get some other gigs along to July - that’s when we were gonna have the second video out. What happened was he didn’t do it. He says he’s booked us some other ones, I say, “Yeah, that’s good, but it’s too late”. We wanted to get some of the “all stars”, maybe Billy Sheehan and Pat Travers to play with Cactus, but he didn’t work on it, so we didn’t get it. Now we’re just sitting around wondering why we didn’t do it. We want to do some more, maybe in November, but as I said, it’s a little late.

But even without Cactus, the live schedule that is listed on your website is pretty packed. What does it take to maintain your drumming abilities at your age?

Well, it’s not that bad really, we do two or three gigs a month. Like this month of August I have a master class, a diary show, which is like a speaking gig on my history, and one show with Rod The Show - it’s not that bad, it’s three shows. In September we’ve got three Vanilla Fudge shows, in October we’ve got three Vanilla Fudge shows, plus I’m playing with an orchestra - that would be like five shows. In November there’s one show now with Rod The Show, but there’s gonna be more. I would say it’s three or four gigs a month, which isn’t really bad. It depends on travel. But I try and keep myself healthy, I work out, I play drums in the studio here, I’ve been doing this tai chi program every day, that seems to help. I’ve got my elements, and I try and keep them intact, you know.

Your latest single is “United States” with Rick Derringer, which lay on the shelf for five years…

Yes, it was never really released. Rick died, and I talked to him the night before he died, we’d been friends for a long time. And with all the stuff that was going on for the United States’ 250 years, I said, “Wow, where’s that song I did with Rick called “United States”?” I called his wife, and she said, “Yeah, I have this track”. She sent it to me, and in two days we re-did the sound, so it sounds better, and we re-did the video in a day and a half. We got that out four or five days before the celebration, July 4, so we got it out just in time, but we didn’t get it out with enough time to promote it. It can be released every year. I think that’s what we’re gonna do.

Do you have a lot of other archival recordings like that - pretty much ready, but never released?

I don’t have a lot, but I’ve just found a recording by me and my brother that we did. We’re gonna re-do the drums, me in my studio, and he in his studio. It’s gonna be on a collectible album… Cleopatra is doing collectible pieces now, it’s just doing the first one, which is a Cactus one. It’s a live radio show with the original Cactus band, a special artwork, a special poster, and we’re gonna do numbered 85 pieces for collectors. We’re gonna do that with Vanilla Fudge, and we’re gonna do that with me and my brother. That album came out in 2015, it did good, but now the label doesn’t own it anymore, we do, so I wanna do something with it. We’re talking about doing that, but I found a track that we never released and never really finished, so I think we’re gonna finish that and add that to the collectible piece.

A couple of years ago there was also a live box set by Beck, Bogert and Appice (“Live In Japan 1973, Live In London 1974”), and a lot of people are still talking about that mythical second studio album that was supposedly recorded but never released. Is there any chance that this will see the light of day?

Well, Jeff’s manager has most of it. I have a few things. One thing was called “Name the Missing Word”, it was a Staple Singers’ song. I’ve just listened to it - it was all done except for a solo. The manager of Cactus was like, “Why don’t we get a major guy to do the solo”? I said, “Well, that’s a good idea!” I’m thinking of someone like Joe Bonamassa that has a big name and would love to play with Jeff Beck. Jeff is playing the rhythm, there’s me and Tim, and it sounds great. I don’t know if that’s ever gonna happen because Jeff’s managers have always been very protective of Jeff. We also have a live TV show that we did in France on a multitrack that could be great, I have some other tracks of the show that we released, that was the first show, but I have some of the tracks of the second show which are different. Plus we have a TV show that was done here in America - “Morning Dew”, and the band is on fire! We could put all of this stuff together as collectible pieces of music, it’s just a matter of Jeff’s manager agreeing with it. I believe we should do it rather that this stuff’s sitting around. I’m the only one left, perhaps he’s waiting for me to die. (laughs)

Oh, please, make them wait for a long time! (everybody laughs)

I’m trying to keep them wait! I think it would be great to release that stuff while one of us is still alive that can talk about it. 

You’ve mentioned the video for “Back Door Man”. This one, as well as “United States”, are marked as AI-assisted on YouTube, and to be honest it’s hard for me to say which frame in those videos is real and which is AI-generated… 

Well, I’ll tell you. In the “Little Red Rooster” video, it’s anything where Dee is riding around in the car and doing anything but singing - all the singing is real, we all recorded it, and we all did the video with green screen. The concept of that was to start with the old black and white bluesy frame with everybody in that frame, and then it all turns into color, and Dee starts riding around in his beautiful old car. There’s a red rooster that goes into the machine and comes out as a beautiful redhead, and then at the end, it all changes. That’s all AI. The singing and playing is all real. It’s a combination. For “Back Door Man” we wanted to make a movie out of the AI. In the movie I’m a police officer, Billy Sheehan is a bum, a homeless person, Eric is almost a combination of that, the ghost kind of looks like Eric. It’s not Eric, but it kind of looks like him. There’s a story there. The story is that the guy gets thrown out of a window, and the ghost is telling you why, showing you all the bad things this guy did - drinking, fighting, gambling, having sex with his friend’s wife, having sex with hookers, and this is why he got thrown out the window. But the playing in that video was taken from the first gig that we did, and we played that song live with me, Billy and Eric and Artie, the guitar player from Cactus. And now this is put into the video as the playing part of that video. I didn’t want to have just the storyline without any of the playing, which would have been great anyway, but I wanted to have the playing in there too. This guy Dom Esposito actually did the editing, and when he first did it, he sent it to me, Billy and Eric, and we all said, “What’s it about?” So I worked with him and co-directed it for about three weeks - we put the storyline in there, we put the live stuff in there, and then it made sense, then it came out great. I’ve got friends of mine in there, the singer from Rod The Show is the pizza guy, the guy reading the paper in the beginning is Jorgen Carlson, who’s the bass player for Gov’t Mule for 15 years. My engineer is cleaning the bar, when a glass flies over his head and bangs the mirror - there’s all kinds of stuff like that going on. I said, “I wanna be a cop”, and he turned me into a cop - amazing! On the internet you’ve got some people in the comments saying, “Well, it’s AI, I don’t like it”. You know what? It’s a story, it’s entertainment, we’re playing, and you’ve got an amazing movie that would have cost 150 grand in the 80s to make. In the 80s all the videos had a whole story about them. We did them with Blue Murder, I did them with Rod Stewart, we did them with everybody and it cost a lot of money. But with AI it doesn’t cost nothing. When Eddie Trunk (well-known rock radio personality - ed.) saw it, he was like, “Oh god, this is the best AI I’ve ever seen”! Yes, and this is the guy that’s got some going.

Vanilla Fudge, as we’ve mentioned, is still a touring band. But are there any plans to take it to the studio again?

Not really, you know. Nobody cares about it.

(surprised) Why? I do!

I know, but most of the people don’t care. We’re re-releasing our “Mystery” album (1984) like a collectible with something extra, although we don’t know what extra yet - have you heard that album?

No, I don’t think so. 

There you go! It’s all original, it’s got great songs, so we’re gonna re-release that as a collectible, and a few people wanted it to be numbered, so there can be like a hundred units, LPs, maybe a couple of hundred CDs, with some extra songs on it, and they’ll get an autograph. Because nobody really cares! Seriously you may care, but for the few that care, it’s not financially worth it. Here’s an example - Rod Stewart. I went to see Rod Stewart, and he had a new song on YouTube with 1 million views yet. That’s a million views! So he said to the audience, “I want you to pick - shall I play a new song that has one million views, or shall I play one of the old songs”? And everybody wanted the old songs. 

(sighs) That’s the way it goes these days.

There it is! Spotify and everything ruined the business. I don’t belong to Spotify, Apple Music or any of those, cause they’ve  ruined the business. You can’t make any money at all. Do you see all that in the back? (points at gold and platinum awards on the studio walls)

Yeah!

You don’t have that anymore. Record companies don’t make the kind of money they used to make, and they don’t put out the budgets that they used to. That BBA live thing, I sold it to Rhino, and I got a lot of money for it, but I don’t think it’s been recouped which means there’s still money owed to the label (the box set came out in 2023 - ed.).

I have one more question about Vanilla Fudge. Back in 2002 on “The Return” album, you did a couple of covers of contemporary pop songs by Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, and you said you also planned to cover something by Eminem, but that never happened…

“The Return” wasn’t the original band. “The Return” was me and Tim (Bogert, bass), and Vinnie (Martell, guitar) sometimes, and a different singer and keyboard player (Bill Pascali). That album didn’t really go anywhere, and finally when the band got back together - Mark Stein (vocals, keyboards), Tim, and me and Vinnie, the all-original band, that album was kind of overlooked. We did it in Europe, we did it in America, we did the N’Sync song, I thought some of the stuff was great, but we couldn’t do it anymore, as once Mark Stein was back in the band, he wouldn’t do it. It’s just band politics, you know. There’s a video called “Black Box” on the Internet (off the Bogert & Appice album called “Friends”, released in 2014 - ed.) where the singer was singing with Teddy Rondinelli the guitar player, they left me and Tim out, and I got pissed off. A good video, all AI - that’s where I met the guy that did my stuff. He’s really brilliant, this guy. He did “United States” too - at the end I’m playing with Rick Derringer, and he’s dead. I’m playing with Rick, and me and Rick are AI. 

You mentioned an archival recording with your brother Vinnie. Are you planning to do anything new together, or does it, once again, make no sense?

Eeh, we did a lot of shows together… Honestly it’s… I’m older than him by 11 years, and my speed has slowed down, his hasn’t yet, and I really don’t wanna overdo myself trying to keep up with Vinnie. He’s still a great drummer. I can do different things but I’m not interested in playing this music. We did that for years, Drum Wars, now that’s kind of old for me, versus the stuff I did with Pat Travers, that’s awesome. Have you heard it?

Do you mean “It Takes A Lot Of Balls” (2004)?

Yeah, and the next one (“Bazooka”, 2005).

Yes, I have “It Takes A Lot Of Balls” on CD right here!

A great record! I think it’s probably the best record Pat has done in the past 20 years. A ten-A record. We toured, we did a DVD, we went to Europe, I love Pat! Now he’s older, he’s got problems with his voice, but he still plays great, as you can tell on the Cactus record. That record was great, I wrote lyrics, I wrote melodies, I wrote music, and we sang songs together. We did one song called “Hey You” that I wrote, and Vinny wrote the lyrics, and me and Pat did it together as a duet, it was fantastic! At the end there’s really crazy stuff, like this fast song like “We Will Rock You” (“Rock Me”) and the other one, which is like “Rock and ro-o-o-o-ll, hey!” (“Keep On Rockin’”). They actually played that at football stadiums 10 years ago. I was very proud of what we did. I don’t think we did a video for any of those, we should have, but videos weren’t that important back then. If you remember how long ago that was, before my brother, in 2004, that was 20 years ago. But I loved playing with Pat, and when we signed with Cleopatra a few years ago, we re-released that album and called it “The Balls Album”. We added two more songs, and I wrote a song called “Tonite”, I wrote the whole thing on Garage Band, I played everything, and then I gave it to Pat, and someone in his camp put bass on it, and he put the guitar, and I did all the vocals. It came out fucking great! That was one of my favorite albums. Another one was with Derringer, Bogert & Appice (“Doin’ Business As…”, 2001), another great album, there’s a song called “Everybody’s Coming” - I wrote the lyrics, I did the vocals, it’s funky as hell, a really great track. The whole record had a lot of stuff. I did so many albums that really didn’t get heard, you know, that’s why I’d rather do stuff that people know me for like what we did with N’Sync and stuff like that. We did an album with Vanilla Fudge with all the songs from the 60s, it’s called “Spirit Of ‘67” (2015), and that was great, because that’s what Vanilla Fudge did. We played that live, we played The Doors thing live, we still play a couple of those songs live, and people love it, because they know the song! When people know the song, and you change it, they realize what you’ve done with it. When you do a new song, they don’t know what you do with it, and even if they like it, they say, “Well, it’s great, but I’d rather hear you sing “You Keep Me Hangin’ On””.

More about family - I have read an interview you did back in 2005, and there you said that your daughter was singing in a punk band at that time. Did she continue, or maybe does she continue doing music?

Oh no, she does special effects makeup now. There’s a big TV show she has done, she’s got nominations for three Emmys, and she’s very successful with what she’s doing. That was when she was a teenager, now she’s 37, but she’s got tattoos and all that stuff. She still looks punky.

My own daughter is an aspiring drummer, she is 14 years old. In your opinion, for young kids, is it a good idea to learn to play drums these days? Do you have any advice for her?

She should just keep practicing and practicing and get with a band, I guess. I really don’t know how you make it today.  Years ago I knew, I had an idea - how I don’t have any idea. All of a sudden these bands from YouTube are huge - they go out and play to 20,000 people, and I’ve never heard of them. They’re not on the radio, it’s all internet stuff. I guess if you learn to operate the internet, Instagram, TikTok and all that stuff… I’ve got a guy working for me, doing Instagram, and he got 4,000 new fans for me in a month, doing what he does. I said, “Look, I don’t have TikTok, maybe you can help me open up a TikTok and help me do that”. I’m gonna talk to him today about that, because you gotta have all that stuff, I guess. I didn’t wanna do TikTok as it was Chinese, but now, as I understand, it’s more American than Chinese. Everybody uses it, even the President uses it. (laughs)

Carmine Appice on the Internet: https://www.carmineappice.net/

Special thanks to Michael Brandvold (Michael Brandvold Marketing) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov
All photos courtesy of Michael Brandvold Marketing
August 3, 2026
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