{"id":9497,"date":"2012-05-07T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=9497"},"modified":"2012-05-09T12:32:55","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T16:32:55","slug":"part-1-of-2-blowin-wind-w-kill-devil-hills-vinny-appice-kill-devil-hill-is-a-real-band-that-i-want-to-last-we-all-want-this-band-to-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=9497","title":{"rendered":"Part 1 of 2: Blowin\u2019 Wind w\/ Kill Devil Hill\u2019s Vinny Appice: \u201cKill Devil Hill is a real band that I want to last. We all want this band to last.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Vinny Appice is one of the greatest drummers of my generation. With a distinct and powerful style of drumming, Vinny has been the backbone of such legendary acts as John Lennon, Rick Derringer, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell. For over 30 years, Vinny has been bringing the thunder and this time around, he\u2019s doing it in his very own band Kill Devil Hill. As a long time fan, it was a great pleasure to get to talk to Vinny on the phone from his home in LA. Our 30 minute interview turned into an hour long conversation full of insightful and often hilarious stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vinny was a very humble and fun person to talk to. This is without a doubt my favorite interview to date. This interview is so full of awesomeness that it couldn\u2019t even be contained in just one part. In part one of our interview, Vinny shared some fun stories from his Dio days, we talked about getting his wish with Kill Devil Hill, the fact that he\u2019s never heard the Black Sabbath album Live At Hammersmith<\/em>. Settle in for this one and enjoy hearing the stories of Vinny Appice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hey Vinny. This is Don from The Great Southern Brainfart. How are ya today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m good man. I love the name of your site. I know a lot of brainfarts so that\u2019s cool. [laughs]<\/p>\n

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Thanks so much for taking the time out to talk with me today.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a fan of your playing since I was 10 years old and listening to Dio and it\u2019s an honor to get to speak with you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you so much Don. That\u2019s awesome. I really appreciate that and it\u2019s nice to hear.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>First off, congrats to you on Kill Devil Hill. You\u2019ve got to be really psyched about this band. What an awesome band you’ve put together.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you. My whole career, even as a little kid growing up, I wanted to be in a rock band. I wanted to be in my own band but my career didn\u2019t really pan out that way. I\u2019m not complaining [laughs]. I\u2019ve always ended up playing with people who were already established and became part of those bands. It was always a dream to try and have my own band. I did it a couple of times and it either wasn\u2019t working out or because something else came up that made me an offer I couldn\u2019t refuse. This is a really special thing to me. It\u2019s a really great band and we love each other and it\u2019s a real band. I love the music we\u2019re playing and this is my little baby. I\u2019m really stoked about it.<\/p>\n

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I can totally hear the excitement in the music. I feel like you kind of came close with the WWIII project but KDH to me just sounds like you nailed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that you mentioned WWIII. WWIII was a killer band and a killer album but I went into that just as a player. Jimmy (Bain) was involved with that and they had another drummer before me. First I did the album and then I did the tour with them. Everything was written already so there wasn\u2019t any of my influence in there except for the playing.<\/p>\n

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This wasn\u2019t the case with Kill Devil Hill though. How did KDH actually come to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. With KDH, this baby was started from scratch. The way it started is that I came off the Heaven and Hell tour and I had to have shoulder surgery. Right before the surgery I went over to my friend Jeff Pilson\u2019s house who plays with Foreigner and Dokken. He\u2019s a great engineer and he has a great studio so I recorded 13 drum tracks at different speeds and different feels and that\u2019s what kicked this off. I had those drum tracks and when I finished, the next day the hospital said that they could get in Monday instead of having to wait a month so I went in and I came out. You\u2019re supposed to be in a sling for six weeks and I couldn\u2019t play drums or anything. I had these tracks so I started listening to them so I invited Jimmy Bain over and he played bass on some of the rhythms and I started getting ideas. I heard about this guitarist named Mark Zavon. He played with WWIII. He came down and started working on stuff with me and we jelled really well. As for singers, I had been getting a lot of Dio impersonators. I wasn\u2019t looking for that because I wanted to move on to something different. Mark turned me on to a CD that Dewey sang on a song which was \u201cHangman\u201d and as soon as I heard it I said, \u201cThat\u2019s the guy.\u201d We continued writing songs and when it didn\u2019t work out with Jimmy we started looking for another bassist. I heard Rex (Brown; ex-Pantera\/Down bassist) was looking for something so I called him. I know him from when Pantera toured with Black Sabbath in Europe. I always loved the way he played. He has a bad ass bass sound so I sent him the songs and he loved them. We got together and we just continued writing. We didn\u2019t try to sound like Sabbath or anybody really. That\u2019s just what I came out. I like it heavy so we made sure we kept it heavy.<\/p>\n

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I love that you didn\u2019t try and make this a \u201csupergroup\u201d of sorts using all well known players.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks. Yeah, this is a real band. It\u2019s not like we said, \u201cOk, Rex will be good. If we can only get a \u2018star\u2019 guitar player like Tom Morello or something.\u201d It\u2019s not an \u201call star\u201d band with me and Rex and other known people to get big money. Kill Devil Hill is a real band that I want to last. We all want this band to last. We want to go on an adventure together.<\/p>\n

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Kill Devil Hill is a little bit of everything mixed together but it\u2019s got such a fresh feel to it.\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, you don\u2019t want to keep playing the same old stuff. I don\u2019t want to come out with songs that sound like 80\u2019s stuff. I just had a vision to just have a cool, heavy band with a little bit of a modern edge to it. This combination seems to hit it right. We\u2019re not doing all of the screaming and yelling that a lot of the new bands are doing. Everybody else is doing that [laughs].<\/p>\n

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I agree. I love hearing a good, solid, and real vocalist. I grew up listening to great singers. I didn\u2019t grow up listening to screaming kids or singers using auto tune. I don\u2019t want to hear that shit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] You grew up listening to melody and so did I. That\u2019s the stuff I like. Melody strikes different moods in people. Dewey screams when he wants to but he\u2019s a bad ass singer. He looks the part too. He\u2019s not trying to look cool or anything. That\u2019s what the guy looks like every day when he wakes up. That\u2019s the same with everybody else in this band.<\/p>\n

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I want to talk about your playing on the KDH album. The playing on this album is like nothing I\u2019ve ever heard you do before. You have such a signature sound to it but there\u2019s some groove and swing in there that I\u2019ve never heard from Vinny Appice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two things that were involved in that. One thing was that the last Heaven and Hell album The Devil You Know<\/em> was written with a friggin\u2019 drum machine. It was all of us in a room with a drum machine. It was stupid. I wanted to go into a rehearsal place and jam and work the shit up loud. That\u2019s the way we did Mob Rules<\/em> and Dehumanizer<\/em> but instead, it wound up with us working in Ronnie\u2019s studio with a drum machine. When we recorded The Devil You Know<\/em>, the band wanted it really simple on the drums so I didn\u2019t play a lot on that album. When the album came out, I got all this feedback like, \u201cVinny didn\u2019t play shit on the drums\u201d and \u201cThe drums are really boring\u201d and shit like that [laughs]. I was like, \u201cOk, but you guys don\u2019t know the whole story.\u201d That was in my head so I decided that I was going to play my ass off on this record.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>I really loved The Devil You Know<\/em> and I had no idea the level of restraint you were working with.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, with Sabbath, it was more that the playing had to be under that Sabbath umbrella. We couldn\u2019t do too much crazy shit. Even having too much melody would be too nice for Sabbath. There are three different egos that are running the band and the way The Devil You Know was written, it wasn\u2019t inspiring for me to play drum machine parts. You can\u2019t hang or swing on a drum machine. It\u2019s hard to work that way. If we would\u2019ve been in a room rehearsing the music would\u2019ve been a lot more aggressive and a lot more Sabbathy than what came out.<\/p>\n

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So I\u2019m guessing that this way of doing things was way different from the way you guys did things back in the day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah. Back then we would just go in every night at 7:00 and just hang out at the rehearsal place. We would get stoned, drink some beers and just go fucking crazy [laughs]. That\u2019s the way Holy Diver<\/em> (first Dio album) was made.<\/p>\n

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I bet you have some awesome stories from those days. Can you share one with me?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah. There\u2019s one story about the Holy Diver<\/em> album which is interesting. There\u2019s a song called \u201cInvisible.\u201d In that song there are two riffs. We had one of the riffs one night and we just jammed on it. We loved it so we recorded it on an old Tascam 4 track recorder. The next night we went back to the studio and smoked a little pot, got crazy and we were like, \u201cLet\u2019s hear what we did last night.\u201d The engineer put the tape in the wrong way so the riff played backwards [laughs]. We started listening to it and we thought it actually sounded pretty cool. We learned the riff backwards and that\u2019s the other riff in \u201cInvisible\u201d [laughs]. Ronnie also wanted a magic sounding effect to start off \u201cInvisible\u201d but we didn\u2019t know how to make a cool sound. We didn\u2019t have computers back then but a friend of ours, who was also the pot dealer, was there and we asked him if he had a tire. He got the spare tire from his truck; we miked up the tire and then let the air out of it [laughs]. That\u2019s what the sound effect before \u201cInvisible\u201d is [laughs]. That\u2019s the kind of stuff that made good music. Ronnie never said, \u201cCan\u2019t\u201d. He never said, \u201cYou can\u2019t from this chord to that chord.\u201d Nobody ever said \u201ccan\u2019t.\u201d We would just jam and record it and everything was a go. That\u2019s what made a great album and that\u2019s the same thing with KDH. Just throw your best, craziest idea into it and see if it works.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m really excited to see Kill Devil Hill. What can I expect from a KDH live show? I\u2019m assuming you\u2019re doing only KDH material correct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, we\u2019re going to be doing the KDH material for now. We might work up a song or two from our previous past. We did a tour last summer but nobody knew the songs but this band just slammed it. It\u2019s just really heavy ass shit when we play live. I still have that fire in me. Rex is on 11, Mark is just loving it all and Dewey\u2019s fucking cranking it so the band is the really powerful live. Even though the people didn\u2019t know the songs but the third song people were there with us and by the end they were going fucking crazy.<\/p>\n

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Vinny, you\u2019ve played everywhere from stadiums to clubs all over the world. Is there one particular kind of venue that you favor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the arena shows were always fun and they were cool but playing clubs where the crowd is right there and in your face is a cool thing. First of all, you better be good because they are right there and five feet away from you. That actually makes me play better. When the audience is so far away you can\u2019t feel the vibe of them as much as when people are right there with you. Right now we\u2019re going to do this tour with Adrenaline Mob. It\u2019s supposed to be a co-headlining tour but Mike Portnoy has got his huge drum set so we\u2019re going on first [laughs]. My drums will actually be set up in front of Mike\u2019s so in some of these places there\u2019s not going to be much room for Dewey to run around and sing but we don\u2019t care. Fuck it. We\u2019re going to just blow the doors of these places [laughs].<\/p>\n

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Fuck it man. Do it old school and put Dewey on the floor in the crowd and let him run the show.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] I\u2019d rather be on the floor of the stage that on those drum risers and shit. Some of those 5, 6, and even 8 foot drum risers I\u2019ve been on. Shit, I love being down there with the band [laughs].<\/p>\n

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I just watched the Dio Sacred Heart Live<\/em> DVD and you were way the fuck up there with the dragon like a mile up in the sky.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] That\u2019s the problem with those kinds of things. It just becomes a show. From the audience view it\u2019s awesome but as far as communicating within the band it\u2019s hard. I mean, it\u2019s a good show but I didn\u2019t like being up there. I\u2019d rather be down there with the band and jamming. At least on the last Heaven and Hell tours the riser wasn\u2019t too bad. There were steps and Ronnie would come up with me so that was cool. When it\u2019s over the top I\u2019m just like, \u201cAw shit. I hate this.\u201d [laughs]<\/p>\n

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It almost kind of takes away from the music in a sense. It becomes more about the visual spectacle than about jamming on the songs and connecting with each other.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. With KDH we\u2019re right there with each other and we can really jam on the songs together. That\u2019s a cool thing to do. It\u2019s really hard to do that when everyone is so far away from each other.<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s talk about the Black Sabbath Live Evil<\/em> album. Everyone bitches about how crappy the \"\"<\/a>production was. I thought it was a great album but Sabbath a few years back released Live at Hammersmith<\/em> with a much better and cleaner production. Did you feel a sense of redemption for the Live Evil<\/em> album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I never heard it.<\/p>\n

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Are you serious?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] Yup. I\u2019ve never heard it that album. I know they released it and I don\u2019t even have one.<\/p>\n

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I should get you a copy of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] That would be nice. I know they were limited to like a few thousand copies or something. It\u2019s unbelievable I tell ya. That\u2019s the problem with Sabbath and Heaven and Hell. They would put stuff out and I would be like, \u201cHey, when did that come out?\u201d Where\u2019s my payment for it? [laughs] But yeah, I never heard that record and there\u2019s a lot of stuff I see out there that I\u2019ll see and I say, \u201cWhat the hell is this?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Live at Hammersmith<\/em> is a great record man. It sounds absolutely amazing and it\u2019s an awesome performance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that was recorded early on in the 80\u2019s. We used to do four night stands at the Hammersmith Odeon. A lot of times we would play after Christmas on like the 28th, 29th, 30th, and New Years Eve. Every night would be sold out and it was just crazy. It was a really cool time.<\/p>\n

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How was that for ya? I hope you dug the hell out of Part 1. In Part 2, Vinny and I discuss his early beginnings and how he got started playing drums in the first place. We also talk about the long running dispute on just how to properly say his last name and his thoughts on the recent drama surrounding the Black Sabbath reunion. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

READ PART II HERE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vinny Appice is one of the greatest drummers of my generation. With a distinct and powerful style of drumming, Vinny has been the backbone of such legendary acts as John Lennon, Rick Derringer, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell. For over 30 years, Vinny has been bringing the thunder and this time around, he\u2019s doing it in his very own band Kill Devil Hill. As a long time fan, it was a great pleasure to get to talk to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[773,778],"class_list":["post-9497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-kill-devil-hill","tag-vinny-appice"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}