BraveWords caught up with legendary drummer Carmine Appice recently for this weekend’s episode of Streaming For Vengeance, and we take a long walk throughout his storied history with Vanilla Fudge, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, King Kobra, Blue Murder, Pink Floyd and more! 

Here’s another excerpt. When asked if he followed his brother Vinny when he joined Black Sabbath for Mob Rules, then jumped ship on Dio’s solo career, he looks back at those years fondly.

"Yeah. I loved Dio,” Appice says. “I loved Dio before my brother was with him, I loved his voice. So when he joined with my brother in Sabbath, I mean I liked what I heard on the radio with the Heaven And Hell record. I was never that crazy about Bill Ward's drumming. To me it wasn't amazing, eye-opening, trend-setting drumming, like John Bonham or something, but it was good. It fit what they were doing. But when my brother joined, and with Ronnie's voice, that was my favourite Black Sabbath. Vinny and Ronnie made those other guys, Geezer (Butler) and Tony (Iommi), play different. They played heavier, funkier, harder, and more kick ass. So I had the album, I listened to it, I knew the songs, I went to see them a bunch of times, and I was friends with all of them. When Black Sabbath came out, we did gigs with them, with Cactus. We almost got in a fist fight with them over a bag of pot, which made it to Circus Magazine. It was funny. When we do the Drum Wars show, we do ‘Mob Rules’. We play with double drums. We don't do anything else from that, but when I played with King Cobra, we'd do ‘Heaven And Hell’ with the audience, with Paul Shortino singing with the audience, and we'd do a song that was on mine and Vinny’s album called ‘Monsters & Heroes’ which is all about Ronnie James Dio that Paul wrote when we were in King Kobra. We gave it to Wendy for her charity, then when we got it back when we were doing the album with my brother and I said to him, 'We should put you on this. Paul's connected to Ronnie, I'm connected to Ronnie, you're connected to Ronnie, so it's a natural for our album', and we did it with double drums. When King Kobra went to Sweden Rock festival a few years ago, Paul sang ‘Heaven And Hell with the audience, then we went right into ‘Monsters & Heroes’, and it's all about Ronnie, those lyrics. And Paul was managed and produced by Ronnie, so there's really a connection. Ronnie was like our family. He lived in LA and didn't have any family, and he used to come to our Christmas parties, birthdays and weddings. I got married in 1983 and Ronnie was at the wedding, and all the Quiet Riot and LA rock stars. Then I wrote it off as a press party (laughing)."

BraveWords’ Streaming For Vengeance with drum legend Carmine Appice will air this Saturday, February 5th at 3:33 PM EST.