“We were diffferent”: how rock ‘n’ roll got its first thundering American icon
It is difficult to envision where the realm of rock and roll would be without the thunderous hard rock rhythms pounded out by John Bonham back in the 1970s, at the peak of Led Zeppelin’s global rock domination. Even still, Bonzo was far from being the first percussionist to strike upon that hard rock sound.
While there are a select few groups, like Led Zeppelin, who will likely never be forgotten – beloved by multiple generations of music fans for their enduring excellence – there are far more who gradually become eroded with every passing year. Even during the age of 1960s’ hippiedom, when seemingly every rock band in existence was being lauded for their revolutionary output, the success stories didn’t always last forever.
“According to legend, the talk of the town during that period was Jimi Hendrix,” Ritchie Blackmore once said of the rock realm of the late 1960s, per a conversation with Guitar World. However, that view is somewhat revisionist according to the Deep Purple guitarist: “That’s not true. It was Vanilla Fudge.”
Simultaneously, one of the most important and woefully underrated outfits of the counterculture age, Long Island’s Vanilla Fudge, pioneered the kind of heavy psychedelia that would soon come to be known under the banner of hard rock.
Mark Stein’s group might have been beloved among circles of spaced-out hippies and fellow rock and roll revolutionaries, but, save for a charting cover of the Motown classic ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’, Vanilla Fudge never really broke into the mainstream.
Nevertheless, without the band’s admittedly underrated output, the likes of Led Zeppelin might never have existed. Certainly, John Bonham’s drumming style was endlessly indebted to the pounding hard rock rhythms of Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, who once told MusicRadar, “If Vanilla Fudge had stuck together, we could have been as big as Led Zeppelin, or at the very least, Deep Purple. We didn’t, but we had the stuff!”
Unlike many of the bands that Vanilla Fudge inspired, the group didn’t fall apart at the seams in dramatic fashion; there was no major falling out or vicious inter-band rivalry at the heart of their breakup in 1970. After years of pretty continuous touring, though, the band members were rather exhausted and ready to move on to new pastures – Appice, alongside bassist Tim Bogart, for instance, went on to form Cactus.
Still, Appice never lost sight of Vanilla Fudge’s lasting impact: “We influenced Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, I mean… the list goes on and on,” he declared. “The sound of that organ with a heavy rhythm section, along with our tremendous arrangements, dynamics, and harmonies, I mean, that’s what it was all about.”
He added, “We were different to anybody else. Even today, nobody can really play Vanilla Fudge right except for the actual band.”
Particularly during the dawn of the 1970s, there were a multitude of bands attempting to emulate that distinctive Vanilla Fudge sound, but nobody quite captured the same revolutionary energy. Regardless, though, the sound of the band and Appice’s drumming lived within the realm of hard rock thanks to the likes of Led Zeppelin.
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