The “daring” Pink Floyd song that required drummer Carmine Appice’s fervorous input
It’s difficult to find any one moment that demonstrated the Pink Floyd duo David Gilmour and Roger Waters’ ability to actually get along. This kind of tumultuous relationship was founded on a layer of friction that grew more fractured the longer their visions differed. As a result, by 1983, the band could no longer continue as a functional unit.
The first album without Waters might have been ambitious at best, but the remaining members, Gilmour and Nick Mason, were eager to continue after winning a legal battle to use the name. As a result, 1987’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason drew in a number of skilled accomplices to help them realise their true artistic vision, including The Wall producer Bob Ezrin.
Around this time, Mason had been busy enjoying another hobby, racing cars, which caused his musical ability to falter after his callouses softened. He generally felt too out of practice to take on the entire project himself. To remedy this, Ezrin called up Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice to lend a helping hand on a song that needed a particularly strong lineup.
Drawing from the idea that politicians who use their militant stance to invoke negativity into societies, ‘The Dogs of War’ required Appice to unleash his fervorous playing in order to give the track the heady, sinister quality it exudes. According to the drummer, his input was needed to deliver “a little different inspiration”, mostly because, in Ezrin’s words, the track was “daring”.
According to Appice, Ezrin’s initial request came via a voicemail that said: “Hey Carmine, I’m in the studio with Pink Floyd and there’s a track that’s just screaming for some Carmine fills.” After asking where Mason was, Ezrin replied: “He’s here, but he’s a bit rusty, and everybody wants a bit of a change, so they’re bringing in guest drummers.”
The idea of ‘The Dogs of War’ adopting an indisputably “daring” quality is obvious: not only does it sound dramatic and eery in composition, but its lyrics also resemble protest music, with Gilmour’s voice appearing firm and demanding as he sings about the world becoming a “battleground” where “dealing in death is the nature of the beast”.
During this time, many, including Appice, noticed that Floyd wasn’t getting much air time on MTV, and instead, the broadcaster platformed the same handful of well-established artists, like Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Journey, Foreigner, and others. In Appice’s view, the staleness of MTV contributed to Floyd risking being forgotten, but enlisting musicians like himself and having the courage to put out songs like ‘The Dogs of War’ helped them to maintain their relevancy.
As he put it in MTV Ruled the World – The Early Years of Music Video: “They never gave airplay to the other bands after a while.”
On being involved in A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, he added: “I remember when it first started, it was always these guys calling my manager, saying, ‘When Carmine’s in town, can he do an interview?’ So they used all of us to help get it going, but then when it got going, it was like, ‘Oh, forget about you guys.'”
