The three classic rock bands Carmine Appice rejected
There are some people without whom the sounds we commonly associate with rock music wouldn’t exist. Arguably, Jimi Hendrix‘s likes revolutionised guitar playing so that it was almost impossible to find anyone else who could play like him in the years before his fame. Of course, he was heavily influenced by blues players like BB King and Muddy Waters, but to say that anyone before him could play in the same way or produce any remotely similar sounds would dismiss just how radical his style was.
For bassists, one could argue that the Who’s John Entwistle laid the foundations for all rock bassists after him and that without him, it would have taken someone else’s influence to generate a genre-defining sound. Similarly to Hendrix, a shout for the most influential rock vocalist could be given to Robert Plant, although his style was a little more similar to blues and soul vocalists that predate his career with Led Zeppelin.
In the case of drummers, there are also a number of examples who could be considered to have defined the ‘rock sound’, and there are a few signs that point to a lesser discussed but highly regarded player that shaped the sound of rock drums.
Carmine Appice was best known for being the drummer with the American psychedelic rock group Vanilla Fudge, a group that paved the way for the likes of Zeppelin and Deep Purple to create a harder and heavier form of rock music, and his hard-hitting style was hugely influential to John Bonham, who Appice often says ‘stole’ some of his trademark fills and recycled them for Led Zep tracks. After the disbanding of Vanilla Fudge, Appice would continue to work with bassist Tim Bogert, and brought in Jeff Beck to form Beck, Bogert & Appice (BBA).
That didn’t mean that Appice wasn’t in high demand from other bands, and played as a session musician for the likes of Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osborne and Pink Floyd. However, there were a number of acts that tried their hardest to acquire the services of Appice but were made to abandon their pursuits of the sticksmith.
In an interview with the X5 podcast, Appice revealed there were a handful of acts that he declined to join throughout his career, with some of them only being unfortunate in their timing when they asked. Revealing the first act that came to mind, Appice stated that he was once approached to join Hall & Oates, and his reasoning for not becoming part of the duo’s band is laughably egotistical.
“I’d just come out of BBA,” recalled Appice, “and my manager said there’s these new guys, Hall & Oates, who want you to play with them. I said ‘maybe call them Hall, Oates & Appice and I’ll do it’.” He went on to lament how they would go on to be successful, although it’s probably not one of his greatest career regrets.
Speaking about his other rejections, he remembered that he was approached to be a founding member of Rainbow, saying that “they called me before they got Cozy [Powell, original Rainbow drummer],” and that at the time he was playing with Mike Bloomfield and Rick Gretsch, and another group called KGB.
Further elaborating on why he wasn’t able to moonlight with another group, Appice explained that ‘in those days, when you’re signed to a label, you’re signed to a label, so I couldn’t jump ship.” This would also be his reasoning for turning down Whitesnake when they were at their peak: “They asked me to do that and I couldn’t do it because I was signed to a label with King Cobra.”
From Appice’s demeanor in the interview, it’s clear that he doesn’t hold many grudges or deep-seated regrets about not having joined any of the aforementioned groups, seemingly of the opinion that it was more their loss than his own.
