Carmine Appice has played drums for multiple Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees. However, he is perhaps at his best when leading his own projects, like his early 70s band Cactus. Appice has reformed Cactus and will release Temple of Blues II, a star-studded look back at the Cactus catalog. Carmine recently took some time to talk about his record and so much more!
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Carmine Appice interview –
On the current lineup of Cactus – The line of the band is Ed Terry’s on vocals, fantastic singer. Artie Dillion on guitar and James Caputo on bass. It’s a fourth piece, just like we’ve always been, and it kicks ass. It’s a great band. Unfortunately, Jim McCarty doesn’t tour anymore. He just plays in Detroit, like an hour, a 15-minute drive from his house, any direction, I asked him to come to this big show we’re doing for the album on the day we’re releasing it April 3rd from Detroit to Chicago and he said, no, he didn’t wanna do it.
We have a lot of people from the album. We’re doing it for a charity for Tunnel of Towers, Music cares, Music Will and St. Jude’s Hospital. We’re doing one show with all the money that goes to that. You buy a ticket, all the money’s going. Because we had a donor that gave us enough money to put the show on and pay everybody and do everything. But the actual ticket price, everything goes to the charities. We’ve already put money aside from the donor for the charities, but everything else goes to the charities. You get a free cactus album when you buy the ticket. Just to get a CD is a, that’s the price of the ticket. On that show we have Doug Aldridge, we got Doug Pennick, we got Billy Sheehan, and Tony Franklin, Bumblefoot, Eric Gales and Pat Travis. I think that was enough. It’s a great lineup.
On the Temple of Blues concept – I wanted Doug Aldridge on the album, but I couldn’t get him. I heard he was sick and I tried to get him, and I couldn’t get him. Then I got him afterwards. He said, “I don’t know why you didn’t get me”. I said, “You’ll be on the next album”. The way I do it is first, the first album did great. It started from the president and the owner of Cleopata Records saying, look, he has some other Cactus records. He said, “Do you think we can do a record with getting all the people who are influenced by Cactus?” I said, “Yeah, Rick can do that. I did in the nineties, I did Guitar Zeus and all these guitar players. I could do that.”
So, while I’m watching, I’m thinking I’m starting to do that record. I’m seeing like Slash and Foghat and Robin Trower all along the blues charts on Billboard. So, I said, “We should market it as a blues record”. So, he says, “Let’s call it Temple of Blues“. I said, “Yeah, Influences and Friends, and that’s a cool title”. For the cover, we had everybody on it with a background of a temple. It was a cool concept, and it broke in number three on the Billboard Blues charts. I’ve been on billboard charts in 1989, so this was great. So, we talked and said maybe we should do another one and he agreed. He said, “But this time I make it shorter so I don’t have to put it out on a double lp, financially”, I said, “okay”. He said, “Do 10 tracks and do one track extra for the cd.”
That’s what we did. The way I do this is once I figure out, I make a list of people I’d like to do it and I text them, I’ll call them or email them. Then once I get the people who said, “Okay, yeah, that’s okay”, then I make another list of the “Oks” and then I think about what Cactus songs we do, which I only wanted to do three because we did most of them on the last album. Most of the good ones, so I said, but what should we do this time? “Evil” was taken from an album called Howlin’ Wolf’s Electric album. It was given to me by Jeff Beck. It was given to Jeff by Jimmy Page, and if you listen to that album, you’ll hear that Zeppelin One all over that album and stuff that Jeff took from it. I took “Evil” in the old days and I said, “Let me listen to that again”. So I listened to it and I said, “You know what? There’s seven songs on here. That would really be great. Just like we did “Evil”. We’ll make it heavier, we’ll do our own version of it and it’d be great.” So that’s what I did. Then when it comes out, I hear now there’s no blues charts on Billboard anymore, but I said maybe, but maybe the Grammys will gimme a nomination for blues because it is blues. It’s all blues. Last time they put my blues album, they went on the charts and went Billboard Blues album number three and hung around the charts and they put me in the regular rock album with Taylor Swift. It’s ridiculous. We’re not going not do anything with that.
Then I started picking the songs and all the songs were killer. Then I had to pick out who did what. But the actual recording starts with me with a click. Me doing the riff, whatever the song is, and making the arrangement with my voice, with the drums, so first there’s no drums, it’s the click and my voice, and then I do a vocal voice so I know where it is, and some of the tracks, like “Moanin”, I played bass on it and then I would put drums on it, so that’s how every, all these songs on the track, on the album started like that. One started different. I think the one with Melanie on it, started with her voice and I put the arrangement to her voice, and Richard Fortus did the guitar and a click. On the song he did down to the bottom, but everything else was done with just me and playing bass on a couple of them.
Then I’d give it to my guitar player, Artie, and if I had the bass, he’d leave it. If I didn’t have the bass, he’d play guitar and bass, and we put the vocal on it with Ed Terry. Now we got a full demo and then we send it to whatever. So, like for instance, Eric Gales and Billy Sheehan, “Back Door Man”, well known. But when Eric and Billy playing, it was great, but we gave it to Eric first. He sang it to the bass that Artie did, and the rhythm guitar that Artie did and the drums. Then he added his guitars and solos and stuff, and his voice. Then he ended it. Then it’s part two, which was the up tempo. He didn’t do it. I said, “Why don’t you do that?” He said, “I thought that was for the drums”. I said, “Mo man, that’s for you to wail”. I sent it back to him. Then he wailed on it, and then we gave it to Billy. Now Billy is known for playing bass, but sometimes following the guitar and the solo. I didn’t know that. I was really surprised to hear Billy doing that, and I said, “Wow, this is outrageous”. So, a lot of times I do this stuff. I get back the demos or whatever that stems, and it blows my mind because I didn’t expect that. So, it changes as we’re doing it, things change. It’s really cool.
On if he picked the songs or the guest did – No the artists didn’t. I gave Dee Snider a couple of tracks to sing. Three tracks to pick, I believe. He picked “Little Red Rooster”. Okay. So now that opened up “Little Red Rooster” to vocals. Whether it was my singer or Dug Pinnick or who else sang on that record? I can’t even remember. There’s somebody, I know there’s another singer. I just can’t think of it now, but anyway. Then I would think like “Spoonful”, right? Spoonful was done by Cream, but this way it’s totally different. The drum pattern was cool, and I thought Bob Daisy would be great bass player on that and Ted (Nugent) would probably be great on that because he comes from that school and every time I give him a track, he changes the rhythm a little bit to make it really Ted, so I did that together and I said, “Now to sing that. I think my singer would sing this great.” I put it together and then, and listened to it again. Yep. And sure enough, Ted changed the guitar, which he played to me and Bob, and the bass and drums and the singing. He is a great singer. He does his own thing. So that was great. The way it came out.
The interesting one was the one with Melanie. Because we did that a little while ago, Cleopatra said, “We have rights to some of Melanie’s voice from the estate. We have her singing Purple Haze. We’d like to do Cactus and Melanie”. I said, “let me hear it”. So, when I heard the voice, I said, “Wow, that scream sounds like Janice Joplin.” That was one. It’s the long way from the roller skate song. The way they did it was they sent me the voice, and I said, “Yeah, we can do that”. So, my engineer, producer, Pat Regan took her voice and stretched it out. So, we put it on a click. Then I had the voice there, and then I put the drums to it with the brakes and the up tempo and all that stuff. Then I gave it to Artie, she screams, when she’s done screaming, then we left space. Like I told him, “Let’s leave 16 bars for a solo”. Then we went up tempo and then we came back down. So, we spaced it out with the arrangement according to my drums, and then I gave it to Artie. He put the guitar, and then our bass player was on the road somewhere, so he couldn’t do it, so Tony Franklin did it. Tony sat in he played with us a bunch of times last year. We did four or five days and he played with us. We went to South America, went to Venezuela before they changed to this horrible, government. We always had guys with machine guns around us, for security. But we played a beautiful theater that were sold out and Tony played great. So, I got Tony on it and then Pat mixed it. We released it before, but on this version, we changed the breakdown in the middle. We gave it to like the radio voice and made it really psychedelic, and then we remastered everything on that track. It sounds different. It is a little different, and it’s on this record and. People love it. I still can’t believe that’s her doing that scream.
They had it on a vocal with her, with an acoustic guitar and some sort of weird rhythms behind like congas or something. So, she must have done it like acoustically somewhere, maybe in a small venue. There was a part I go, “Ooh, ah, I really liked that”. It made it sound a bit jungley, so I put that in there as well, but for me it’s great because I basically produced all these things, with my engineer, and I arranged everything. Arranging for me is, that’s my thing with Vanilla Fudge, that always been my thing. I used to sing do backups. I know a lot about vocals, and I majored in music in high school, so I know chord changes and stuff. Just enough to do this stuff and play bass, just enough of that and, so, I’m blown away that I’m producing all these guys. They respect what I’ve done and that’s why they’re doing this. They respected Cactus. That’s a great feeling and knowing that at the end got a great product.
On if there is anyone he wanted but didn’t get – I wanted Ty Tabor. There’s a few, I have to look at the list, but there’s a few, but Ty hits me right away. There’s one, one more. I did get Steve Morse on this one. That track was great. I got Derek Sherinian playing keyboard, that was “Bad Stuff”. That was on the fourth Cactus album. I always loved that song. Had a great groove and it came from Dwayne Hitchings, my keyboard player with Cactus back then. I thought of Derrick immediately because I know Derrick for a long time. He always loves to play on stuff in my, I love him to play on it. So, we did that, and then we got Steve Morse and Tony Franklin, and then my singer sang it, and I gave it to Joe Lynn Turner and he said, “Man, this guy sounds great. Why? Why do you want me?” I said, “Because you’re Joe LynnTurner”. So, he did a great job. That track is smoking.
On if he spoke with John Sykes before he passed – Not like immediately before, I would guess it was six months before. Just by text I noticed he’s disappeared and I’m doing that, calling him and texting. Finally, he answered my text. I said, “Dude, are you okay? Because you like disappeared”, and we were really close at one time point, and he said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m good.” I figured he is good. But he talked to one of my roadies, weird enough that was on our tours and got to know him. He spoke to him three days before he died and he was telling him how much he appreciated all this stuff he did for us. It was sad, Tony knew about it. I didn’t know about it. I said, Tony, “You knew about it?” He didn’t tell me. He said, “John said, don’t tell anybody”. So he didn’t tell. John’s the kind of guy where he’d just rather live out his life and let cancer do its thing than do all the cancer treatment, lose all his hair and go through the pain of doing that. I could see that.
On his relationship with Rod Stewart and if they would play together – I talked to him about that and I talked to his road manager. He said he can’t really do that because everybody’s got in ears. They’re all dialed into their own mix and that’s why you never see that. But I, yeah, I talk to him. Matter of fact, I have a show called Rod the Show. I have a guy that looks like Rod, sounds like Rod, dresses like Rod. Also in the show we got Katja Rieckermann that played sax with him for 14 years. I don’t consider us a tribute act because like I said, “Hot Legs”, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, “You’re In My Heart”, “Passion”, so many songs that I did with Rod and I made him do, I didn’t make him do, we did “You Keep Me Hanging On” that we do on our show. That song is always the biggest applause of the show.
So, we called it that and I emailed Rod back and forth and I said, “Dude. I’m doing this show because I get to play the songs that we did that I never get to play. You do them all the time. I never get to play them.” I worked on them, I worked on vocals with him on “You’re In My Heart”, and it was me and him in the studio. I did the background vocals. I did all the background vocals. I wrote “Young Turks”, I wrote “Sexy”, co-wrote, and I was involved in a lot of this stuff. “Hot Legs”, people thought I wrote it because the drums are so prominent, and I said,” I don’t wanna call this a tribute”. The agent keeps calling it a tribute and I freaking hate it, so we wanna call it, the name of the show, Celebrating the Music and Legacy of Rod Stewart, which is a lot more classy than saying the tribute to Rod, so I said, “What do you think?” He sends me an email back. He said, “Wow, I’m honored.” I said I emailed back. I said, “I’m honored that you’re honored.”
So that really shows us that he’s honored that we’re doing it. It’s like a endorsement. So, we put together this whole big video at the beginning, which shows, talks about Rod from the beginning, where he was born and right after the war and his and from Scottish descent. Then he joined Jeff Beck, and then he joined the Faces and I was on tour with the Faces with Cactus when “Maggie May” was number one. I knew what was going on because I was there. He had to leave the Faces. His career started taking off. Maggie May was number one, and then he started his own band and shows a picture of the band that I’m in and then his band and shows continued. Then it shows pictures of Rod with Katja. Then we have starring Rod Caudill tonight as Rod Stewart, and then we’re playing “Young Turks” behind it. We did a gig last year, a Rod show with an orchestra. So, I had a song of “Young Turks” with an orchestra. It opens up with that and then we have an English guy talking about it. Then when he’s done, he goes, “So, please welcome Rod The Show”. Then “Young Turks” comes up again, and then we’re on the stage by then. We pick up “Young Turks” where it ends and the show starts. we’ve got background runs through the whole thing. We got confetti and we got we do “Hot Legs”. Fire comes up from my. My drums, it’s just a real show,
I use a blonde drum set and a gong. It looks like the same kit I had when I was with Rod and Katja looks great and my singer’s great. He gets the audience singing all the songs just like it was with Rod. Just like for me. it’s like playing with Rod again. 1979 kick ass Rod show. I love Rod. He was the best front man when I was with him. He was the best front man. Period. Now he’s older, I feel it. I’m packing up his stuff, man. My legs and my calves are killing me from doing this stuff, and I feel it playing. I’m not as fast as I used to be. I know he feels it as well. He’s got this whole show with the five girls. It’s not just Rod Stewart anymore. It’s the Rod Stewart review. Which is great. I saw it. It’s a great show. Our show is what Rod used to be. Like I said he’s loving it. I hope one day he comes and sees it, hopefully jumps up on stage with us.
When he’s not playing in Vegas, I want to try and get this thing into Vegas in another hotel. When you can’t see Rod, Rod The Show, okay. I’m crazy. I have all these crazy ideas and this guy’s been doing this show, it used to be called Tonight’s the Night. He’d been doing rock show, playing rock for 20 years doing casinos and this and that. His brother played drums and his brother passed away now. So, I do the whole show. His brother used to do half, and I do the other half. I went in there, I said, “Are you guys the band or are you guys the backup band?” Because they’re all wearing black and they stand in the back and the guitar player had a bald head that went around with the, no hair. It made it look old. I said, “Dude, you should wear a freaking hat, like what’s his name in “Mean Street”, Robert de Niro “Mean Street”, and wear some colorful outfits.” Same with everybody. When we played the next gig, the agent came and said, “Who’s the new guitar player?” The same guy. So I changed the whole thing.
I went up and jammed with him one time. The first time when I got off the stage, he’s singing and Rob said, “we should be partners”. I said, “let’s go. I’m ready”. I had a Rod show, Rod Experience years ago or 14 years ago. I went to China with it. I went all over the states with it. Then it, I couldn’t find anyone to book it That wasn’t happening yet. Tributes weren’t happening yet, but now it’s happening.
So, I do Cactus. I do these albums, and then we do Cactus. So now we’re calling the show we’re doing Cactus All Stars. I’m gonna do other gigs as the Cactus All Stars. With maybe Billy Sheehan, Bumblefoot and Pat Travis, and the regular band. We’ll play theaters, that’s gonna be like later on, maybe July. So, it’s great. So, I’m having a good time. Rod’s 82 now. I’m living in my 80th year, so he’s living in his 83rd year a few years older than me. I remember my father saying, “Yeah, my brain just feels 17, but my body going”, I totally get it. But I’m still rocking. I’m still kicking ass.
