Carmine Appice - Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock ’n’ Roll

Carmine played in my band from the midseventies through to the early eighties. I had liked his previous groups, Vanilla Fudge and Cactus. He was in my band because I found him to be a brilliant drummer. And he wouldnt have been there if he wasnt special.

And almost equally important, Carmine never seemed down. He was always very up and positive. Sometimes he didnt get my British sense of humor, but not his fault: hes a Yank.

There was only one drawback: his sense of style was fucking useless. Absolutely hopeless. He would turn up in these horrible bell-bottom velvet trousers. They might have been acceptable in 1972, but they certainly werent in the eighties. As for his hair, well, the less said about the parrot-like yellow or orange streaks the better.

Carmine was always good to be around and great to play with, but onstage we had to calm him down when he got too carried away. I called him the Chinese Dentist because he could not resist putting in too many fills. I remember that sometimes we would do I Dont Want to Talk About It, a simple ballad that just needed him to hold down the beat, but no, he would be putting in all these bloody drum fills! So naturally I would do the only logical thing I could and throw a beer glass at his head. Seriously.

Carmine was so easy to wind up. He would do these long drum solos that hed finish standing on his stool holding his sticks in the air, which was the cue for his roadie to bang a huge gong behind him for a big dramatic ending. Wed snatch the stick off the roadie or even hide the gong itself, so Carmine was left standing there like a lemon. Then at the end of his solo he would go to the front of the stage and throw his sticks into the crowd, and the road crew would be hiding in the pit to throw two hundred of em back at him.

Carmine joined in most enthusiastically with our offstage endeavors like the Sex Police. It worked like this: we would all dress up in white overalls inspired by A Clockwork Orange plus T-shirts with Sex Police printed on them as wed charge around hotels winding up anybody in the tour party who had taken a girl back. Given Carmines habits, he was often in the firing line.

He was also a leading light of the Downstairs Supper Club. We would go out for dinner, eight or nine of us, and halfway through the meal we would all dive under the table and hide. It tended to shock the waiting staff. But I always ended up paying. Carmine never bought dinner. He was tight like that. (Thats not true! Carmine)

I have nothing but good to say about Carmine, even though I ended up firing him. God knows why! Maybe that was just how we were back then. He cowrote Do Ya Think Im Sexy with me, which became the fastest-selling song in Warner Brothers history.

I believe people love characters in rock and roll, and Carmine was a real character. He still is! I saw him last at my birthday party, and I am convinced that he was still wearing the same bloody jacket he used to wear in my band....