HEAVEN AND HELL Drummer: 'It's Amazing This Music Has Lasted This Long'

Chad Bowar of About Heavy Metal recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal drummer Vinny Appice (HEAVEN AND HELL, BLACK SABBATH, DIO). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

About Heavy Metal: How did you become involved in the HEAVEN AND HELL album ["Black Sabbath: The Dio Years"] and tour?

Vinny Appice: I heard about it last year, and I heard Bill Ward was doing it. That was cool, but it was the Dio era, and I played on more albums than Bill during that time. I decided to wait and see, because anything can happen with that band. Sure enough, in November I got a call saying Bill isn't going to do it and asked if I wanted to do it. I said "Sure!" The next day I was on a plane to London. I went there and played on three new songs that are going to be on the BLACK SABBATH "The Dio Years" "best-of" album. That was fantastic. Now the tour has been booked and everything is going great. Radio City Music Hall in New York sold out in 45 minutes. We were overwhelmed.

About Heavy Metal: What do the new songs sound like?

Vinny Appice: The new songs sound very SABBATH-y, very heavy and dark. Everything is playing great and Ronnie James Dio is singing great. It sounds fantastic. It's very heavy.

About Heavy Metal: How was the chemistry in the studio?

Vinny Appice: The funny thing is these days when you do a track, nobody else is there. You play to the existing guitar, bass and vocal tracks because they already recorded a bunch of stuff.

About Heavy Metal: What have been the high points and low points in your career?

Vinny Appice: The highest of the high points were getting my first platinum record, playing Madison Square Garden and playing all these giant festivals. This business goes up and down, and with the HOLLYWOOD ALL STARZ we're playing clubs and things like that. So it's quite a change from playing in front of 50,000 people at a festival. But I love playing and am willing to do whatever I need to do to make it happen. There's always people in the audience that appreciate what we play and are there to see us and that's what makes it worthwhile.

About Heavy Metal: What are the biggest changes you've seen in the music industry over the years?

Vinny Appice: The biggest change has been in technology. Everybody's got a studio now and people can be making great records in their garage.

There are a lot of new bands out, and a lot of stuff I hear sounds really generic and over polished. Now I'm starting to see a lot of reunions happening, so the more things change the more they stay the same. People still want to hear the stuff that's the foundation of rock. It's amazing this music has lasted this long.

Read the entire interview at About Heavy Metal.