Carmine Appice reveals he has recently received a “cease and desist” letter from Mötley Crüe’s lawyers

Carmine Appice reveals he has recently received a “cease and desist” letter from Mötley Crüe’s lawyers

The legendary drummer Carmine Appice (King Kobra, Vanilla Fudge, ex-Blue Murder, ex-Ozzy Osbourne) was recently interviewed by Andrew Daly for Goldmine. Appice was promoting his latest album Running Up The Hill, which will be released under the name Carmine Appice & Fernando Perdomo Project on May 26, 2023.

Appice recently made headlines about a month ago0 when he revealed things that his friend / guitarist Mick Mars told him about Mötley Crüe that allegedly occurred during last summer’s very successful The Stadium Tour (which also included Def Leppard, Poison, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and Classless Act) including that Sixx‘s bass parts were pre-recorded. The drummer’s comments resulted in some “heated” exchange of words with Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx where the latter tweeted, “A washed up drummer speaking for our band without any of the facts is as ridiculous as bottom feeder media running with stories without fact checking. When you hear the truth it will be from us.”

Interestingly enough, Mars has now gone on the record accusing all three of his former Mötley Crüe bandmates of partly to fully using pre-recorded parts during The Stadium Tour.

On whether he was surprised about the reaction to his comments about Mars and Mötley Crüe. Appice indicated: “Oh, it’s been unbelievable. Did you see what came out since then between Mick and the rest of the band? (Guitarist Mick Mars filed a lawsuit against the other members of Motley Crue over contractual disagreements.) I’m sure you did. It’s all so sad, but it vindicates my story, which I never thought would start an entire viral internet thing. The response that came out of it was amazing, and his [Nikki Sixx] response of calling me a “washed-up drummer” was pretty wild and pretty hurtful.

But I got a great response from people through their comments, and a lot of people are behind me, so it’s all good. That said, I did get a cease-and-desist letter from all these lawyers who work for Mötley Crüe, so I can’t go into too much detail. I have to be careful with what I say, but then again, we’re not really talking about details; we’re just talking about what happened. Ultimately, all this only helps my album that’s coming out.”

In terms of whether he saw Sixx‘s reaction coming, Appice stated: “I honestly was very surprised. I didn’t think he’d go there, all things considered. It really was a surprising thing because we were friends. And after the fact, I challenged Nikki Sixx to a jam-off, but I got no response. I’m not surprised, as I could jam circles around all of them. I’m sure of that. But yeah, what he said was sad because we were friends, but I guess we’re not anymore.

I got texts from Derek Sherinian saying, “Man, what the hell is wrong with Nikki?” and Stephen Pearcy apparently said to Nikki, “Dude, what the hell are you doing here? We’re all friends.” And then I started to see a ton of responses from other musicians who said that they don’t like Nikki, and the rest of those guys too much and that the fans have been getting on Mötley a lot… I read that and was like, “Oh, my God. I didn’t know that.” I really didn’t know about any of that stuff, so I had no way of knowing that this whole thing would get as big as it did.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Carmine Appice via Goldmine’s website.

Carmine Appice & Fernando Perdomo Project‘s “Running Up That Hill” single: