News Segment
CARMINE APPICE TALKS ABOUT BLUE MURDER REUNION:
March 5, 2006
In a brand new, exclusive extensive interview conducted by Rock N Roll Universe drum legend Carmine Appice discusses his entire career, from his early days in VANILLA FUDGE, CACTUS, BECK, BOGERT & APPICE, through his years spent with ROD STEWART, KING KOBRA, OZZY OSBOURNE and BLUE MURDER, working with PINK FLOYD, all the way to his present activities with TRAVERS & APPICE. Also covered in the interview are the drummer’s recollections of LED ZEPPELIN’s first U.S. tour where the rock legends opened for VANILLA FUDGE, the upcoming CACTUS reunion at this summer’s Sweden Rock Festival, as well as possible BLUE MURDER and BECK, BOGERT & APPICE reunions. An excerpt from the interview follows:
RNRU : There’s been a lot of talk recently concerning some sort of Blue Murder reunion. Are there any plans for that?
CA : Let’s put it this way. Me, Tony and John got together, I think in October, we played, and it was magic. We were gonna try and do some shows in Japan in December, but John had dates booked with Thin Lizzy, they were confirmed, then they weren’t, but he didn’t know what he was doing. So we couldn’t do them. We started talking, we really liked it. So far, we’re all up to doing it, it’s just a matter of finding the right time. Hopefully this year, we can find a month where we can do some shows, or maybe even do a new record. We’re talking about it seriously. We’ll probably start it off in Japan. That’ll be fun. I love Tony, he’s my favorite bass player. I’ve probably played with Tony more than anyone. We brought him out on tour with us in Travers & Appice, in Europe, and Pat loved him too. Tony’s my favorite bass player to play with. On the ‘Guitar Zeus’ albums, he plays incredible.
RNRU : The first album you guys did, the ‘Blue Murder’ album was incredible. Any thoughts on why it wasn’t a huge hit in the States at the time?
CA : We had no management. In this business, especially in the last 15 years, everything has to fall in place. You needed the record company, the agencies, the managers… the manager was the key. The manager controlled everything, to make sure this happened, that happened. Honestly, we didn’t have a manager. We had the greatest label, we had Bob Rock producing, the first project he released on his own. We had Mike Fraser, we had John Kalodner, we had all the pieces. Between Me, Tony and John we had great songwriting, John was coming out of the Whitesnake thing. We were chart mates. I was on the ‘Momentary Lapse Of Reason’ album with Pink Floyd, and John was on ‘Whitesnake.’ We were right next to each other in the Top 10. Tony had just finished up with The Firm, and it was just amazing.
RNRU : You would’ve thought that would’ve been a shoe in for a Whitesnake type of success at that time…
CA : John thinks that Geffen might’ve blown it because Coverdale told them not to make it successful. I don’t think so. I think it was the fact that we had no management at the helm. We were out on the Bon Jovi tour, we did 13, 14 shows with Bon Jovi. We were out there jamming like these jam bands do, and people were eating it up. The girls were lovin’ it. We were getting great reactions, but we had no manager man, period. We fired the manager we had, and me and John were taking care of things. I would talk to Jeff in the publicity department, and John was talking to the promotion department. We had no manager. My old manager Alan Miller was sort of in the background coaching us. We had no manager, then finally when we got one, it was too late. We had pushed MTV to play “Valley Of The Kings” a lot. They didn’t want to. What Kalodner wanted to do was to release that album with that song as the lead song. Then the second song, “Jelly Roll,” would be the big one that everyone slammed, including MTV. But we had spent so much money on the video that John and the band wanted to see it on MTV. Kalodner pressured, from what I remember, but John says he doesn’t remember this, I think as a band we pressured Kalodner to have MTV push it. And it was the wrong song. So when it didn’t happen on MTV, when they released “Jelly Roll,” we got it to the Top 5 requests and airplay in the country at the time, we were getting sales. We needed MTV behind it, and they wouldn’t get behind it. They already shot their wad on “Valley Of The Kings.” So that’s basically what happened I think. But it all comes down to management. If we’d had a strong manager managing us, then we would’ve been fucking huge everywhere.
To access the entire interview go to this location:
http://www.rocknrolluniverse.com/rocknrolluniverse_385.htm
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