Drummer Vinnie Appice talked to Eddie Trunk about his early jobs with Black Sabbath and why he turned Ozzy Osbourne‘s first line-up down. Take a look:
“I got a call from Sharon Osbourne to play with Ozzy before he started [his solo band].
“Sharon called me up, and said, ‘Hey Vinny, we heard about you. Ozzy’s going to put a band together. Do you want to fly to England, go hang out with Ozzy?’…
“But the rumors and stuff – I was, like, 19, maybe 20 then. So I asked [brother] Carmine, ‘Carmine, I got this offer from Ozzy to go to England.’
“And I’ve never been out of the country, except to Canada. Like, ‘Where’s England? Should I do this? Is he crazy?’
“And Carmine goes, ‘Yeah, he’s pretty crazy.’ So he kind of talked me out of it, and I didn’t do it.
“About two months later, I got a call from Sabbath. They’re in LA, they want me to meet Tony Iommi. I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I go down, I meet Tony at the hotel, he walks in with that Axis album [1978’s ‘It’s a Circus World’], and he goes, ‘Yeah, this is good.’
“He was a jokester. I like to joke around, we had a good laugh. So I went down to rehearsal the next day, I brought my little drum set – four toms. They set up this little kit and Tony goes, ‘Can you play double bass? The kit’s so small.’
“‘Oh, no, I don’t really play double bass. I’ll add to it.’ So I added two drums up above my shoulder. As the thing progressed, I kept adding drums.”
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!