As BLACK SABBATH prepares for their historic farewell show this Saturday, July 5 at Villa Park in Birmingham, former drummer Vinny Appice has revealed he wasn’t asked to be part of the event.
In a new interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station, Appice was asked if he had been invited to take part in the highly anticipated “Back to the Beginning” concert — a charity event that will mark the final performance of the original BLACK SABBATH lineup and the last-ever live appearance by frontman Ozzy Osbourne.
Appice responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “No, no, no. They didn’t contact me because times have changed and I’m associated with [the Ronnie James] Dio [version of] BLACK SABBATH. Even though I did play — at one point I did the European tour with Ozzy and BLACK SABBATH, which I thought was cool. I’m sitting there on the drum set facing the audience, and then I see Ozzy in front of me, and then Tony [Iommi] and Geezer [Butler], I go, ‘This is pretty damn cool. I’m with the original band now.’ It was cool with Ronnie, of course, but now this was, like, ‘Wow.’ I’m the only other drummer that played with them at that point. So that was very cool for me. So I’m associated more with Dio, so I’m not involved in this whole thing there. So that’s okay.”
Vinny went on to mention that he performed just a handful of shows with the Ozzy-fronted version of SABBATH over 25 years ago.
“It went into America too, a little bit,” he explained. “We might have played 10 shows, 12 shows, something like that.”
When asked about his experience touring with Ozzy, Vinny shared: “He’s pretty crazy. But you know what? He’s fun — he’s a lot of fun. And we sat and talked many times and all this stuff, and he was great. He was a cool guy. And what you see on TV, that’s him. He’ll tell you the story a couple of times. He forgot he told you. You just sit and listen. ‘Ozzy, you told me that already.’ I can’t tell him that. Ozzy was great.”
“When we started playing, [Ozzy] thought it was really funny to come, during the set, with a bucket of water and throw it on me,” Vinny continued. “So I’m, like, ‘Oh, crap, man.’ Now I’m all kind of wet and the drums are all wet and not working very well. So he did that twice. The road crew had to come up and wipe everything. But he’s laughing. So then the next morning, Sharon Osbourne [Ozzy‘s wife and manager] says, ‘Vinny, how’s it going?’ I said, ‘It’s great. This is fantastic. But he keeps throwing water on me.’ And she said, ‘He did?’ And that was the end of the water. It shows you who wears the pants in the family.
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