Carmine Appice is a legend when it comes to drumming. As Rick Van Horn said in Modern Drummer magazine (1999) "Carmine Appice set the foundation for heavy drumming ... before Bonham, before Ian Paice... before anyone else." He's played with a wide range of bands from Vanilla Fudge, Blue Murder, Rod Stewart, King Kobra, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Stanley, Ted Nugent, Cactus, and Rod Stewart to name a few. He even performed on Pink Floyd's "Dogs of War."
He's currently celebrating the reissue of "Carmine Appice's Guitar Zeus" which, released last month, features his '95 and '97 installments of the album and pairs them with five new tracks, yielding a 33 song non-stop, tour de force of guitar wizardry.
Also this year is the 40th anniversary of the Rod Stewart album Blondes Have More Fun on which Carmine played, sang backing vocals and co-wrote the smash hit "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy." Carmine also co-wrote 1981's "Young Turks from Rod's Tonight I'm Yours album.
Carmine has written several books throughout his career from instructional to biographical. In "Stick It. My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock 'n' Roll" he talks about how hung with Hendrix, trashed hotel rooms, and taught John Bonham (as well as Fred Astaire) a thing or two about drumming (along with some more colorful memories).