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NEW!
Heaven and Hell reunites Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi,
Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice for the first time in
15 years. In 2006, the hard-rocking quartet convened
to record three new songs for the era-spanning collection
“Black Sabbath: The Dio Years”. The session went so
well that the band agreed to satisfy longstanding demands
for a reunion tour.
The Heaven and Hell tour will spotlight Dio's tenure
with Sabbath and will feature selections from all three
of the group's studio albums, Heaven and Hell (1980),
Mob Rules (1981) and DeHumanizer (1992) – as
well as the newly recorded tracks. The ‘Heaven
And Hell’ world
tour will continue until the end of the year with shows
in the US, Asia and Europe. The anticipated release
date of the new CD is April 3rd on Rhino/Warner Bros.
Records.
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The younger brother of influential
drummer Carmine, Vinny Appice was inspired to follow
his brother's career choice at an early age, even taking
lessons from the same Brooklyn-based drum teacher. The
younger Appice's first significant involvement in the
music industry took place at the tender age of 16, when
he was invited by John Lennon to add handclaps to Whatever
Gets You Through the Night,
a track he was recording in collaboration with Elton John.
Vinny subsequently worked on several more Lennon projects
before joining forces with guitarist Rick Derringer in 1976,
joining his group Derringer and contributing to a self-titled
album that same year. A live document recorded in Cleveland
(cleverly titled Live in Cleveland) presented some of their
touring material in 1977, closely followed by a second studio
album Sweet Evil. Before the end of '77, Appice moved on
to create his own band Axis – a power trio also featuring
guitarist Danny Johnson and Jay Davis. Axis only managed
to record a single album (1978's It's
a Circus World) before
the three members parted ways. continued >
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American Classic® 5B
Ideal for heavy rock.
L=16", Dia.=.595" |
In 1980, Appice reached
the turning point of his career when he was chosen to replace
drummer Bill Ward in the now Ronnie James Dio-fronted line-up
of Black Sabbath. Sabbath had just released its first album
with the new singer (Heaven and Hell) earlier in the year,
and with Appice behind the kit they went on to complete
the studio album (Mob Rules) and issue their first
authorized live album (Live Evil). By the time
of the latter release, however, relations between Dio and
the two founding Sabs had traveled south; with the drummer
in tow, he founded his own band Dio in 1983, launching
this new project with the well-received debut effort Holy
Diver. Appice's tenure with Dio would provide him with
his most successful years in music, the first two albums
achieving platinum status and the band itself becoming
one of the leading arena acts of the 80s.
By
the end of the decade Dio's popularity had waned considerably,
and Appice took his leave to spend the next couple of years
as a member of WWIII, a metal act fronted by German singer
Mandy Lion. An eponymous record was released in 1991, but
shortly afterwards the drummer was called away to take
part in a full reunion of the Dio-era Black Sabbath. The
honeymoon lasted only long enough to complete the album Dehumanizer (1992)
and its associated world tour: by the end of '92 both he
and the vocalist were once again active with Dio. This
second involvement endured six years and produced three
more albums (Strange Highways, 1994; Angry
Machines, 1996; and the live Inferno, 1998)
before Appice was invited a third time to perform with
Sabbath – this time backing original vocalist Ozzy
Osbourne. After completing a European tour, Appice then
accompanied the band on its 1999 U.S. Reunion tour in case
health issues necessitated a last-minute replacement for
founding drummer Bill Ward.
During the 2000s Appice branched out into
film music, co-composing the song Inside of You Inside
of Me for the Hollywood re-make of the comedy Bedazzled,
and into venue management, opening his own live music bar
in Bakersfield, California. Session work for vocalists
Lana Lane and Mark Boals kept him busy in the first few
years of the decade, followed by a resumption of his membership
in WWIII in 2004.
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