In a new interview with Full in Bloom, legendary Carmine Appice looked back on his days with the Ozzy Osbourne band.
When asked about the moments on the road with Ozzy and Sharon punching each other, he said (Transcribed by UG)::
“Oh yeah, oh my god. As I said, I’m from an Italian family, we don’t hit women like that. I was ready to go in between them and say, ‘Ozzy, what are you doing?’.
“Bob Daisley said, ‘Stay out of it. She punches him, he punches her, it’s ridiculous.’ And we’re in a restaurant on the side of a freeway, you know, at a truck stop.”
When asked about how he got fired from the band, he said:
“I was brought in at the end [of ‘Bark at the Moon’ recording]. They hated what Tommy Aldridge did on the album, they tracked me down in France, asked me if I wanted to join.
“So I was in France, I went to London to meet with them – Ozzy and Sharon – and I played with the band. And there was [bassist] Bob Daisley who I know and [guitarist] Jake E. Lee who I knew, and [keyboardist] Don Airey who I sort of knew, and we played together.
“I said, ‘I’d love to do it,’ and they said, ‘Look, we want you to finish the album in NY with Ozzy,’ and I had a deal where every time they went gold I get a bonus of thousands of dollars.
“So I went to New York with the engineer from Bon Jovi who I worked with, was Bon Jovi’s cousin. We worked on the album, we did some drum experimenting to fix the drum sound, to make it better and to try to get more time, we finished the vocals with Ozzy…
“I hung out with Ozzy in the hotel and Sharon left him in my care, which is unbelievable and, you know, that was my association. We’d meet Ozzy through New York on the SST, we flew to London and we did a video, I was in the video playing drums to Tommy and Ozzy’s track.
“And then I did the first European tour, I did three months over there, and after that two months in America.”
“So, I did the first five months of the ‘Bark on the Moon’ tour when I got canned. Sharon, she told me, ‘Your name is too big, we want more of a sideman like Tommy Aldridge.’
“That year, 1983, I was getting a lot of exposure, I did a Derringer & Appice record… So they wanted more of a sideman that doesn’t get any press, doesn’t do his own side projects, just a face in the band, sort of like my brother [Vinny Appice] used to be.
“I used to tell my brother when he was with Dio, ‘You should do your own stuff.’ And then after she fired me, I ended up suing them. I ended up settling with them, but it wasn’t what I wanted.
“I wanted to create music and go into the studio with me playing drums and get that killer drum sound that I knew how to get for Ozzy and help write songs and just be involved. She fired me, it killed all those dreams, and it was a drag.
“I remember sitting at home, as you read in the book, watching MTV… and this is what else she didn’t like: I had friends at MTV like J.J. Jackson. She didn’t like that, she was pushing Jack E. Lee, not Carmine Appice, so all that stuff.
“I had my own PR, I had my own shirts on the tour, so she cut my head off of the shirts. It was crazy, man. I was having a good time, it doesn’t matter, I know how to work an audience, that’s why I joined Rod Stewart, he told me that. ”
Legendary JUDAS PRIEST have confirmed that they will take a part in a previously postponed European tour with Ozzy Osbourne, which will be rescheduled for 2020. Legendary BLACK SABBATH singer has announced the postponement of all his 2019 tour dates, inclusive of shows in North America and Europe, as he recovers from an injury sustained while dealing with his recent bout of pneumonia. Ozzy has been delaying all the tours due to the prolonged sickness and we are expected to see him back in action sometime next year. Ozzy is also going to release an album next year which will be the first album in over a decade