In a new show of “Rock Fantasy” , Vinny Appice spoke about Heaven And Hell, continuing with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, after Ronnie James Dio death.
He said:
“Ronnie didn’t wanna do those shows; he doesn’t wanna go on before Ozzy, ’cause who knows what would happen. So he refused to do ’em. But Tony [Iommi, guitar] and Geezer [Butler, bass] really wanted to do ’em, so now we’ve got a little conflict going. And it’s decided we’re doing the shows. So now I’m in the middle. What do I do? So I had to sit down with Ronnie and go, ‘Look, I’m in the middle.
”What do you suggest? I don’t wanna really leave them hanging — there’s not much time to get a [different] drummer — and I don’t wanna burn my ties with you, obviously. I wanna play with you.’ And he said, ‘Do it. You’ve gotta do it. You can’t leave them without a drummer.’ So we agreed on what we were doing.
“We played Phoenix with Ronnie, and then the next day was off. So the next day we were gonna rehearse with Rob Halford at some rehearsal place. So it was really funny, because it was just a regular rehearsal place. And in comes Rob Halford, Iommi, Butler, me. People in there are going, ‘Ah, oh my God. What the f*ck is this? What’s going on?’ I remember the faces — everybody was freaking out.
“So we rehearsed with Rob for about two or three hours, and went over songs that I never played before; they were Ozzy tunes,” Vinny added. “The only thing we did of Dio‘s was only a couple of ’em; one of ’em was ‘Heaven And Hell’. So now we’ve got all these new songs, and Tony and Geezer haven’t played them in a while either, and I haven’t played them. And now we’re playing with Rob, and we’re kind of now on edge. Like, ‘Oh, s*it.’ You don’t have that confidence of, ‘Man, we’ve been playing the whole tour together.’ You don’t have that confidence. So it was a bit nerve-racking.
“We went out, and it sounded great — Rob killed it. Except the teleprompter went off. So, luckily, Rob had all the lyrics on the floor on paper, but he couldn’t see them. So he got down on one knee so he could read the f**king lyrics.”