Carmine Appice Still Going Strong at 75
The legendary drummer's early 70s band Cactus has unearthed a recording of their first ever concert, which is available now as a new live album.
Thanks for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. No fancy preamble this issue, just my quick expression of thanks and now we’ll get right into this week’s story.
Very few drummers have reached the heights that Carmine Appice has. His legendary career took off while he was beating the skins for Vanilla Fudge in the late 1960s. The Brooklyn, New York native went on to form Cactus and Beck, Bogert & Appice in the early 1970s, play in Rod Stewart’s band near the end of that decade, join Ozzy Osbourne’s band in the early 1980s, found the successful King Kobra, work with Rick Derringer in DNA, and join the excellent-yet-underrated Blue Murder.
The above is more than most drummers have on their resumes, but he’s also recorded with Ted Nugent, Paul Stanley, Jan Akkerman, Michael Schenker, Sly Stone, Pink Floyd, Pat Travers, and many others — including virtually every guitarist of note in his Guitar Zeus series. His catalog of recorded music is so vast that he’s lost count of the number of albums on which his drumming has appeared.
His latest release, however, takes fans back near the beginning of his professional career, when he was just 24 years old. Appice and bassist Tim Bogert had left Vanilla Fudge to put together a project with guitar legend Jeff Beck. That was put on hold when Beck was injured in an automobile accident, fracturing his skull. His recovery, as one would imagine, took some time.
Instead, Appice and Bogert put together Cactus — “the American Led Zeppelin.” Guitarist Jim McCarty from Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels and singer Rusty Day (who also plays harmonica) from the Amboy Dukes were recruited to form a heavy blues rock super quartet, and Cactus was born. Cactus was a band that should have been much bigger. They played a style of rock that was popular at the time and featured members of some well-known bands.
The band made its debut as a concert act on May 16, 1970, and that first ever set was captured live. The recording surfaced recently, and Purple Pyramid/Cleopatra Records released it as The Birth of Cactus - 1970 on digital, CD, and limited edition colored vinyl on Jan. 21 — nearly 52 years after the concert took place.
“I don't even know where we got (the recording) to tell you the truth. My manager found it somewhere,” Appice said. “There must have been somebody snuck into the place with a bag with an old cassette player, maybe with a couple of mics.”
That description might not fill fans with confidence in the sound quality, but the recording is extraordinary — particularly for one so old and which may not have been recorded with high-tech equipment. It sounds better than it has any right to.
“We remastered it, and it totally captured the total energy of the show, which was unbelievable energy,” Appice said.
His description is spot on. The band flat out rips through a 40-minute set in what sounds like an attempt to destroy their instruments through brute force. It’s a raw, aggressive, torrid, primal rock and roll performance. The material Cactus plays should appeal to fans of Led Zeppelin or similar heavy blues rock from that era and the performance that was captured on The Birth of Cactus - 1970 is breathtaking.
Playing on the same bill as Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and the Steve Miller Band at Temple Stadium in Philadelphia, Cactus went on early that day. Appice said his recollection is that Cactus opened the show. He added that playing in a stadium with such notable names on the bill sounds much more impressive now than it actually was at the time.
“You’ve got to remember Jimi Hendrix wasn't the icon he is now. The Grateful Dead were not what they are now. Steve Miller was not what he is now. We were all bands coming up,” he said. “You're all bands in like, the second and third year of being rock stars — not 40 years. So, it was so different.
“And the other thing is Temple Stadium. When you think of a stadium you think of like Dodger Stadium or Shea Stadium…65,000 people, sold out. Wrong. This was a small stadium. And most likely, from what I remember of those days, we didn't play to the whole stadium. We played to a corner of the stadium. This one might have been a 20,000-seat stadium, and maybe we played to half of it.”
Appice attacks his drum set like it stole from him, while Bogert and McCarty similarly blast through their parts on opener “One Way…Or Another.”
“We were a demolition crew,” Appice said of the band’s aggression on stage. “We should have been called Demolition.”
“One Way…Or Another” didn’t get recorded in the studio until the second Cactus album. The band’s opening song for that first concert wasn’t yet a fully formed composition.
“It wasn't even a song yet. It was a great riff and we jammed on it,” Appice said.
The song also has never been played the same way twice, according to Appice. He said the band played it differently every night, making this recording that much more special as a time capsule. It has its own unique fingerprint that hasn’t been duplicated in all the years since it was first played.
“Sweet Sixteen” is another screaming, in-your-face number and the band held onto that one until the third Cactus record, Restrictions, which came out in October of 1971. So, much of this recorded live set is actually more like proto-Cactus.
The first song from what would become the band’s self-titled 1970 debut album was the third one played in the set that day. “No Need to Worry” is a heavy blues rocker very much in the style of Led Zeppelin.
The second side of the record kicks off with a massive, 13-minute, three-part medley, with bits of “Let Me Swim,” “Big Mama Boogie,” and “Oleo.” The bookend songs in the medley went on to appear on the debut album, while “Big Mama Boogie” had to wait until 1971’s One Way…Or Another — the band’s sophomore release. “Oleo” is noteworthy for its fantastic groove, with Bogert playing a bass solo over Appice’s drumming. The two are locked together perfectly.
“He always did a solo in ‘Oleo’ and nobody did a solo like him,” Appice said of Bogert. “It was totally unique. He was doing that since Vanilla Fudge.”
Appice himself took the spotlight in “Feel So Good,” a track that got its studio release on the second Cactus album. It starts off like something straight off a Hendrix album and finishes as another time capsule, as the drummer played a solo. Appice’s approach was to play songs differently by feel every night, so the solo is unique.
“I like to keep them melodic,” Appice said of his approach to drum solos. “I like to build it. I like to go high, come back down, and then maybe bring the audience in and get them clapping or invested, and then climax and go out.”
The band’s closing number from the set — and, as a result, on the album — is “Parchman Farm.” The band went on to place the song first on their debut album. The band scorches through a blistering rendition of the old delta blues song, first recorded by Bukka White in 1940. The four members of Cactus put their heavy blues rock stamp on it and turned it into an incendiary closing number.
“I was 24 years old and a fireball of drumming energy that I could not do today at age 75,” Appice said with a laugh of his performance in 1970.
Although Appice is the only original member remaining in the group, Cactus is still an ongoing band today. They released Tightrope — their seventh studio album — less than a year ago. Appice shows no signs of slowing down and has multiple ongoing projects in the works, including a King Kobra release.
Fans can hear The Birth of Cactus - 1970 on the streaming sites now and you can order the red vinyl version at the Cleopatra online shop. You can also buy it on CD there or at major online retailers such as Amazon. The digital version is available on Apple Music and other online music outlets.
You can keep up with Cactus news on the band’s website.
Check out the video below for my full conversation with Carmine, which includes how he got involved with recording drums for Pink Floyd’s “Dogs of War,” working with Paul Stanley on his first solo album, his collaboration with Rick Derringer in DNA, how King Kobra ended up doing the theme song from the Iron Eagle film, and much more.
Thanks again for your time today. Please share MRC with the music fans in your life.