During a recently appearance on “That Jamieson Show”, legendary heavy metal drummer Vinny Appice spoke about how his first name ended up getting misspelled as “Vinnie” in the credits on the back of his first album with BLACK SABBATH, 1981’s “Mob Rules”.
“I’ve got some gold records and things on the wall that are spelled that way too — V-I-N-N-I-E,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “But if you look at that album, I’m first listed. I don’t know why. They put me first. Then, on the next album, the band was starting to break up. And this has nothing to do with me; this was between Ronnie [James Dio, vocals], Geezer [Butler, bass] and Tony [Iommi, guitar] why the band was breaking up. And on the next album, which was ‘Live Evil’, there’s only one picture of me versus four or five of everybody else. And then it says ‘special guest’ in really small letters: Vinny — I think it’s spelled correctly — Appice. That’s called music politics.”
Appice joined BLACK SABBATH in 1980 during the “Heaven And Hell” tour and appeared on the albums “Live Evil” (1982) and “Mob Rules” (1981). In late 1982 he left BLACK SABBATH with vocalist Ronnie James Dio and formed the band DIO. They recorded “Holy Diver” (1983), “The Last in Line” (1984), “Sacred Heart” (1985), “Intermission” (1986), and “Dream Evil” (1987). In December 1989, Appice left DIO. In 1992, he returned to BLACK SABBATH for the “Dehumanizer” album and tour. He then rejoined DIO and they recorded “Strange Highways” (1994) and “Angry Machines” (1996).
Appice rejoined his BLACK SABBATH bandmates Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi in 2006 as HEAVEN & HELL, touring and releasing one studio album, “The Devil You Know”, before Dio‘s death in 2010.
Under the moniker APPICE, Vinny and his brother Carmine released “Sinister”, their first joint studio album, in 2017 through SPV/Steamhammer.
