Born back in 1957 in Brooklyn, New York City, the drummer Vinny Appice started his career in 1975, a few decades after his older brother, Carmine Appice, who is also a successful drummer. Over the decades he had the chance to play with many incredible artists and be part of bands like Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven & Hell.
But if you imagine he never had a regular job, you are wrong. He curiously worked at Verizon back in the late 90s in charge of DSL and a T1 line support. He recalled that interesting story in an interview “The Double Stop With Brian Sword” (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Drummer Vinny Appice recalls working at Verizon in the late 90s
“I got into computers and I started taking all the Microsoft exams. I started building them and I really got into it. And then, at the Microsoft thing, people would go, ‘Man, you were amazing. Wow. You should give us a resume.’ I said, ‘I don’t have a resume.’ At that point, I was taking care of my friend’s — he had a bunch of carpeting stores, and he had nine locations. So I was networking them all together and taking care of the whole company and then other people. I had a little business going on.”
“So I was doing that. And then people would call on the phone and go, ‘Is this Vinny Appice?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ They’d go, “What are you doing here?’ Because I wound up getting a gig at Verizon. They said, ‘You’ve gotta get them your (resume).’ So I made up a resume. I gave it to them, and then they called me. And they knew I played drums for Sabbath, but I knew my shit with computers. So they go, ‘If you want a job, we’ll give you a job.’ I said, ‘Really? You mean you come here every day and do the same thing?’ ‘Cause I never had a job. So I thought, ‘You know what? Right now I like challenges, so I’m gonna try this.'”
He continued:
“So I was in charge of DSL and a T1 line support and stuff, ’cause I knew how to fix stuff like that. So I did it for about a year and a half, two years. Then I had some sort of vacation, they call it. It wasn’t even a vacation. But there was a gig I did with Erik Norlander, as I played on Lana Lane’s, his [wife’s] album and did some work with Erik. And he said, ‘You wanna come to Japan? We’re gonna do two gigs.'”
“And I said, ‘Okay.’ So I think we left on Thursday for the weekend, played the gigs, did some interviews, blah, blah, blah, and came back on Sunday. And then I went back to Verizon on Monday. They go, ‘What’d you do for the weekend?’ I said, ‘I went and played two gigs in Japan.’ ‘You did? How’d you do that?’ And then I had enough of that, and I went, ‘Okay.'”
During the same conversation, the musician said he builds his own computers and even made one for his brother’s recording studio. He claims he is a total “computer nerd” and that is always improving and changing pieces of his computers. Although he was the drummer in Black Sabbath’s album “Dehumanizer”, released in 1992, he wasn’t credited as one of the writers of the song “Computer God”, featured on that record.
During his career, Appice also recorded with Rick Derringer, Axis, Ray Gomez, Kill Devil Hill, Last In Line and more.