Vinny Appice Recalls How He Felt Staying At John Lennon’s House To Work On ‘The Mob Rules’

Black Sabbath drummer Vinny Appice recalled the times when they were recording ‘The Mob Rules’ during a recent appearance on Eddie Trunk Podcast.

As you might already know, Black Sabbath recorded a single, The Mob Rules, for the soundtrack of the film named Heavy Metal in 1981. Also, they released a self-titled album at the same time.

In the conversation, Vinny mentioned that he knew he was just a temporary drummer until Bill Ward comes to the band, but he saw this as an opportunity. Also, he revealed something interesting about the recordings.

According to Vinny, Black Sabbath went into John Lennon’s house that owned by Ringo Starr to record The Mob Rules, and he got John’s room. However, he decided to move out to another rook because it was a weird feeling for him to stay after Lennon passed away.

Eddie Trunk asked:

“You were told initially that you were going to be temporary and they were expecting Bill to return?”

Vinny Appice replied:

“That’s right. They said it was under the circumstances of, ‘Well, Bill returns, it’s Bill’s band…’ But I’m 20-21, this is a good opportunity here, so I said, ‘Fine… If Bill comes back, then I’ll go home.’

So we started and finished the ‘Heaven and Hell’ tour, and Bill wasn’t coming back. There was no word of it. And then finally we hit the UK, and we had to do a song for the movie ‘Heavy Metal.’

So we had a couple of days off, went into John Lennon’s house, which was owned by Ringo, so we go in, and for some reason, I got John’s room, and I just felt weird about staying there because he just passed, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know.’”

He continued:

“So I took another room, so that’s where we wrote and recorded ‘The Mob Rules,’ the first take for the movie. It came out so good, like, Warner Brothers loved it, the band loved it – Tony, Geezer, Ronnie.

I knew that cemented me into the band more because now we recorded something. And Bill never played somebody else’s parts, he never had to, so if Bill did come back, they’re going to do that song and he’s gonna do my parts.”

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