The iconic drummer who has worked with yet another legends like Ozzy Osbourne, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, and Cactus, Carmine Appice, has talked with The Aftershocks Podcast this week and shared what he thinks about Led Zeppelin and the unexpected pass of their drummer John Bonham.

According to Carmine Appice, Cozy Powell and him were the rumored replacements after the pass of John Bonham but it did not happen because they did not had any offer from Led Zeppelin. In case he does not want to ego out, he also claimed that Cozy was playing with his style.

After sharing the untold story of the replacement of John Bonham, he also talked about the recent generation of the music. According to Carmine, there is no soul to the music in these years. There is not even a single extemporisation in the live shows and they all feel the same.

Here is what he said to The Aftershocks Podcast:

“When John Bonham passed away [on September 25, 1980], I was in Europe, and there were big rumors going on that me or Cozy Powell were going to replace him because of the feel.

Now, Cozy and John grew up together, and if you read a book called ‘A Thunder of Drums,’ it talks about when John Bonham came back from touring with Vanilla Fudge – him and Cozy were all gaga about the fact that he was hanging out with me, and both of them used to listen to me.

This is just a fact, I’m not trying to ego-out, you know – a lot of people look at this and say, ‘Oh, he’s just an egomaniac,’ but you know, this is a fact that I read in the book myself.

Chris Welch, the writer, wrote it and he told me about it, I said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that.’

I knew Cozy because Cozy played with Jeff Beck, you know, we were supposed to play with Jeff Beck, me and Tim [Bogert, bass], and Jeff had a car accident and he was detained by 18 months, so we put Cactus together instead.

And then when he came back, he had Cozy – Cozy played my style, the big drums, powerhouse, groove, and then we finally got together, and years later I was asked to join Rainbow, and I couldn’t do it because I had a group with Mike Bloomfield called KGB.

I was signed to a label, so Ritchie [Blackmore, guitar] got Cozy. So I used to see Cozy, I’d go, ‘What are you, my professional replacement?’ – I’d be kidding around with him.”

He continued:

“No. 1, when you’re playing bass drums so fast, all those bass drums have to be padded up so you could hear them, but even so when you go to live gigs, you can’t really hear them. You feel it, but you don’t hear it, you know?

You hear something like rumbling on the bottom, but you don’t hear it as good because they’re so fast. I mean, look, there’s only a certain amount of notes you can put in one beat.

You can go up to 64th notes in one beat, 64th notes at a fast tempo is almost one note, how are you going to hear that? So, it’s just a matter of physics, really.

It’s a different feel – there’s no soul to the music, it’s more like brain music than heart music. Any band that plays the same every night, the drummers don’t go in like, ‘OK, here’s the groove for the verse; here’s the groove for the pre-chorus; here’s a groove for the solo…’

We were just going to play, whatever comes out, comes out – even R&B, you take Aretha, a lot of reason her songs are so great, Bernard Purdie played on all those songs, same drum sound, the same feel all the time. But Bernard Purdy couldn’t play Slipknot, you know?”

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