After recently releasing three remastered cover versions of LED ZEPPELIN classics “Rock And Roll”, “Immigrant Song” and “Ramble On”, VANILLA FUDGE will release the album “Vanilla Zeppelin” digitally on September 30 via Golden Robot Records.
This is LED ZEPPELIN done “FUDGE” style and fully remastered. VANILLA FUDGE rolls these classics out in their own way, with some amazing and soaring organ interludes and adding their soul and funked up influence, giving these songs a new life and identity of their own.
“Vanilla Zeppelin” track listing:
01. Rock And Roll
02. Immigrant Song
03. Ramble On
04. Dancing Days
05. Black Mountain Way
06. Your Time Is Gonna Come
07. Dazed And Confused
08. Trampled Under Foot
09. Moby Dick
10. All Of My Love
11. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
12. Fool In The Rain
In a 2021 interview with the “Musicians On Couches Drinking Coffee” podcast, VANILLA FUDGE drummer Carmine Appice once again repeated the claim that one of John Bonham‘s licks, a triplet bass drum motif used most prominently on “Good Times, Bad Times”, the opening track on the first LED ZEPPELIN album, was inspired by something Carmine did on either the first VANILLA FUDGE LP or the “Renaissance” record.
Carmine said: “What it was I heard [LED ZEPPELIN‘s debut] album. [LED ZEPPELIN and VANILLA FUDGE] had the same attorney, and they were on the same label. And my manager was connected to their manager, Peter Grant; they were both heavyweights. So when that album came out — before it came out — they gave us a copy and they said, ‘We wanna put Jimmy Page‘s new band on with you guys.’ We knew Jimmy Page; we used to do gigs with THE YARDBIRDS. So when I heard the record and I heard the triplet on ‘Good Times, Bad Times’, I said, ‘Woah! What a foot on this guy. It’s pretty amazing.’ So on the very first gig that they played with us, I said to John, before the gig, I said, ‘I love your foot on the record. It’s unbelievable.’ And he said, ‘Thanks. I got that from you.’ I said, ‘You did. I don’t remember doing that.’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s right on your VANILLA FUDGE record.’ I said, ‘Where is that?’ Because in those days — still today, I don’t play what I rehearse; I play whatever comes to me when I’m doing it. So I had done it somewhere on a record, so he pointed it out — I think it was on the ‘Renaissance’ record… And he said, ‘So I just got that concept from what you did and then did what I did.’ And I said, ‘Wow.'”
Appice went on to say that he didn’t feel comfortable bringing up his influence on Bonham in interviews for a long time due to the way the LED ZEPPELIN legend is credited with being an innovator who brought an unprecedented level of power, speed, and control to rock music, thereby setting the bar for all drummers coming after him.
“There was a time I couldn’t really talk about this because ZEPPELIN was so big and people envisioned John Bonham like he was ‘it,’ he was God, and you can’t talk about that he got something from you, ’cause he was God — God doesn’t get anything from anybody,” Carmine said. “And when I said it, people would say that I was crazy, I was egoing out, this and that. Then there was a book that came out called ‘[John Bonham:] A Thunder Of Drums’. When that came out, it told these stories and it told about when John Bonham came back from playing with VANILLA FUDGE, how gaga he was about meeting me. And he was hanging out with Cozy Powell, telling him the stories about hanging out with me. And they were both gaga about hanging out with me. I didn’t know anything about that until this book came out. After that book came out, it told, with that being said, that he actually did listen to me and that I was an influence on him.”
A 2017 blog post by Rain City Drummer, a blog dedicated to the art of drumming, attempted to get to the bottom of Appice‘s claim that Bonham lifted the lick from Carmine, apparently without any success.
Carmine previously said that Bonham took the bass drum triplets from the VANILLA FUDGE song “Ticket To Ride”, telling Classic Rock Revisited in a 2006 interview: “When I first heard John Bonham do that triplet thing on the bass drum, I went up to him and said, ‘John, that is amazing. I have to admit that I took that from you.’ He looked at me and said, ‘What are you talking about? I took that from you!’ I replied, ‘I don’t do that. You couldn’t have taken it from me.’ He proceeded to tell me where I did actually do that on the first VANILLA FUDGE record and he was right. I only did it for a moment on that album and he took it and made something bigger and better out of it.”
Back in 2014, Carmine said that he would love to play with a reunited LED ZEPPELIN, claiming that he is a better fit to replace Bonham than John‘s son Jason.
“Everybody in that band there is legendary… They’re old school and legendary. Jason isn’t legendary, and he’s not old school,” Appice explained to the “Totally Driven Radio” podcast. “He’s John Bonham‘s son, but he don’t play like John Bonham. He plays more… He plays like him. He’s not John. He’s got that name, but he’s not John Bonham. I’m not John Bonham either, but I think my style might be close, ’cause I came first, and John listened to stuff I did and did it his own way. And we took ’em on their first tour. It’s very close-sounding stuff in feel.”
VANILLA FUDGE was one of the first American groups to infuse psychedelia into a heavy rock sound to create “psychedelic symphonic rock”, an eclectic genre which would, among its many offshoots, eventually morph into heavy metal. Although, at first, the band did not record original material, they were best known for their dramatic heavy, slowed-down arrangements of contemporary pop songs which they developed into works of epic proportion.
Originally, VANILLA FUDGE was a blue-eyed soul cover band called THE PIGEONS, formed in New Jersey in 1965 with organist Mark Stein, bassist Tim Bogert, drummer Joey Brennan, and guitarist, vocalist and U.S. Navy veteran Vince Martell. They built a following by gigging extensively up and down the East Coast and earned extra money by providing freelance in-concert backing for hit-record girl groups. In early 1966, the group recorded a set of eight demos that were released several years later as “While The World Was Eating Vanilla Fudge”.
In 1969, while VANILLA FUDGE was immersed in extensive touring, Atco released the expansive, symphonic-tinged record “Near The Beginning”. Among the group’s many TV appearances on legendary shows were “Dick Cavett”, “Merv Griffin Show”, “David Frost” and “Where The Action Is”, among others. The group did a TV commercial for Braniff Air, and also recorded a radio commercial for Coca-Cola with guitarist Jeff Beck, a fill-in for Vince who was unable to be there that day. This event gave rise to the eventual creation of a CREAM-styled power trio featuring Beck, Bogert and Appice.
Exhausted by the constant touring, VANILLA FUDGE decided that their late 1969 European tour would be their last. Following the release of their final album, “Rock & Roll”, they played a few U.S. farewell dates and disbanded in early 1970. VANILLA FUDGE reunited in 1984 and recorded a new album, “Mystery”, which also had Beck as a guest artist.
In the summer of 2006, the original VANILLA FUDGE reunited to tour with THE DOORS OF THE 21ST CENTURY; it culminated in a VH1 special, “Decades Of Rock”.
The group currently continues to tour in the USA. In August of 2007, they performed at Radio City Music Hall with DEEP PURPLE, another opening act for the FUDGE in the Sixties. Critics praised VANILLA FUDGE‘s performance that night as one of their greatest.
On October 15, 2006, VANILLA FUDGE was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall Of Fame by Felix Cavaliere for their contribution to music history.
They performed on “Late Night TV Show with Jimmy Fallon” on NBC TV on March 28, 2011.
VANILLA FUDGE celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017 and is still rocking the world in the current day with one of its greatest hits, “You Keep Me Hanging On”, featured in the Quentin Tarantino movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”.