During a recent appearance on VRP Rocks, Carmine Appice revealed the animosity between Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart.
When the interviewer wanted to learn how the drummer transitioned from Vanilla Fudge to Cactus, Appice explained:
“After the Fudge broke up, we were gonna play with Jeff Beck and it was gonna be me, Jeff, Tim [Bogert] and Rod Stewart. Rod didn’t want to work with Jeff for financial reasons whatever and they were enemies for years until I helped them get back together in 1980. That’s a long time.”
They Looked For Other Members When Beck Couldn’t Make It
The rocker talked about how he found the band name Cactus:
“So, when Jeff was going to come over, he had a car accident and he couldn’t get here. So he said 18 months and me and Tim said, ‘What, we just broke up with Vanilla Fudge. What are we gonna do for 18 months?’ I already had the name Cactus. We saw it on a drive-in with the Fudge. Big lettuce cactus. I said, ‘That’s a great name for a band.’ So Tim agreed to.”
Appice disclosed how they picked the other names for the band:
“So when Jeff couldn’t make it, we said let’s see who else we can get. So we got Jim McCarty. He was in the Detroit Wheels. He was like the American jetpack at the time and no one played like that. We got Jim and he recommended Rusty Day. So we got Cactus.”
Stewart Speaks About His Relationship With Beck
Stewart and Beck first connected in the late 1960s when Stewart joined Beck’s band after The Yardbirds. They stayed close until Beck passed away. Still, Stewart previously mentioned that Beck had some difficulty being the frontman:
“Jeff was a great guy, but he wasn’t a great bandleader. I mean, you have to look after your band. I remember when me and Ronnie [Wood] were staying in New York, and we never got a per diem, we just got our money every week, and sometimes that money would be very late in coming. Not necessarily Jeff’s fault, but his manager. I think it was Peter Grant. So me and Woody would go up the corner from the Gorham Hotel where all the bands used to stay, and we’d go into shops and nick eggs – steal them. Sometimes Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend would go and buy us breakfast because we had no money.”
Stewart and Ronnie Wood joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Wood started on rhythm guitar but later switched to bass. They left the band in 1969 when Small Faces broke up and formed Faces.