Vinny Appice Explains Why Single Bass Drum Was Perfect for Sabbath and Dio

When Eddie Trunk asked Vinny Appice on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation whether he ever played double bass, the answer was an unambiguous no. Growing up, he gave it a brief try because his brother Carmine Appice was doing so much with double bass, but it never clicked: "Carmine's doing so much with it, I'll just stay with single bass," he decided, and that was that.

The rationale Appice laid out on the March 25 appearance cuts straight to the technical core. "I grew up heavily on John Bonham, who was one bass drum, one pedal, and Buddy Rich, who was the best ever — one pedal," he explained. "I'd rather have one strong, fast foot, powerful foot, than diluting it with two." He was careful to add that double-bass players aren't actually diluting anything, acknowledging that some of them are incredible. Still, his conclusion was firm: "I stayed with that one bass drum and kept it heavy, and I think it worked great playing with the bands I played with — with Sabbath and Dio, it was perfect."

This isn't a new revelation. Appice had discussed his preference for a single-bass setup in an interview with Metal Edge more than a decade and a half ago. In that earlier conversation he went even further, ruling out the double pedal as well: "I never used a double pedal either, so I'm known as 'Mr. Single Bass.' The good thing is that with a double bass your foot can't get lazy, so I've got a lot of power with one foot and it's fairly fast from playing with one just bass drum."

What makes his Trunk Nation comments worth sitting with is the specific way he connects right-foot philosophy to those two bands. With Sabbath, he describes a certain discipline in how fills were approached, keeping things "darker — not so much snare drum; more dark stuff." With Dio, anything went. Ronnie James Dio never told him to pull back on a fill, and Appice says the two fed off each other on stage, Dio's vocal performance inspiring something new out of him every night. A single bass drum, driven hard by one right foot honed on Bonham and Buddy Rich, was the engine underneath all of it.

Appice joined Black Sabbath in 1980 during the Heaven and Hell tour, subsequently appearing on the 1981 studio album Mob Rules and the 1982 live album Live Evil. With Dio he recorded Holy Diver, The Last in Line, Sacred Heart, Intermission, and Dream Evil. He has recorded and co-written songs on several dozen albums and CDs, including many multi-platinum records, and his drumming is on soundtrack work for Wayne's World 2, Heavy Metal, Iron Eagle, and Bedazzled.

Appice is also the author of drum instruction book "Rock Steady" and the DVD "Hard Rock Drumming Techniques," and has performed drum clinics around the globe. Those instructional materials put his single-bass approach into structured form, working through hand-and-right-foot exercises, patterns in both binary and ternary rhythms, and fills across multiple tempi. For anyone who has wondered how a single pedal anchors some of the heaviest records in metal history, Appice's answer is straightforward: build one foot that is fast, powerful, and never lazy, and then pick the right band.