Vinny Appice did not play drums on 'The Devil You Know'. Interview.

[Paulie 88]

It has been standard practise since drum machines were first invented in the early '80s.

Robin Gibb's first solo album, recorded in 1969, had drum machines on it. Might be earlier examples, that's the first one I know of.

On the topic of drum machines though, they've improved a lot in recent years...

They have not found a way to program a soul yet.

All the best,
PAULIE

[ZepHead]

I wonder if this is part of Bill's gripe with the band. Perhaps one of the conditions of his contract was that they'd record with a drum machine or basically want Bill to copy parts they wrote on a drum machine.

All of this starts making a sense.

[Wicked Cricket]

I don't know why people keep thinking songs were written with a drum machine and the drummer was suppose to play what the machine played..??!!! They used it in absence of a drummer, to mark time so they could lay down tracks, it's done by everyone in the business for Christ's sake.. the subject of this thread as I said before is totally misleading, stating that Appice didn't play drums on TDYK... it gets people's attention but it's 180 out of the truth... when they recorded, it was a live, flesh and blood, Vinnie Appuice who was banging the skins people! LOL! and I'm positive a drum machine and Bill have no connection to his WANTING out of the reunion... but hey, let's just blame it all on Sharon...right?

[DiosSword]

have you seen any of the concerts? Vinny was awesome! So either he played very little in the album or played to the drums machine tune, which would only make sense to ge t amore "real" sound, which nowadays is probably not a huge problem.

Neil Peart did the same thing on "The Weapon" (Signals). He talks about it quite tongue-in-cheek in the tour book for that album. That was in 1982. They've come a looooong way with drum boxes since then.

Having said that, as a former drummer myself, I can see where Vinny would be frustrated, given that he was so good in the past on things like "The Sign Of The Southern Cross."

I always wondered why he had a lot of cowriting credits with Dio, but none with Sabbath.