During an interview with Drum for the Song (via Ultimate Guitar ), drummer Vinny Apice recalled a funny and mischievous story about a prank he and Ronnie James Dio played on Tony Iommi.
Iommi had just bought a Range Rover when he went to a farm to record the 1981 album The Mob Rules , the first with Appice in the Black Sabbath . When the guitarist arrived, he was very happy with the purchase and showed it to his colleagues, proud of the acquisition. "We went there to see it and complimented [the car]," Vinnie said.
“We were going back to the studio. Tony and Geezer [ Butler , bassist] went first, then Ronnie, and I was last. I saw a can of oil on the shelf and said, ‘Hey, Ron, let’s get this oil, put it under the car, and say it’s leaking.’ And Ronnie said, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.’ He was like a kid – I turned him into a kid. I said, ‘But you have to warn him about the leak, because if I warn him, he’ll know it’s a joke.’”
He continues: “I put the oil under the car, we waited, Ronnie pretended to be leaving the studio for a minute, then he comes back and says: 'Hey, Tony, there's oil under your car'. Tony immediately gets worried: 'What?'”
Appice knew about cars, having even taken some mechanics classes, so Tony asked him to take a look at the car. “I looked underneath and said, ‘Oh, it looks like it’s leaking… it’s hard to know what happened, but it’s definitely dripping.’ Meanwhile, we were laughing secretly, because we knew it was a lie,” he said.
Tony, worried about the car, called a mechanic from the Royal Automobile Club, but the group didn't see it happening and continued with the joke until the repairman arrived and said there was no leak. “That cost him a few hundred dollars. Then we had to tell him, and he reacted: 'You idiots!'. Everyone laughed,” he recalled.
The guitarist didn't forgive his colleague and retaliated: "The next day, my room was destroyed. Everything was upside down. They even set it on fire. Tony arranged a good revenge," concluded the drummer.
Watch the full interview, in English, below.
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