Former Black Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice will never forget the conversation his mom had with John Lennon at a Rod Stewart concert in the mid ‘70s.

One of his favorite backstage moments took place during the time his band BOMF was working with the former Beatle, which led to his mom making lasagna for him, as he told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show.

“They call up to the room [in New York’s Record Plant Studios] and go, ‘Guys, can you come down here? We need you to do hand claps,'” Appice said. “So, we go downstairs and go into a recording room, and in the control room we see John Lennon and Elton John. … We’re all freakin’ out! So, we do this whole thing, do all the hand claps. A couple days later, John comes walking up, and he sits down and watches us play. We’re, like, freakin’ out, and then we’re talking to him, then we start hanging out with him. We’re playing pool in the pool room. He really liked us.”

He added that the "cool story is, we’d talk about food, so I tell him my mom makes homemade Italian food from Brooklyn. I say, ‘I’ll bring you some.’ So my mom makes lasagna in a pan. I go in the studio, ‘Hey, John, this is from my mom.’ ‘Oh, thanks very much!’ He took it away.”

About a month later, Vinny’s brother Carmine was playing a show with Stewart at Madison Square Garden. “My parents go see his show, John Lennon’s there," Vinny recalled. "My mom goes, ‘Oh, there’s John Lennon!’ She goes to him, ‘Hey, I’m Vinny’s mom and I did the lasagna.’ ‘Oh, thank you so much!’ She goes, ‘You got my pan?’ She asked John Lennon for the pan back!”

Be sure to listen to Ultimate Classic Rock Nights on more than 50 stations across the U.S. from 7PM until midnight, Monday through Friday. You can see the list of radio stations where it airs here.

 

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