“In an hour we wrote Rod Stewart’s best-selling song”
The times that a Carmine Appice happens to think back to the incredible success of the song by Rod Stewart from 1978 “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” – written together with Stewart himself and the keyboard player Duane Hitchings – makes no secret of it, telling MusicRadar: “Even today, it’s a great source of income.”
Appice, now 78, says of this song: “Some people criticize it because it’s disco. When we first made it, it was a rock song, but then they added everything else to it: more synthesizers and orchestra. After that, the drum sound got smaller. After mixing, I said to myself, ‘Wow, what happened to the big sound we had?’ But we trusted it, and it went to number one in 15 countries. I guess we couldn’t argue after that!”
Carmine Appice
joined the band of
Rod Stewart
in 1976, after a completely chance meeting in Los Angeles. “I had met a friend of mine,
Sandy Gennaro
who said to me, ‘Hey, I just auditioned for Rod. I don’t think I’ve been chosen, but you should call him.’ I said, ‘Oh, give me the number.’ So he gave me Rod’s tour manager’s number and he called Rod, who said, ‘Well, have him come to my house. The band is there. Tell Carmine to go there and see if he wants to try.’ I thought it was strange, because I didn’t go there to audition, but to see if I liked the band.”
When he arrived at Stewart’s home in Los Angeles, Appice was more than impressed. “It was a big mansion with gates and everything. There were all kinds of cars in the driveway. And I thought, ‘Man… I didn’t know Rod made this much money!’. I said to myself, ‘I want to be in this band!’ I liked the band because it was pure and simple rock ‘n’ roll. Rod said to me, ‘If you want it, you have the job.’ And so it went.
The first album by
Rod Stewart
with
Carmine Appice
it was
“Foot Loose & Fancy Free”
of 1977, which included the single in the tracklist
“Hot Legs”
. It’s a great song for a drummer, and when it came to recording it, Stewart referenced one of Appice’s former bands. “Rod basically said to me, ‘Sound like you did in Cactus.’ And when we went to record the album, which had ‘Hot Legs’ on it, everyone thought I wrote it because the drums were so prominent. On that song and for the album, the engineer was Andy Johns, and he and I worked hard to get that great drum sound.”
Beyond ”
Hot legs”
,
“Foot Loose & Fancy Free”
also included a version of
“You Keep Me Hangin’ On”
which in 1966 the
Supremes
led to the number one position in the American sales charts and in 1967 it was reinterpreted in a rock key by another of Appice’s former bands, the
Vanilla Fudge
.
Says Appice about that R’n’B classic: “It was funny, because Rod and I were in the limousine together and he quoted ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On,’ he said, ‘You know, I would have loved to do that. That song is really great.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m in the band now, why don’t we do it?’ And he said: ‘Do you think so?’ And I said: ‘Yes!’ In that song, the hardest thing to do is the drums because it’s really outside the box. The feel of that song comes from the drums.”
Returning to
“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
Carmine Appice
remember what he asked
Rod Stewart
. “Rod said, ‘I want something like The Stones’ “Miss You.” I nodded, “Okay.” So I got a piano, a drum machine, and beat the Stones song. I set the drum machine up like them and made up a bunch of different chords, and then I went to Duane Hitchings’ house. He had an eight-track studio, and we put together a bridge and the whole “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”. Rod loved it. So, with Duane, we wrote the best-selling single Rod had ever had, which I couldn’t believe. We took an hour to record it at Duane’s house and it ended up selling millions of copies worldwide.”
In addition to being a resounding success, the story of
“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
is accompanied by a lawsuit over copyright issues. The chorus takes up the melody of the 1972 song
“Taj Mahal”
of the Brazilian musician
Jorge Ben Jor
. Not only that: the string arrangement of
“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
is taken from the soul singer’s song
Bobby Womack
from 1975
“(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It”
.
Rod Stewart he told his version of events in ‘Rod: The Autobiography’volume published in 2012. “The Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor pointed out the similarity of the melody of the chorus of “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” to a 1972 song of his called “Taj Mahal”. I immediately raised my hand. I had been at the Rio carnival in early 1978 with Elton and Freddie Mercury… I had heard Jorge Ben Jor’s “Taj Mahal” going everywhere at full volume. Clearly the melody had stuck in my memory and then it resurfaced while I was looking for a line that would fit the chords. Unconscious plagiarism, plain and simple.”
Stewart also made another confession: “The synth hook at the beginning of the song: I took it, very deliberately, from the strings of Bobby Womack’s ‘(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It’. But the rules are that you can take a line from an arrangement – as opposed to a melody line – without infringing copyright. So you can’t touch me for that.”
Carmine Appice
referring to
“Taj Mahal”
Of
Jorge Ben Jor
now says: “Rod had gone to South America, heard that song, and had it in his head. I think it stuck with him and while we were writing the song he put it out without realizing it was by someone else. It just came out of his head.”
At the end of it all, controversy aside, Appice remains extremely proud of this hugely successful song. “Some guy on Facebook took it apart and said, ‘Wow, listen to this drum sound. It’s a rock drum sound!’ And when it came out as a single, it sounded really good. It was a bit like “Miss You”, but more powerful. What can I say? It’s a great song. Thanks to him I have a platinum record. I’m very proud of it.”
