Steel Notes Magazine June 2014 | Page 42

Interview with Vinny Martel - Alexxis Steele

Interview with Vinny Martell by Alexxis Steele

INTERVIEW WITH VANILLA FUDGE LEAD GUITARIST VINNY MARTELL , PART 2 of 4

A : Vinny How do you feel about the comment that Ray Manzarek from The Doors made about being a more soulful shredder that may not exist in all of classic rock ? Now that ’ s an accolade there !

V : Boy I tell you that was a nice comment ! We were doing a gig , he was doing a single or something up in Detroit at an outdoor amphitheater . We saw him and had toured with them in the old days and we got up and did our gig , and I guess he heard us play and came out after . He ’ s a cool cat , a real nice guy ! In 05 ’ we did a Strange Days tour , it was The Doors , Steppenwolf , The Yardbirds , and us . We did like ten cities and states , we did ten up in Canada and we ended up in Atlantic City at Trump ’ s Taj Mahal , and we did a live recording for “ Decades Of Rock ”. It was VH1 Classics on one of their fist recordings , so it was great it was for us , and I ’ m sorry he ’ s not here at the moment , but it was a beautiful , beautiful comment that he made . Evidentally I was hitting all of the right notes that particular night , and he was catching it , so It was pretty cool . And I ’ m in touch with the lead guitarist , in fact I did something with him up in New York City at The Cutting Room about six months ago . They had a thing but he was playing up there and I was invited up so I came up you know we said hello and everything and we jammed , and signed some guitars so we try to keep all the old rockers like Jerry Miller from Moby Grape , I talk to him sometimes we try to keep it all together if at all possible .

A : okay awesome ! now in 2006 you were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame with a lot of artists like Joan Jett , Twisted Sister , Billy Joel , and many other artists right ?

V : Oh Yea , The Long Island Music Hall Of Fame with Billy Joel , Joan Jett , Harry Chapin ,

George Gershwin , Twisted Sister , Peter Criss . It ’ s all people that grew up in Long Island to some degree . I didn ’ t grow up in Long Island but , our management was based in Oceanside , Long Island , and Island Park , Long Island . If you had some kind of strong affiliation with Long Island , you ’ re inducted , and there were a lot of other people , but yes it was a great evening , and a great event .

A : Great ! You were saying before that the Fudge had reunited again , and you were touring the US and recently came back from a big European tour , tell me about that .

V : What happened was we got a call from an agent in Germany that they wanted us to

The guys that put the tour together knew about the guy that had escaped from behind the iron curtain ... Over there these people , if a girl had long hair down her back , a cop could come up with a scissor and could just cut it off .

come back because we had played there in 68 ’ 69 . We are also very big in Europe as you said before , so either way we were in demand for quite a few number of years to play there again . What we ended up doing was run down all of these countries . We called it the Rock Legends On Tour , it ’ s myself , Carmine Appice on drums , Mark Stein on organ and unfortunately , Timmy Bogert our great bass player , one of the best in the world doesn ’ t like to tour anymore . He doesn ’ t need the money , and got in a motorcycle accident , so we have a great fill in guy named Pete Bremy , who was my bass player with the Vince Martell Band . We did Zurich , The Netherlands , Paris France , Dresden Germany , Frankford Germany , Nuremberg Germany , Belgium , Hanover Germany , we did this one night after another , Vienna Austria , Tyrone Italy , and we beat the heck out of ourselves . We caught a cold over there from beating ourselves , but it was just great that so many fans and people from the 60 ’ s and some with tears in their eyes came because they never thought they would see The Vanilla Fudge . We sold so many albums that the record company had released , and so many albums that we signed things that we have never seen before , and it was just special , just

42 | Steel Notes Magazine steelnotesmagazine . com | June 2014