Ritchie Blackmore and Cozy Powell were massive practical jokers . This is a brilliant story as told by Ritchie in a recollection of an event in France in 1977.
Cozy Powell was an amazing drummer. He didn't really get the recognition he deserved. His double bass was BadAss. He really could play the hell of the drums.
His passion for the instrument has always been absolutely inspiring.... I mean he recorded an album with ELP and he was able to connect the dots with Carl Palmer as well as continue the legacy of inviting his personal perspective on his approach to the instrument....One of my favorite drummers of all time...HAHA then again I usually say this about almost every drummer that I have been inspired by.
"He didn't really get the recognition he deserved".....I think he did, he was recognised as being a drummer everyone wanted to work with, hence his extensive CV
Read a story, where Cozy climbed in a hotel window, thinking it was a crew member's room and sprayed the sleeping figure on the bed with a fire extinguisher. After escaping the way he'd came in, a short time later the police arrived and were questioning guests. It turned out the sleeping figure was actually a German tourist who had taken a bad turn after being sprayed with the contents of the extinguisher.
My drumming inspiration, especially in MSG. In England, "Cozy" a pretty standard abbreviation of Colin amongst older guys, but is generally pronounced "Cozzy" or "Coz".
Cozy Powell played a practical joke on me once. It was two weeks after my 16th birthday, on the morning of Sunday 27th February 1977. I was hitch hiking from Wantage, at the foot of the Berkshire Downs in southern England (near the villiage of Harwell where Cozy lived at the time, not that I knew that) to visit with friends near Rowstock Corner, five miles down the rather tricky A417. First up was a Ford Granada. Looked like a sales rep and he wasn’t giving the time off day to anyone. Second was an Austin 1100 with an elderly couple out for a Sunday morning drive after church. They weren’t stopping either (or likely to exceed 40MPH). The third car was something else. It was roso red and had to have been the most beautiful automobile I had ever seen (I later discovered it was a 1977 Ferrari Dino). And it stopped! The driver had long black hair, Aviators, a white silk shirt, black leather trousers/pants and alligator skin boots. “Rowstock Corner” I asked optimistically? “Jump in”. And we were off! The first thing was how it became apparent very quickly that this guy could drive. I mean really drive. The next thing was we came up behind the Austin 1100 on a stretch that it is impossible to overtake/pass on. Too bad I thought, having been enjoying the ride up to that point. At which point the driver dropped the car into second gear and sort of put this Austin behind us as if by sleight of hand. I didn’t know they invented a car that could do that? It was as if time had stopped for everything outside this exotic leather cocoon. Once I had recovered my sensibilities I became emboldened enough to ask “so are you in the music business”? “Yeah”. “Go on then, who are you”? “I’m Keith Richards”. Shortly afterwards I told my friends “you won’t believe who just gave me a ride”! At which I told them and they said “correct. We don’t believe you” at which point someone turned on the radio to a news story about how Keith Richards had been arrested for heroine possession in Toronto earlier that day. It took me two years to find out who it really was! So that was it. Cozy Powell yet again giving some random kid the ride of his life (I still remember it 45 years later) but being sure to have a little fun for himself along the way. To be fair he and Kieth Richards did look a bit similar back then… Rest in peace Cozy. I had a tire blow out on me once, at speed, and should never have lived to tell the tale. Yours was just bad luck. At the age of sixteen I knew you were a drummer and because of your generosity of spirit I had also discovered you could drive at least as well as you played your drums. Since then I have come to understand just how good at playing your drums you really were.
@@flexiblestrategist9922 The tire blowing out was bad luck. That he was over the limit doesn’t change that. But I agree he should not have been over the limit.
@@vincentveasey9389 We know that. So did he. His last words (to his girlfriend, via his mobile phone) were "oh shit". It was a tragic accident involving only himself. He'd had also taken a modest amount of alcohol, the autopsy revealed. All on him and he knew it. But he was someone who would have owned it. Do remember it was the very early days of mobile phones and we didn't really know about distracted driving back then. And driving under the influence was still the norm in rural England in the late 1990s, especially for his generation. That has all changed now, and amen to that, but a quarter of a century ago things were what they were.
@@francispower1418 Come on. Sharon Reeve wasn't his girlfriend, she was his married mistress young enough to be his daughter, and the gross old pervert was yelling into the phone bragging to her about reaching 104mph as he drove drunk in the rain, off to pay her a visit in her own husband's bed. And all this was a few years AFTER the thing with the foreign teen who had moved in near his house in the early 1990s, she barely understood English when he first started creeping on her, that one was when he was around 45. As a drummer myself I worship Cozy's playing but let's not kid ourselves about the kind of person he was.
All these skills as well as being an excellent drummer who unlike most drummers was always adapting his technique as you can hear through the various bands he was in Rainbow, Whitesnake, ELP, Sabbath to name just a handful. He had a reputation as a power drummer but was much more than this and had good snare technique too. Listen to his work with Jeff Beck Group. The only drummer capable of joining LZ at that time and it was discussed but never happened.
Interesting as always, but the thought of having to endure all those juvenile pranks and nasty practical jokes, make me glad I was never in the rock world. There’s something pathological about this kind of thing.
What a great bro I'm 67 and still climb ladders I play everything guitar drums and bass but I got to work for a f u c k i n g get my self-medication so I can rock and roll I refuse to join this cult system
Cozy as a hero because he and people like us don't join this f****** system music is more important that's why they try to conform us to play their crap
That's really a great story. You might think that's a nice little story but, man this is a great deep story! This is a story about people. Man... Check, him, out. Man... This is real people. Not even kidding. When is the last time, you heard a story like this one? Mm, mm, mm? Huh? What happened? This isn't like hiding the coffee cup in the laundry basket... The most that, goes on today is, when thousands of pigeons try to make a statue disappear. Like, where is Doug Henning? Or his twin brother with the sledgehammer and watermelon... Oh, ho! I've seen this before. Hey man, where did you get the infield tarp from? Sale on garbage bags, eh.. oh, shoot! They don't do that anymore, either.
.... Blackmores's woman is finer than frogs hair....See, guys, this is why you wanna be a rockstar or at least filthy stinking rich/successful. Women love a guy with money.
Cozy was great,that rainbow line up,down to earth,donnington,ritchie,cozy,roger,graham,don,was probably one of the greatest rock line ups of all time,phenomenal
Hearing this im surpriced he lived as long as he did, but on the other hand it seems like his death was due to being an "on the edge" kind of guy as well. Rock In Peace Cozy, Ronnie and Jimmy.
