The drummer Brian May called “one of the world’s greats”
Brian May has been no stranger to working with some of the greatest musicians that the world has ever seen.
Freddie Mercury was practically a dynamo every single time he took to the stage, and the fact that May could have found time to work with Eddie Van Halen when he wasn’t making great licks for Queen makes you wonder whether he has the number of every single virtuoso in the rock and roll world. But even when times were at their darkest, May could always rely on a few musical heroes to help pick him up and carry him through his own records.
Queen were always known for their massive spirit every single time they made a new record but how the hell were they supposed to carry on after Mercury’s passing? There’s no way of replacing one of the gods of rock and roll frontmen, and when the remaining members put together Made in Heaven, it felt more like a postscript for their career than anything too ambitious. They simply wanted to pay tribute to their friend, but May wasn’t done making rock and roll records.
He wanted the chance to make something of himself as a solo artist, and Cozy Powell seemed to be his second in command whenever he started putting down his own licks. He could have put together the supergroup to end all supergroups if he wanted to, but Powell was the rock that made May push himself further when making his own records like Back to the Light. And when you listen to his drumming, you can really hear why.
Powell had already been a workhorse drummer as far back as working with bands like Rainbow and Black Sabbath, but no one ever seemed to realise the powerhouse they had on their hands. Most people had come from the technical school of drumming, but Powell was a descendant of people like John Bonham, always hitting the skins as if he was trying to shatter the drum head every single time he played.
And as far as May was concerned, what he did opened the door for what rock and roll drummers were able to do. After all, some of the best drummers of the modern age, like Chad Smith and the late Taylor Hawkins, were putting their backs into the way they drummed, and that kind of forceful playing is something that Powell helped invent alongside people like Bonzo and Carmine Appice.
Powell didn’t have the same kind of notoriety that his drumming brethren did before his passing, but May will always remember him as one of the almighty drummers in rock and roll when honouring him after the fact, saying, “The people that Cozy worked with are a catalogue of the world’s greatest, from Ritchie Blackmore to Tony Iommi to Jeff Beck. He deserves [praise] because he was one of the world’s greats.”
And when working with someone like May, you really need to have that kind of power to get a lot of those songs to ring out like they were supposed to. May was always the resident rocker in Queen, so when he flew solo for the first time, it was easy for him to rely on having that kind of strong backbeat behind him, even when he was making his own versions of songs like ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’.
So while many people fawn over Queen’s collaboration with Paul Rodgers and even the admirable job Adam Lambert has done, Cozy Powell will forever be one of the unsung heroes of May’s career. He was one of the most brilliant sidemen that anyone could have asked for, and the lion’s share of May’s solo career comes down to him finding a confidante like him whenever he walked into the studio.
