Former Rainbow keyboardist Tony Carey recently opened up about his troubled relationship with late drummer Cozy Powell. He explained how Powell’s aggressive nature ultimately contributed to his tragic death. Carey shared these insights during an interview with Classic Album Review.
The discussion centered around the hostile dynamic between the two musicians during their time in Rainbow together.
When asked about Powell’s hatred toward him, Carey provided detailed examples of the drummer’s aggressive behavior both on and off stage.
“Yeah, Cozy hated me. Ritchie wasn’t the real problem. Cozy was the real problem. He couldn’t stand me. Eventually, they mobbed me out of the band. I laughed myself. I mean he fired me twice,” Carey said.
Carey described specific incidents that highlighted Powell’s dangerous temperament.
“He threw a drumstick at me that must have been this big around on stage and missed my eye by he had deadly aim. I must have moved and he would have put my eye out with the thing and I don’t know why but he was really really aggressive,” he continued.
The keyboardist also recalled Powell’s reckless driving habits during tours. These habits foreshadowed the drummer’s eventual fate.
“We would all rent cars at the airport for in somewhere Frankfurt, say, and the show was in France, and we’d get maps. This is way before the internet or anything. And he’d been a Mercedes or something fast. And I’d rent a Ford Cortina or whatever. We wouldn’t drive in any kind of like ordinary fashion. And a couple of shows I rolled up to the show after soundcheck. The audience is there. One of them was an open air and if I’d been 10 minutes later, I would have missed the show. I guess they didn’t care,” Carey explained.
Carey connected Powell’s aggressive personality to his tragic death in 1998.
“And just this kind of aggression and I have to go back to our upbringing, you know, I’m a hippie. I’m non not aggressive. And then he would we were at the chateau for long live rock and roll and they had a go-kart there and he’d drive that thing in the parking lot in the gravel way too fast and like dangerously fast and he wore a marble racing team jacket and I guess he’d driven some kind of professional or something or been on some kind of team racing him and then he wasn’t even 40 and he drove his Saab into a tree, you know, and he just go going way too fast,” he said.
“I guess it was raining and he was on the phone or something and wasn’t paying attention and smashed his car up and killed himself,” Carey concluded.
Carey’s observations about Powell’s reckless behavior proved tragically prophetic when examining the circumstances of the drummer’s death.
SaabPlanet reported that Powell died on April 5, 1998, following a car crash while driving his Saab 9000 Turbo at 104 mph in bad weather on the M4 motorway near Bristol. The excessive speed in dangerous conditions reflected the same reckless driving patterns Carey had witnessed during their touring days together.
The crash details further supported Carey’s assessment of Powell’s dangerous lifestyle choices. Best Classic Bands documented that Powell had been drinking and was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. These factors significantly worsened the outcome of the crash.
Powell’s passion for speed and racing, which Carey mentioned in his recollections, was well-documented throughout the drummer’s life. Rock and Roll Garage noted that Powell was known for his love of fast cars and racing. This explained his wearing of the Marble Racing Team jacket that Carey remembered from their time recording together.
The tragic irony of Powell’s death at age 50 was that his aggressive nature had created tension within Rainbow and led to conflicts with bandmates like Carey. This same trait ultimately became the very characteristic that cost him his life on that rainy April evening in 1998.
