Jeff Beck, who recruited Powell in 1970, recalls his big break clearly.
"I was auditioning for drummers and I was late. When I finally arrived there were 15 drum kits set up and one double kit in red glitter," Beck told Classic Rock magazine.
"I said to my assistant: “Whose is that flash-bastard kit over there?” And she pointed and said: “He’s the guy you want.”
"I said: “Let me hear him first and then we’ll go from there.” Cozy and I played for about a minute and you could see all the other drummers packing up their kits.
"We struck up a friendship from that time on. His idol was John Bonham, and I guess he was my John Bonham."
Jeff Beck's recording with Stevie Wonder (Superstition) coincided with his (unfinished and unreleased) recording with Cozy at the Motown studios.
In another Jeff Beck' lost interview the guitar palyer said: 'Stevie Ray Vaughan was the closest thing to Hendrix'.
Beck said simply, “I think Stevie Ray was the closest thing to Hendrix when it came to playing the blues.“
"There's clearly a touch of Jimi Hendrix in Vaughan's outburst in particular – not just the obvious technical skill and similar blues influences, but in the solo's sense of adventure, and devil-may-care fearlessness."
"When I saw Jimi we knew he was going to be trouble. And by ‘we’ I mean me and Eric [Clapton], because Jimmy [Page] wasn’t in the frame at that point. I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating. He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs."
