OVER THE TOP

Cozy Powell carved out a pretty good career for himself and certainly starting out in the early seventies as part of Jeff Beck's band was getting off on the right foot. "Over The Top" was his first solo album released in 1979. Three guitarists help out and I'm not the biggest fan of Clempson or Marsden but yes Gary Moore does it for me but his bluesy style will unfortunately be on one track only as in "Killer". Check out his playing 5 1/2 minutes in to the end. Jack Bruce on bass. Nice. Don Airey adds synths and piano and man I could do without the synths on here. Especially "Heidi Goes To Town" where the synths sound bad. Even the self titled closer features plenty of those synths and no guitar. Nooo! It doesn't end well. The opener is a cover and then we get "El Sid" with that great sounding rhythm section and the guitar doesn't sound good at all to start but it sure gets better later on. And speaking of Jeff Beck "The Loner" is dedicated to him. The guitar is the focus as bass and drums support. Some piano then the synths lead 3 minutes in but the guitar is back leading quickly.

I really like Cozy's playing and he sounds more "Rock" than "Jazz" to my ears.