Former Europe guitarist Kee Marcello recalled his worst moment onstage, saying his life had flashed before his eyes as he saw a hand grenade landing near him.

“I played a festival and someone threw a hand grenade onstage,” Marcello told Music Radar in a new interview. “It landed right in front of me. It turned out to be a smoke grenade, but it looked exactly like the cliched idea of what you think a hand grenade looks like.”

He recalled that he "just froze. My life was passing before me until someone grabbed it and threw it away. [The crewman] got a celebration that evening where we took care of him properly, because that was so brave. People read about it in the paper and said, ‘Come on, Kee, it was just a smoke grenade … ’ But how was I supposed to know? There’s no way you could tell by looking at it. That was really scary.”

In a previous interview Marcello was asked if safety issues at concerts concerned him. “I never really thought about it,” he replied. “I mean, you would be the last to know. Once in Oslo, I had death threats against me, but my then manager didn't tell me until after the gig. But, you know, I don't really think about that stuff.”

In the new interview, he said he regretted that he was regarded as having had no previous career when he replaced John Norum in Europe in 1986. “The entire media sort of took for granted that I was a young kid that had a big break, which was far from the truth,” said Marcello, who was a member of Easy Action in the early '80s.

“Some of my best work I had already started on, you know?" he continued. "I’d had gold and platinum albums before I was even in Europe. I was already established, and I was treated like this young guy who came from nowhere, which felt so unfair after all I’d done.”

 

 

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