Cream were a 1960s British
blues-rock band and supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist
Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker. Their sound was
characterised by a hybrid of
blues,
hard rock and
psychedelic rock. Combining Clapton's blues
guitar playing with the powerful voice and intense basslines of
Jack Bruce and the
jazz-influenced drumming of
Ginger Baker, they have sold over 35 million albums worldwide.
Wheels of Fire was the
world's first platinum-selling double album. Cream is widely
regarded as being the world's first notable and functioning
supergroup.
Cream's music included songs based on traditional blues such as
"
Crossroads" and "
Spoonful", and modern blues such as "
Born Under a Bad Sign", as well
as more eccentric songs such as "Strange Brew", "
Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "
Toad". Cream's biggest hits were "
I Feel Free" (UK, #11), "
Sunshine of Your Love" (US, #5),
"
White Room" (US, #6), "
Crossroads" (US, #28), and "
Badge".
Cream, together with
The
Jimi Hendrix Experience, made a significant impact upon the
popular music of the time, and along with Hendrix popularised the
use of the
wah-wah pedal. They
provided a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that
foreshadowed and influenced the emergence of English bands such as
Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple, and
The Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s.
The band's live performances influenced
progressive rock acts such as
Rush,
jam bands such as
The Allman Brothers Band,
Grateful Dead,
Phish and
heavy metal
bands such as
Black Sabbath
Cream was ranked #16 on
VH1's
100 Greatest
Artists of Hard Rock and Rolling Stone Magazine named them the
sixty-sixth greatest artist of all time.
History
Formation
By July 1966, Eric Clapton's career with
The Yardbirds and
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers had
earned him a reputation as the premier blues guitarist in Britain.
Clapton's
virtuosity and raw power with the instrument inspired one fan to
spray paint the words "Clapton is God" on the wall of an Islington
underground
station. Clapton, however, found the environment of
Mayall's band confining, and sought to expand his playing in a new
band.
In 1966, Clapton met Baker, then the leader of the
Graham Bond Organisation, which at one point
featured Jack Bruce on bass, harmonica and piano. Baker, too, felt
stifled in the GBO, and had grown tired of Graham Bond's drug
addictions and bouts of mental instability. "I had always liked
Ginger", explained Clapton. "Ginger had come to see me play with
John Mayall. After the gig he drove me back to London in his Rover.
I was very impressed with his car and driving. He was telling me
that he wanted to start a band, and I had been thinking about it
too." Each was impressed with the other's playing abilities,
prompting Baker to ask Clapton to join his new, then-unnamed group.
Clapton immediately agreed, on the condition that Baker hire Jack
Bruce as the group's bassist; according to Clapton, Baker was so
surprised at the suggestion that he almost crashed the car.
Clapton had met Bruce when the bassist/vocalist briefly played with
the
Bluesbreakers in March 1966; the
two also had worked together as part of a one-shot band called
Powerhouse (which also
included
Steve Winwood and
Paul Jones). Impressed with Bruce's
vocals and technical prowess, Clapton wanted to work with him on an
ongoing basis.
What Clapton did not know was that while Bruce was in Bond's band,
he and Baker had been notorious for their quarreling. While both
were excellent jazz musicians and respected each other's skills,
the confines of the GBO had proved too small for their egos. Their
volatile relationship included on-stage fights and the
sabotage of one another's instruments. After Baker
fired Bruce from the band, Bruce continued to arrive for gigs;
ultimately, Bruce was driven away from the band after Baker
threatened him at knifepoint.
Nevertheless, Baker and Bruce were able to put aside their
differences for the good of Baker's new trio, which he envisioned
as collaborative, with each of the members contributing to music
and lyrics. The band was named "Cream", as Clapton, Bruce, and
Baker were already considered the "cream of the crop" amongst blues
and jazz musicians in the exploding
British music
scene. Before deciding upon "Cream", the band considered
calling themselves "Sweet 'n' Sour Rock 'n' Roll". Of the trio,
Clapton had the biggest reputation in England; however, he was all
but unknown in the United States, having left
The Yardbirds before "
For Your Love" hit the
American Top Ten.
Cream made
their unofficial debut at the Twisted Wheel
on 29 July 1966. Their official debut came
two nights later at the Sixth Annual Windsor Jazz & Blues
Festival. Being new and with few original songs to their credit,
Cream performed spirited blues reworkings that thrilled the large
crowd and earned them a warm reception. In October, they also got a
chance to jam with
Jimi Hendrix, who
had recently arrived in London. Hendrix was a fan of Clapton's
music, and wanted a chance to play with him onstage. Hendrix was
introduced to Cream through
Chas
Chandler, the bassist of
The
Animals, who was Hendrix's manager.
It was during the early organization that they decided Bruce would
serve as the group's
lead
vocalist. While Clapton was shy about singing, he occasionally
harmonized with Bruce and, in time, took lead vocals on some
notable Cream tunes including "Four Until Late", "Strange Brew",
"Crossroads", and "Badge".
Fresh Cream
Cream's debut album,
Fresh
Cream, was recorded and released in 1966. The album
reached #6 in the UK charts and #39 in the United States. It mainly
consisted of blues covers, including "Four Until Late", "
Rollin' and Tumblin'" (written by
Muddy Waters), "
Spoonful" (written by
Willie Dixon and recorded by
Howlin' Wolf), "
I'm So
Glad" and "Cat's Squirrel". The rest of the album featured
songs written (or co-written) by Jack Bruce, most notably "
I Feel Free" (which was a UK hit single, but
only included on the American edition of the LP), and two by Ginger
Baker (one of which, "
Toad", contained
one of the earliest examples of a
drum
solo in
rock music).
The early Cream
bootlegs display a
much tighter band showcasing more songs. All of the songs are
reasonably short five-minute versions of "N.S.U.", "Sweet Wine" and
"Toad". But a mere two months later, the setlist shortened, with
the songs then much longer.
Disraeli Gears
Cream first visited the United States in March 1967 to play nine
dates at the RKO Theater in New York. They returned to record
Disraeli Gears in New York
between 11 May and 15 May 1967. Cream's second album was released
in November 1967 and reached the Top 5 in the charts on both sides
of the Atlantic. Produced by
Felix
Pappalardi (who later co-founded the Cream-influenced quartet
Mountain) and engineer
Tom Dowd, it was recorded at
Atlantic Studios in New York.
Disraeli
Gears is often considered to be the band's defining effort,
successfully blending psychedelic British rock with American blues.
It was also the first Cream album to consist primarily of original
songs, with only three of the eleven tracks written by others
outside the band.
Disraeli Gears not only features hits
"Strange Brew" and "
Tales of
Brave Ulysses", but also "
Sunshine of Your Love".
Although the album is considered one of Cream's finest efforts, it
has never been well represented in Cream's live sets. Although they
consistently played "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "Sunshine of Your
Love", a setlist consisting of several songs from
Disraeli
Gears was quickly dropped from the set in mid-1967, favouring
longer jams instead of short pop songs. "We're Going Wrong" was the
only additional song from the album which saw some occasional play
time in their live sets. In fact, at their
2005 reunion shows in London, Cream only played three songs
from
Disraeli Gears: "Outside Woman Blues," "We're Going
Wrong," and "Sunshine of Your Love."
In August 1967, Cream played their first headlining dates in
America, playing at the Fillmore West in San Fransisco for the
first time. The concerts were a great success and proved very
influential on both the band itself and the flourishing hippy scene
surrounding them. Faced with a new listening audience, it was
during this time that Cream started to stretch out on stage,
incorporating more jamming time in their repertoire, some songs
reaching 20 minutes. Long drawn-out jams in numbers like "
Spoonful", "N.S.U." and "Sweet Wine" became live
favorites while songs like "Sunshine of Your Love", "Crossroads",
and "Tales of Brave Ulysses" remained reasonably short.
Wheels of Fire
In 1968 came Cream's third release,
Wheels of Fire, which topped the
American charts.
Wheels of Fire studio recordings
showcased Cream moving slightly away from the blues and more
towards a semi-
progressive rock
style highlighted by odd
time
signatures and various orchestral instruments. However, the
band did record Howlin' Wolf's "
Sitting on Top of the World" and
Albert King's "
Born Under A Bad
Sign". According to a
BBC interview with
Clapton, the record company, also handling
Albert King, asked the band to cover "
Born Under a Bad Sign", which became a
popular track off the record. The opening song, "
White Room", became a radio staple. Another song,
"Politician", was written by the band while waiting to perform live
at the BBC. The album's second disc featured three live recordings
from the Winterland Ballroom and one from the Fillmore. Eric
Clapton's second solo from "
Crossroads" has made it to the top 20
in multiple "greatest guitar solo" lists. Ginger Baker's "Toad" is
now widely-regarded as one of the greatest live drum solos in rock
history.
After the completion of
Wheels of
Fire in mid-1968, the band members had had enough and
wanted to go their separate ways. As Baker would state in a 2006
interview with
Music Mart magazine, "It just got to the
point where Eric said to me: 'I've had enough of this,' and I said
so have I. I couldn't stand it. The last year with Cream was just
agony. It damaged my hearing permanently, and today I've still got
a hearing problem because of the sheer volume throughout the last
year of Cream. But it didn't start off like that. In 1966, it was
great. It was really a wonderful experience musically, and it just
went into the realms of stupidity." Also, Bruce and Baker's
combustible relationship proved even worse as a result of the
strain put upon the band by non-stop touring, forcing Clapton to
play the perpetual role of peacekeeper.
Clapton had also fallen under the spell of
Bob
Dylan's former backing group, now known as
The Band, and their debut album,
Music from Big Pink, which proved
to be a welcome breath of fresh air in comparison to the incense
and psychedelia that had informed Cream. Furthermore, he had read a
scathing Cream review in
Rolling
Stone magazine, a publication he had much admired, where
the reviewer,
Jon Landau, called him a
"master of the blues cliché." It was in the wake of that article
that Clapton wanted to end Cream and pursue a different musical
direction.
At the
beginning of their farewell tour on 4 October 1968, in Oakland
, nearly the
entire set consisted of songs from Wheels of Fire: "White
Room", "Politician", "Crossroads", "Spoonful", "Deserted Cities of
the Heart", and "Passing the Time" taking place of "Toad" for a
drum solo. "Passing the Time" and "Deserted Cities" were
quickly removed from the setlist and replaced by "Sitting on Top of
the World" and "Toad".
Goodbye
Cream was eventually persuaded to do one final album. That album,
the appropriately titled
Goodbye, was recorded in late
1968 and released in early 1969, after the band had broken up.
It
featured six songs: three live recordings dating from a concert at
The
Forum
in Los Angeles, California, on 19 October, and
three new studio recordings (the most notable, "Badge", was written by Clapton and George Harrison, who also played rhythm
guitar). "
I'm So Glad", which
first appeared as a studio recording on
Fresh Cream,
appeared as a live track on
Goodbye. It was the only song
to appear on both Cream's first and last albums.
Cream's
"farewell tour" consisted of 22 shows at 19 venues in the United States
between 4 October and 4 November 1968, and two
final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall
on 26 November 1968. Initially another
double album was planned, comprising live material from this tour
plus new studio tracks, but a single album, Goodbye was
released instead with three live tracks taken from their
performance at The Forum in Los Angeles
on 19 October 1968, and three studio tracks, one
written by each of the band members. The final United
States gig was at the Rhode Island Auditorium
, 4 November 1968.
The two Royal Albert Hall concerts were filmed for a
BBC documentary and released on video (and later DVD) as
Farewell Concert. Both
shows were sold out and attracted more attention than any other
Cream concert, but their performance was regarded by many as below
standard. Baker himself said of the concerts: "It wasn’t a good gig
... Cream was better than that ... We knew it was all over. We knew
we were just finishing it off, getting it over with." Cream's live
performances were already declining. In an interview from
Cream: Classic Artists, Ginger Baker himself agreed that
the band was getting worse by the minute.
Cream's supporting acts were
Taste
(featuring a young
Rory Gallagher)
and the newly formed
Yes, who received
good reviews. Three performances early in Cream's farewell tour
were opened by
Deep Purple. Purple had
originally agreed to open the entire U.S. leg of the tour, but
Cream's management removed Purple after only three shows, in spite
of favorable reviews and good rapport between the bands. Purple
fans sometimes attribute the decision to Purple's being "too good"
to open - and upstaging the declining Cream.
Breakup
From its creation, Cream was faced with some fundamental problems
that would later lead to its dissolution in November 1968. The
rivalry between Bruce and Baker created tensions in the band.
Clapton also felt that the members of the band did not listen to
each other enough. Clapton once told a story that when Cream were
playing in a concert, he stopped playing and neither Baker nor
Bruce noticed. Clapton has also commented that Cream's later gigs
mainly consisted of its members showing off. Cream decided that it
would break up in May 1968 during a tour of the US.
Later, in July, an
official announcement was made that the band would break up after a
farewell tour of the United States and after playing two concerts in London
.
Cream
finished its tour of the United States with a 4 November concert in
Rhode
Island
and performed in the UK
for the last
time in London on 25 and 26 November.
Post-Cream
Blind Faith was formed immediately after
the demise of Cream, following an attempt by Clapton to recruit
Steve Winwood into the band in the
hope that he would help act as a buffer between Bruce and Baker.
Inspired by more song-based acts Clapton went on to perform much
different, less improvisational material with
Delaney & Bonnie,
Derek and the Dominos and in his own
long and varied solo career.
Jack Bruce began a varied and successful
solo career with the 1969 release of
Songs for a Tailor, while
Ginger Baker formed a jazz-fusion ensemble out
of the ashes of Blind Faith called
Ginger Baker's Air Force, which
featured Winwood, Blind Faith bassist
Rick
Grech, Graham Bond on sax, and guitarist
Denny Laine of the
Moody
Blues and (later)
Wings.
Reunions
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
In 1993,
Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and set aside their differences to perform at the
induction
ceremony. Initially, the trio was wary about performing,
until encouraging words from
Robbie
Robertson inspired them to try. The end result was an
incendiary set consisting of "Sunshine of Your Love", "Crossroads",
and - interestingly, as the band had never played it live during
their original tenure - "Born Under a Bad Sign". Clapton mentioned
in his acceptance speech that their rehearsal the day before the
ceremony had marked the first time they had played together in 25
years. This performance spurred rumours of a reunion tour. Bruce
and Baker went so far as to say in later interviews that they were,
indeed, interested in touring as Cream. A formal reunion did not
take place immediately, as Clapton, Bruce and Baker continued to
pursue solo projects, although the latter two worked together again
in the mid-1990s as two-thirds of a power trio
BBM with Irish
blues-rock
guitarist
Gary Moore.
2005
In 2004,
it was officially announced that Cream would finally reunite for a
series of four shows, on 2, 3, 5, and 6 May 2005 at the Royal
Albert Hall in London, the venue
of their final concerts in 1968. Even more surprising was
that the reunion came at Clapton's request: although the three
musicians chose not to speak publicly about the shows, Clapton
would later state that he had become more "generous" in regard to
his past, and that the physical health of Bruce and Baker was a
major factor: Bruce had recently undergone a
liver transplant for
liver cancer, and had almost lost
his life, while Baker had severe
arthritis.
Tickets for all four shows sold out in under an hour.
Touts were soon charging outrageous prices for what
became one of the hardest-to-get tickets in rock and roll history.
The performances were recorded for a live CD and DVD. Among those
in attendance were
Paul McCartney and
Ringo Starr,
Steve Winwood,
Roger
Waters,
Brian May of
Queen,
Jimmy Page of
Led Zeppelin and also
Mick Taylor and
Bill
Wyman, formerly of
the Rolling
Stones. The reunion marked the first time the band had played
"
Badge" and "
Pressed Rat and Warthog" live.
The Royal Albert Hall reunion proved a success on both a personal
and financial level, inspiring the reformed band to bring their
reunion to the United States.
For reasons unknown, Cream chose to play at
only one venue, Madison Square Garden
in New York
City
, from 24-26 October 2005. The shows were
marred by some controversy in regard to tickets: the show's
promoters had made a deal with credit card company American Express
to make tickets available to American Express customers only in an
unprecedented week-long pre-sale. Again, touts charged high prices
for tickets; nevertheless, the shows were a financial success and
received critical praise.
Fans of Cream hoped for a full-scale tour, but a statement from
Cream's publicist days after the last performance put the nail in
that particular coffin, when it was announced that Cream would not
tour the United States. In an interview with Jack Bruce in the
December 2005 issue of
Bass Player magazine, Bruce hinted
that he would like to see Cream continue in one way or another,
possibly in the form of a new album, but that a tour was out of the
question: "It would be quite a challenge to try to create music
that would stand up to the classic songs. I've got a few ideas
already — in fact, I wrote a song yesterday that I think would
work. I just don't know if it will happen, because we all feel the
band is so special we don't want to do it that often, if we go on.
We've had offers you wouldn't believe — I didn't believe — for long
world tours, and it's tempting. But none of us wants to accept
because it would take away from the rarity and special nature of
getting together. I'd like to do it every now and again and just
play somewhere, but we could do an album amidst that, and I'm going
to suggest it."
2006-present
In February 2006, Cream received a
Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award in recognition of their contribution to, and influence
upon, modern music. That same month, a "Classic Albums" DVD was
released detailing the story behind the creation and recording of
Disraeli Gears. On the day prior to the Grammy ceremony,
Bruce made a public statement that more one-off performances of
Cream had been planned: multiple dates in a few cities, similar to
the Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden shows. However,
this story was rebutted by both Clapton and Baker, first by Clapton
in a
Times article from April
2006. The article stated that when asked about Cream, Clapton said:
"No. Not for me. We did it and it was fun. But life is too short
I've got lots of other things I would rather do, including staying
at home with my kids. The thing about that band, he says, was that
it was all to do with its limits....it was an experiment".
In an
interview in the UK magazine Music Mart, about the release
of a DVD about the Blind
Faith concert in Hyde Park
1969, Baker commented about his unwillingness to
continue the Cream reunion. These comments were far more
specific and explosive than Clapton's, as they were centred around
his relationship with Jack Bruce. Ginger said, "When he's Dr.
Jekyll, he's fine... It's when he's Mr. Hyde that he's not. And I'm
afraid he's still the same. I tell you this - there won't ever be
any more Cream gigs, because he did Mr. Hyde in New York last
year."
When asked to elaborate, Baker replied: "Oh, he shouted at me on
stage, he turned his bass up so loud that he deafened me on the
first gig. What he does is that he apologises and apologises, but
I'm afraid, to do it on a Cream reunion gig, that was the end. He
killed the magic, and New York was like 1968... It was just a get
through the gig, get the money sort of deal. I was absolutely
amazed. I mean, he demonstrated why he got the sack from Graham
Bond and why Cream didn't last very long on stage in New York. I
didn't want to do it in the first place simply because of how Jack
was. I have worked with him several times since Cream, and I
promised myself that I would never work with him again. When Eric
first came up with the idea, I said no, and then he phoned me up
and eventually convinced me to do it. I was on my best behaviour
and I did everything I could to make things go as smooth as
possible, and I was really pleasant to Jack."
Jack
Bruce told Detroit
's WCSX
radio
station in May 2007 that there were plans for a Cream reunion later
in the year. It was later revealed that the potential
performance was to be November 2007 London as a tribute to
Ahmet Ertegün. The band decided against
it and this was confirmed by Bruce in a letter to the editor of the
Jack Bruce fanzine,
The Cuicoland Express dated 26
September 2007:
- "Dear Marc,
- We
were going to do this tribute concert for Ahmet when it was to be
at the Royal Albert
Hall but decided to pass when it was moved to the
O2
Arena
and seemed to be becoming overly
commercial."
The headlining act for the O2 Arena Ertegun tribute show (postponed
to December 2007) turned out to be another reunited English
hard-rock act,
Led Zeppelin. So while
the band members are all still alive and talking again, no Cream
reunions are planned for the near future.
Recently, Rolling Stone.com has featured the band, and Sirius Radio
stations "Classic Vinyl" and "Deep Tracks" are heavily playing
their songs. This has led some to speculate that a reunion may be
in the works.
Discography
Cream tribute songs
References
- Musicradar.com
- CNN.com
- Whereseric.com
- Cream (1966). Fresh Cream
- Cream (1967). Disraeli Gears
- Cream (1968). Wheels of Fire
- Cream (1969). Goodbye (1969)
- http://books.google.com/books?id=LzzCw6xs9roC
- http://www.thehighwaystar.com/specials/sonic/inglewood68/
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