Cream were a British rock power trio formed in 1966 consisting of drummer Ginger Baker, guitarist/singer Eric Clapton and lead singer/bassist Jack Bruce. The group’s third album, Wheels of Fire (1968), is the world’s first platinum-selling double album. The band is widely regarded as the world’s first successful supergroup. In their career, they sold more than 15 million records worldwide. Their 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 current material such as “Strange Brew”, “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Toad”.
The band’s biggest hits were “I Feel Free” (UK number 11), “Sunshine of Your Love” (US number 5), “White Room” (US number 6), “Crossroads” (US number 28), and “Badge” (UK number 18).
The band made a significant impact on the popular music of the time, and, along with Jimi Hendrix and other notable guitarists and bands, popularized the use of the wah-wah pedal. They provided a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that foreshadowed and influenced the emergence of British bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. They also influenced American southern rock groups the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band’s live performances influenced progressive rock acts such as Rush.
Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Formation: 1966
By July 1966, Eric Clapton’s career with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as the premier blues guitarist in Britain. Clapton, however, found the environment of Mayall’s band confining, and sought to expand his playing in a new band. In 1966, Clapton met Ginger Baker, then the leader of the Graham Bond Organisation, which at one point featured Jack Bruce on bass guitar, harmonica and piano. Baker felt stifled in the Graham Bond Organisation and had grown tired of Graham Bond’s drug addictions and bouts of mental instability.
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 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 November 1965; the two also had recorded together as part of an ad hoc group dubbed 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.
In contrast, while Bruce was in Bond’s band, he and Baker had been notorious for their quarrelling. 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.
Baker and Bruce 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. Initially, the group were referred to and billed as “The Cream”, but starting officially with its first record releases, the trio came to be known as “Cream”.
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.
The band made its unofficial debut at the Twisted Wheel on 29 July 1966. Its official debut came two nights later at the Sixth Annual Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. Being new and with few original songs to its credit, they performed blues reworkings that thrilled the large crowd and earned it a warm reception. In October the band 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.
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 several Cream tracks including “Four Until Late”, “Strange Brew”, “World of Pain”, “Outside Woman Blues”, “Crossroads”, and “Badge”.
Fresh Cream: 1966
The band’s debut album, Fresh Cream, was recorded and released in 1966. The album reached number 6 in the UK charts and number 39 in the United States. It was evenly split between self-penned originals and blues covers, including “Four Until Late”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin'”, “Spoonful”, “I’m So Glad” and “Cat’s Squirrel.” The rest of the songs were written by either Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker. (“I Feel Free”, a UK hit single, was included on only the American edition of the LP.) The track “Toad” contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music as Ginger Baker expanded upon his early composition “Camels and Elephants”, written in 1965 with the Graham Bond Organisation.
Early Cream bootlegs display a much tighter band showcasing more songs. All 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: 1967
The band first visited the United States in March 1967 to play nine dates at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in New York. There was little impact, as impresario Murray the K placed them at the bottom of a six-act bill that performed three times per date, eventually reducing the band to one song per concert. They returned to record Disraeli Gears in New York between 11 May and 15 May 1967. This, the band’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 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.
In addition to “Strange Brew” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses”, Disraeli Gears features “Sunshine of Your Love,” which became the group’s unofficial anthem. Bruce and Pete Brown came upon the idea in a state of near desperation in the wee hours. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from the long and fruitless night at his apartment, the bleary-eyed Bruce pulled out his double bass again and played a riff. At that point, Brown looked out the window and saw the sun was about to rise: “It’s getting near dawn …,” he said to himself. Brown put the words on paper then thought some more: “When lights close their tired eyes”.
The album was originally slated for release in the summer of 1967, but the record label opted to scrap the planned cover and repackage it with a new psychedelic cover, designed by artist Martin Sharp, and the resulting changes delayed its release for several months. The album was remarkable for the time, with a psychedelic design patterned over a publicity photo of the trio.
In August 1967, they played their first headlining dates in the US, playing first at The Fillmore in San Francisco and later at The Pinnacle in Los Angeles. The concerts were a great success and proved very influential on both the band itself and the flourishing hippie scene surrounding them. Upon discovering a growing listening audience, the band began to stretch out on stage, incorporating more time in their repertoire, some songs reaching jams of twenty minutes. Long, drawn-out jams in numbers like “Spoonful”, “N.S.U.”, “I’m So Glad”, 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: 1968
In 1968 came the band’s third release, Wheels of Fire, which topped the American charts. Still a relative novelty, the double album of two LP discs was well-suited to extended solos. Wheels of Fire studio recordings showcased the band 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. Clapton’s second solo from “Crossroads” has made it to the top 20 in multiple “greatest guitar solo” lists.
After the completion of Wheels of Fire in mid-1968, the band members had had enough and wanted to go their separate ways.
Goodbye and break-up: 1968–69
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. Equipment during these years had also improved; new Marshall amplifier stacks produced more power, and Jack Bruce pushed the volume levels higher, creating tension for Baker, who would have trouble competing with roaring stacks.
Clapton spoke of a concert during which 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 they 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 were eventually persuaded to do one final album. The 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 (including “Badge”, which was written by Clapton and George Harrison, who also played rhythm guitar and was credited as “L’Angelo Misterioso”). “I’m So Glad” was included among the live tracks.
Cream’s “farewell tour” consisted of 22 shows at 19 venues in the United States from 4 October to 4 November 1968, and two final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 and 26 November 1968 that were opened by Yes who had formed three months earlier. The final U.S. gig was at the Rhode Island Auditorium on 4 November. The band arrived late and, due to local restrictions, were able to perform only two songs, “Toad” and a 20+ minute version of “Spoonful”.
