Cream were a British rock supergroup formed in London in 1966. The group consisted of bassist Jack Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker. Bruce was the primary songwriter and vocalist, although Clapton and Baker contributed to songs. Formed by members of previously successful bands, they are widely considered to be the first so-called supergroup in rock history. Cream were highly regarded for the instrumental proficiency of each of their members.
During their brief three-year career, the band released four albums: Fresh Cream (1966), Disraeli Gears (1967), Wheels of Fire (1968), and Goodbye (1969). Beginning with Disraeli Gears, the band were joined in the studio by producer and multi-instrumentalist Felix Pappalardi. Their music spanned rock styles such as blues rock, psychedelia, and hard rock. Throughout their career, they sold more than 15 million records worldwide. The group's third album, Wheels of Fire (1968), is the first platinum-selling double album. They scored international hits with singles such as "Sunshine of Your Love" (1967) and "White Room" (1968).
Tensions between Bruce and Baker led to their decision in May 1968 to break up, although the band were persuaded to make a final album, Goodbye, and to tour, culminating in two final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 and 26 November 1968, which were filmed and shown in theatres, then in 1977 released as a home video, Farewell Concert. The group briefly reunited twice following their breakup, in 1993 for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and again in 2005 for a series of concerts. Bruce died in 2014 followed by Baker in 2019, leaving Clapton as the last living member of the group.
In 1993, Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."Cream: inducted in 1993". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved 25 April 2012 They were included in both Rolling Stone and VH1's lists of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", at numbers 67 and 61, respectively. "The Greatest Artists of All Time". VH1/Stereogum. Retrieved 25 April 2012.Waters, Roger. "Cream: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 25 April 2012 They were also ranked number 16 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".
History Formation (1966) By July 1966, Eric Clapton's career with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as one of the premier blues guitarists 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 drummer of the Graham Bond Organisation, for which Jack Bruce had played 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. "I had always liked Ginger", explained Clapton. "Ginger had come to see me play with the Bluesbreakers. 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 Bruce, who had joined Manfred Mann since leaving Graham Bond, 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, Baker and he 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.Tobler, John and Frame, Pete: Jack Bruce interview, Zigzag # 22, autumn 1971
Baker and Bruce tried 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" among 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 unknown in the United States, having left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the American Top Ten.
The band made their unofficial debut at the Twisted Wheel on 29 July 1966, with the official debut two nights later at the Sixth Annual Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival. Being new and with few original songs to their credit, they performed blues reworkings that thrilled the large crowd and earned them 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.
During the early organisation, they decided Bruce would serve as the group's lead vocalist. While Clapton was shy about singing, he occasionally harmonised 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 six in the UK charts and number 39 in the US. 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 Baker expanded upon his early composition "Camels and Elephants", written in 1965 with the Graham Bond Organisation.
Disraeli Gears (1967)
The band first visited the US in March 1967 to play nine dates at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in New York City. Their impact was small, 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 and 15 May 1967.GP Flashback : Cream, June 1967 – Guitar Player Article – June 1967 This, the band's second album, was released in November 1967 and reached the top five in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Produced by Felix Pappalardi (who later co-founded the Cream-influenced hard rock band Mountain) and engineer Tom Dowd, it was recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City.
Disraeli Gears is often considered to be the band's defining effort, successfully blending psychedelic British rock with American blues. It also included "Sunshine of Your Love", which became the group's highest-charting song, peaking at number five on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. 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 Australian Martin Sharp who also wrote the lyrics for "Tales of Brave Ulysees", and the resulting changes delayed its release for several months. The cover was remarkable for the time, with a psychedelic design patterned over a publicity photo of the trio.
In August 1967, the band played their first headlining dates in the US, 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 20 minutes. Long, drawn-out jams in numbers like "Spoonful", "N.S.U.", "I'm So Glad", and "Sweet Wine" became live favourites, 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. The album was recorded in a spate of short sessions from July 1967 to June 1968. Still a relative novelty, the double album of two LP records was well-suited to extended solos. The psychedelic cover was again designed by artist Australian Martin Sharp. The Wheels of Fire studio recordings showcased the band moving away from the blues and more towards a semiprogressive 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, their record company, Atco Records, 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 included 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 grown tired of their exhausting touring schedule and increasingly loud jamming, and wanted to go their separate ways. Baker stated 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." Bruce and Baker's combustible relationship proved even worse as a result of the strain put upon the band by nonstop touring, forcing Clapton to play the role of perpetual peacekeeper.
Clapton had also become interested in the music 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 to Clapton in comparison to the psychedelia and volume that had defined Cream. Furthermore, he had read a scathing Cream review in Rolling Stone, a publication he had much admired, in which the reviewer, Jon Landau, called him a "master of the blues cliché". In the wake of that article, Clapton wanted to end Cream and pursue a different musical direction.
At the beginning of the band's farewell tour on 4 October 1968, in Oakland, California, nearly the entire set consisted of songs from Wheels of Fire: "White Room", "Politician", "Crossroads", "Spoonful", and "Deserted Cities of the Heart", with "Passing the Time" taking the 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 and break-up (1968–1969)