Eric Clapton and his music

Сережа, спасибо за все эти материалы. Это бесценный вклад!
Вот маленькая новость от меня

May 7, 2005

Ringo and wife Barbara, shared a box last night wth Paul and Heather McCartney at the Royal Albert Hall in London to watch the legendary band Cream perform in concert.

Коля, дорогой! Всегда рад чем-то помочь настоящим любителям музыки, таким как ты!

А насчет новости...Судя по записям им было на что посмотреть и чему поучиться! ;))))

ПОКА НЕ ВИДИТ АВТОР...
Introduction
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup

"THEY WILL BE CALLED CREAM..."

Cream caused a sensation when they burst on the scene in 1966. The triumvirate of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker unleashed a dazzling blend of musical styles, played with unrivalled skill, energy and panache. The very name of their band seemed bold and uncompromising. Yet it was a legitimate choice. Cream was simply the best.

When the band was launched with a formal announcement by their manager Robert Stigwood, it was proudly proclaimed 'The first is last and the last is first, but the first, the second and the last are Cream. They will be called Cream...'

It sounded egocentric. Certainly the new group brought together some of the most gifted musicians of the day. Although the band's roots lay in the traditions of jazz, blues and rock'n'roll, their energy and vision ensured Cream's music was new, fresh and individual. It wasn't long before they took the world by storm with a succession of highly distinctive hit records and block busting concerts that set new standards of excitement.

In age when rock music was exploding, Cream broke down musical barriers. Among their admirers was trumpeter Miles Davis, and it has been claimed that his celebrated switch to a jazz-rock policy with such albums as the ground influenced Bitches Brew breaking work of Cream. The British group also introduced the concept of the 'power trio', which laid the foundations for the entire heavy rock genre. Cream inspired and set standards for the countless young players who followed in their wake. Between them Clapton, Baker and Bruce helped re-define the arts of playing rock guitar, bass and drums. On a broader level, Cream also proved it was possible to retain musical ideals, while achieving huge commercial success. It was a pattern repeated in the future by such trios as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Rush and The Police.

Yet Cream were never just a 'heavy rock group.' Their dynamic 'live' shows emphasised improvised solos and block buster instrumentals like 'Stepping' Out', Train Time' and 'Toad', but they also played with attention to dynamics and displayed a harmonic and rhythmic sophistication far in advance of their contemporaries.

Developed their song writing skills with lyricist Pete Brown, Cream devised material that often combined poetry with cinematic imagery. Surreal tone poems and hook laden chart hits took their place alongside ballads, music hall ditties, rock tunes and down home blues. Cream took risks and experimented. Not every idea succeeded but they were never predictable. There was no great master plan to become pioneers of 'progressive rock.' As Ginger Baker cheerfully insists 'We were a pop group!'

Often thought controversial or avant garde at the time, Cream songs like 'I Feel Free,' 'White Room,' 'Strange Brew,' 'Politician' and their biggest hit 'Sunshine Of Your Love' are now revived on innumerable soundtracks and in TV ads. They can be heard in movies like True Lies, Uncommon Valour and Good Fellas and are used whenever directors wish to evoke nostalgia and the free wheeling spirit of the Sixties. In the summer of the year 2000 the haunting Bruce Brown song 'White Room' was being used to advertise Applemac computers in a major TV campaign, bringing the sound of Cream into the 21st century,

During their meteoric career the group made just four best selling albums including their 1966 debut Fresh Cream, followed by Disraeli Gears (1967), Wheels Of Fire (1968) and Goodbye (1969). Virtually their entire recorded output was collected on the long over due 1997 CD box set Those Were The Days (Polydor), together with demos and alternative versions. Listeners, who heard these tracks, perhaps for the first time, were struck by the richness of the material as well as the spontaneity and intensity of the performances.

Cream's recordings seemed amazingly diverse, compared to the work of groups who tend to compress their music into set patterns according to the dictates of producers and record companies. This may well be the right way to proceed, given the meandering excesses of the Seventies Prog Rock generation.

But Cream was focused in its own way. They had their own well-defined sound, and the search for new angles, away from basic blues-rock fare was hardly surprising, given their art and music school backgrounds. The need to explore, to learn and keep an open mind was an important part of their training. A sense of humour and a taste for anarchy was also considered an asset in the Sixties. All these attitudes and influences took their place in formulating the music of Cream.

In the midst of the acclaim for their achievements, it's easy to forget that the so-called 'super group' was formed in humble circumstances with a minimum of publicity, investment and equipment. The 'sensation' they caused was largely confined to the cognoscenti, a few music critics and those eager fans that queued up in the rain to pay a few shillings to see the group play their first few gigs in London pubs and clubs.

Despite the esteem in which Clapton, Baker and Bruce were held, when the fledgling group had the temerity to ask a promoter for an extra five pounds for a sold out gig, it was refused! When they wanted to record songs that weren't just recycled R&B standards, they were greeted with blank incomprehension and even hostility. Sometimes demo tapes were 'lost' and sessions sobotaged. "Cream was a success, despite the industry," recalls Jack Bruce.

Cream changed the lives of each of its founder members. They were all three powerful yet intensely different characters. In many ways Ginger Baker was the driving force. He came up with the idea, got it together and brought the group to the attention of their manager, the impresario Robert Stigwood. Ginger was regarded as one of the finest rock and jazz drummers in Europe. He had established his name and achieved cult status while playing alongside Jack Bruce in the Graham Bond Organisation.

Within a few years of Cream's success, his status was transformed, and the hard hitting extrovert had become a legend and remains the epitome of the wild eyed rock drummer.

Jack Bruce, the band's singer, bass player and co-composer, found his wings with Cream after many years of struggle and hard work. In the aftermath of Cream's acceptance he was able to launch a busy solo career, leading his own groups and working with a vast range of musicians from Tony Williams to Frank Zappa.

Eric Clapton devised the name Cream and was also a prime motivator in forming the group. After his previous experience with The Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric found that Cream gave him the chance to play with complete freedom and to experiment and develop a more mature guitar style. The tempestuous trio was something of a hot house and a highly competitive musical environment. The Cream experience wasn't always a happy one for Eric, but it was like a finishing school that honed his talents and paved the way for a tremendously successful solo career. He was and remains the finest blues guitarist of his generation, a warm and sensitive singer/songwriter and the creator of many of popular music's most moving and memorable themes from 'Layla' to 'Wonderful Tonight' and 'Tears In Heaven.' He has never forgotten his Cream years and songs like 'Badge,' 'Sunshine Of Your Love' and 'White Room' remain staples of his 'live' performances.

In their heyday Cream were at the forefront of a huge music explosion that overlapped and followed on from The Beatles era. Together with The Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd, Cream raised expectations to fever pitch and for many of its adherents, delivered the musical equivalent of an acid trip. The sheer intensity of Cream shows remained locked in the memories of eager audiences for years afterwards.

Whether wowing hippies at the Fillmore, San Francisco or delighting fans at the Saville Theatre, London, Cream became Flower Power icons and an integral part of the whole Sixties' psychedelic experience.

With fame, money and success came problems. It was a heavy burden of responsibility for any band, to be expected to turn on their fans night after night on endless tours. Each member of Cream had his own ego and temperament. Eventually the strain took its toll and the band, which began as brothers, came to an end with abrupt finality after only three years at the top. There was a huge sense of disappointment and loss among fans when Cream broke up in December, 1968. When they completed their final recordings for their Goodbye album, played their farewell concerts in the States and at the Royal Albert Hall, London in November they left their fans in limbo.

Yet this was probably their wisest move. The complete break ensured that Cream split at the top of their game. They are remembered today only for great shows, hit singles and ground breaking albums that left their public desperate for more. There was no attempt to drag out their career together, no legacy of failed albums or less than successful 'come back' tours, often the fate of bands who never gave up trying.

In the light of subsequent developments, during which pop and rock has undergone huge, fundamental changes, it is unlikely that Cream could have survived and prospered into the 21st Century in its original form.

Pete Brown, the poet and singer who co-wrote many of Cream hit songs with Jack Bruce is frankly amazed that such a musicianly band was so acceptable. "Looking back now, it seems extraordinary it should have been such a success world wide. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Luckily they were all strong people and managed to motivate themselves. At first people thought they were going to be just a Chicago style blues band playing a few clubs. Indeed the whole operation was club orientated and based on percentages. The British music business has always been terribly blinkered. Very few people could see that Cream was going to make it in America and around the world."

Says Jack Bruce: "Cream showed that rock musicians could play. But that was a double-edged sword, because it became very unfashionable to be able to play didn't it? But Cream was a nice little trio. It certainly was an influence—on the whole future of rock music."

The Formation
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew

BAKER'S IDEA

While working as a reporter at Melody Maker's London office, I got an urgent 'phone call one morning in June 1966. The caller was Peter 'Ginger' Baker, the drummer from the Graham Bond Organisation. He wanted to tell me exciting news about a new band that would feature himself, together with his old bass playing partner Jack Bruce, and...."get this Chris....Eric Clapton!" And who was going to manage this extraordinary new outfit? "Old Stigboot!" It should have been front page news - but the cover was already done. Instead the story went inside, in a few terse paragraphs. It was enough to cause a sensation among those thousands of fans who went every week to see the extraordinary roster of R&B bands of all styles who packed the clubs in those pre-disco days. Eric, Jack and Ginger were already heroes as far as they were concerned. The idea of them coming together in an all-star band was almost too much to take.

It certainly caused a shock wave among the managers and band leaders who thought they had first call on these musicians' services. Within hours of the MM hitting the streets, I was inundated with ' phone calls demanding retractions and press releases issuing denials. I learned that day, the more vehement a denial, the more likely a story was true. The headline on our exclusive story was:"Eric, Jack & Ginger Team Up" and went on to say: "A sensational new 'Groups' Group' starring Eric Clapton. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker is being formed. Top groups will be losing star instrumentalist as a result. Manfred Mann will lose bassist, harmonica player, pianist and singer Jack Bruce; John Mayall will lose brilliant blues guitarist Eric Clapton and Graham Bond's Organisation will lose incredible drummer Ginger Baker. The group say they hope to start playing at clubs, ballrooms and theatres in a month's time. It is expected they will remain as a trio with Jack as featured vocalist."

Two weeks later the story was confirmed, despite the howls of protest from the managers of Manfred Mann and John Mayall's Blues Breakers. Robert Stigwood, who had been manager of the Graham Bond Organisation, told me he had signed the new band. "They will be called The Cream, and will be represented by me for agency and management. They will record for my Reaction label and go into the studios next week to cut tracks for their first single. "

Robert confirmed that the band would make its debut at the National Jazz And Blues Festival at Windsor. In the meantime Jack Bruce would continue with Manfred Mann and Clapton would stay with John Mayall. Ginger Baker would leave Graham Bond on July 20, 1966, to be replaced by Jon Hiseman.

Just a few months before the story broke, I had come up with an idea for a "Groups' Group" in an article that proposed an imaginary line up of players from the best bands of the day. The phrase would later be changed to "Super group" to reflect the commercial success that such a line could enjoy, but the original concept was to celebrate musicianship. It was rather like the 'all star' bands to be found in jazz.

We asked a dozen group musicians to chose their favourites and I put in my own choice as well. Among the voters were Mick Jagger, Spencer Davis, Ray Davies, Eric Burdon, Paul Samwell-Smith, Chris Farlowe, Keith Moon, Paul Jones, Tony Hicks (of the Hollies), Steve Marriott, Georgie Fame, and Tony Crane (of the Merseys).

My votes produced a band that would include Steve Winwood (lead guitar and vocals) and Ginger Baker drums. Although each member of the Cream would get some votes, nobody concocted a line up with all three. The ultimate Group's Group based on the number of votes for each contender, consisted of Eric Clapton (guitar), Bruce Welch (rhythm guitar), John Entwistle (bass), Brian Auger (organ), Ginger Baker (drums) and Steve Winwood (vocals), actually closer to Blind Faith than Cream.

The three men who would eventually achieve lasting international fame in Cream had all enjoyed varying degrees of success and recognition during their formative years. I'd first met Eric Clapton when he was a young Mod in The Yardbirds, and Jack Bruce I'd got to know since I'd first seen him pounding a double bass in Bruce Turner's Jump Band at a jazz festival.

Eric was already a star with a devoted following and Clapton was being revered as 'God' by his fans, and being accorded an unprecedented level of hero worship on his gigs with John Mayall's Blues Breakers. I managed to tear myself away from Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames at the Flamingo to go and see Eric with the Bluesbreakers at a gig in Putney. It was no exaggeration to say that everyone at the gig was in awe of the moustachioed figure, whose guitar playing seemed blessed by an almost mystical power.

We were all impressed by Eric, but such was his command over audiences, he hardly needed any further introduction. Or so it seemed. Taking Eric as face value as a highly rated lead guitarist, who seemed so self-contained and assured meant that ultimately many failed to fully understand or appreciate the inner conflicts and musical ambitions that motivated him. Eric was always one step ahead of everyone around him. Change and movement meant more to him than being conveniently slotted into a safe, rigid category.

However there was one member of Cream who I had championed since I first heard about him from musicians like Graham Bond and Charlie Watts. The Stones' drummer had consistently praised Ginger Baker, who had who replaced him in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, while Bond proudly boasted that Ginger was 'The greatest drummer in Europe," adding the European rider as a courtesy to the great American drummers. Ginger had other ideas. He was pretty sure that aside from his idols Max Roach, Art Blakey and Phil Seamen, he was the greatest drummer in the world.

Bond had first raved to me about Baker when the former was still a bebop alto sax player on the modern scene. So I knew of the drummer's reputation long before I joined the MM and it was a priority of mine to win him recognition.

I was just blown away by the sheer dynamic attack Ginger brought to the drums. His was a unique style, incredibly daring in its day. He broke all the rules that inhibited most British jazz and pop players. His blitzkrieg approach, involving a spectacular assault on the tom toms and bass drum, was violent, unorthodox, unpredictable and tremendously exciting.

But despite his reputation as a hell raiser, both on and off the kit he was a conscientious band player, who had been raised in both traditional and modern jazz environments. He took such matters as drum rudiments and time keeping very seriously. His 'take no prisoners' approach was anathema to sections of the jazz establishment, but he found freedom and fulfilment in the Graham Bond Organisation, where jazz, blues and rock were mixed with confidence and bravado.

Ginger Baker
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew

Ginger Baker was born in Lewisham, South London on August 19, 1939. He grew up in neighbouring New Eltham on the borders of Sidcup and went to school in Woolwich. As a teenager he was filled with a restless energy which he employed training and competing as a racing cyclist. This undoubtedly gave him the strong leg muscles which later helped him play double bass drums with such speed. But his first instrument was the trumpet, which he played in the local Air Training Corp band. Their drummer also played with a trad jazz band led by Dick Charlesworth, and Ginger became intrigued by the idea of playing drums himself. The two lads would get out all the ATC band's military drums for fun and hammer away on them together.

Baker was also keenly interested in modern art and modern jazz, and with his flaming red hair and penchant for wearing bright green suits, he quickly became known as a rebellious beatnik. From his earliest days, despite his wild, eccentric appearance and his artistic flair, Ginger was a business like achiever, determined to try his hand at anything. In later years he would become involved in sculpture, painting, rally driving and polo.

By the age of 15 Ginger had nurtured plans to become a professional racing cyclist until he bought his first drum kit. "I was a cyclist and I wrecked my bike," recalls Ginger. "I had been into drums from a listening point of view for quite a time. I used to bang on the table with knives and forks and drive everybody mad. I used to get the kids at school dancing by banging rhythms on the school desk! They kept on at me to sit in with this band. The band wasn't very keen, but in the end I sat in and played the bollocks off their drummer. And that was the first time I'd sat on a kit. I heard one of the band turn round and say 'We've got a drummer.' and I thought, 'Hello, this is something I can do.'"

His first kit he described as "a bit alarming." It was a flimsy toy set which he bought for three pounds. He had wanted a kit that would have cost twelve pounds but he'd already spent seventy on his racing bike and his parents couldn't afford to give him any more. He finally raised the money by getting a job in commercial art working for sign writers and later in an advertising studio. Ginger formed a band which included his cousin on banjo and a couple of friends on trumpet and trombone.

Then he saw an advertisement in Melody Maker. The Storyville Jazz Men, a local trad jazz band led by Bob Wallis, needed someone to beef up their rhythm section. He played a gig with them, and despite the fact he'd only been playing a few months, got the job. At the age of 16 Baker left home, quit his day job and spent a year on the road with the band.

He acquired a more professional second hand drum kit and he built up a good reputation. He even recorded some sides with top clarinetist Acker Bilk, and was then asked to play with Terry Lightfoot, who ran one of the big name bands of the day. "Then I got fed up with my kit," recalls Ginger. "I got this great idea for using Perspex. It was like wood to work on, but it was smooth, and it would save painting the inside of the drum shell with gloss paint. So I bent the shells and shaped them over a gas stove..." Ginger laughs at the memory of his crude experiments. "I cut them all out, and pieced them together with proper drum fittings. I made it in 1961 and used it up until 1966 when I got my first Ludwig kit."

Ginger says he used the home made kit on the first two classic Graham Bond LPs 'The Sound Of '65' (for which I wrote the sleeve notes), and 'There's A Bond Between Us.'

Right from the start Ginger got his own sound and style and I remember watching fascinated along with the rest of the audience, when I first saw him play with Alexis Korner at one of the early National Jazz & Blues festivals, He was intense, passionate and played as if every beat was torn from his body. If he missed a beat or dropped a stick, the audience felt his pain and frustration, and when he reached a crescendo and a whirling epic drum solo took off, everyone shared his personal joy. If he had played the saxophone or guitar, it would doubtless have been the same experience, a battle of mind over matter. Baker told me: "The way I play—I know now, more than ever—is something I was born with. The whole approach, the way you hit the drum, is achieved by listening to the sounds you make. I could always play. When I joined the Storyville Jazz Band I told them I'd been playing for three years. In fact I had only been playing three months. "

Ginger listened avidly to early New Orleans jazz drummers like Baby Dodds who played with Louis Armstrong. "I fell in love with what he was playing. Baby Dodds was the link between western military drum techniques and African drummers. He was the man who first successfully married the two. He was the first jazz drummer."

Ginger also listened to Alton Red who drummed with Kid Ory, and Zutty Singleton, before he discovered bebop and modern jazz. As he absorbed the records of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie he heard the fluid, inventive rhythmic backing of drummer Max Roach. "He was the Guv'nor. But when I started playing trad jazz was the thing, and it was the easiest thing to play and the best music to start off with as a young drummer.

But things started to go awry when I started to play Max Roach style. As soon as this happened Terry Lightfoot nearly swallowed his clarinet. He'd say: 'I want four to the bar on the bass drum, nothing else!' So I told him to get lost."

Ginger's vigorous defence of his stylistic freedom meant he was out of a job. He'd only been with the band for six months but ended up having a row with all of them.

In 1959 he went off with guitarist Diz Disley on a three-month stint in Copenhagen, then went on a Scandinavian tour with gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Back in England he returned home to live with his parents and found that the house next door was empty. It proved a useful hideaway, where he make as much noise as he liked. Even so, the racket coming through the walls drove his mother mad.

He was determined to study and practised drum rudiments for nine hours a day. He went to London's West End and hung out in Archer Street, then a famous meeting place for musicians looking for work. He wanted to be a professional musician, but under pressure from his parents he got a temporary job in a factory, loading trucks.

только получил на виниле - 1st pressing on ATCO.

Eventually he got another band job. "I got a reading gig, and I couldn't read. I had to learn to read music in a fortnight, to get the gig. It took me a week to find out what a repeat sign meant. I couldn't figure out why I was getting to the end of a part and the band was still playing!"

By sheer perseverance Baker mastered the mysteries of arrangements and written parts sufficiently to get by and he could fake the rest.

He moved to Cricklewood in North London and within three months he met and married Liz, a charming and patient lady, who would see Ginger through the tumultuous years that lay ahead.

With the help of friends he got a job playing with Irish dance bands at the Galtimore ballroom. One of the bands played swing in the style of Stan Kenton and Shorty Rogers as well as Irish music. He studied harmony and wrote an arrangement of 'Surrey With The Fringe On Top.'

It was a corny enough piece, but it gave Ginger a great deal of satisfaction to hear a band playing his work. He played at the ballroom for nearly a year, and fitted in gigs at American air bases and a trip to Germany. His big goal in life was to break into the tight knit modern jazz community, and he eventually freelanced at Ronnie Scott's Club. "I was rather controversial," recalls Ginger. "I was always 'too loud!' But I don't like these guys that play like a metronome. I know I'm a bit of a monster. I have always been big-headed, but people whose playing I liked always liked mine, and that kept me going."

Ginger joined the Johnny Burch Octet, which he still believes is one of the best groups he ever played with. He also played with the Bert Courtley band and worked at all-night sessions at Soho's Flamingo Club. He almost landed a top job with the John Dankworth Orchestra, but many of the band had misgivings about employing such a temperamental player. Gradually he found himself frozen out of London's modern jazz circuit. It wasn't just to do with Baker's legendary temper. His passionate approach to drumming was considered too disturbing.

"In those days I played like a madman and got emotionally involved in the music. Some people don't like that. They feel they are losing control of the band. A lot of drummers just played what they heard on record. I was always playing myself. I had influences obviously but when I was playing modern jazz I was always accused of being a rock 'n' roller because I need to lay down an off-beat. But then, so did Art Blakey. They didn't like this loud drummer playing off-beats, and getting the audience clapping their hands, and dancing about. That was most uncalled for. You were supposed to sit up and listen and drink your drink. But I never considered myself a rock 'n' roller, I was always a jazzer."

The music scene was about to undergo a sea change. Big bands, and Trad and Modern jazz groups faced a new challenge from Rhythm & Blues. British musicians and fans had for years supported the revival of many aspects of American music. The whole post-war traditional jazz movement (called Dixieland in the States), had rested on the enthusiasm of a few revivalists dedicated to recreating the authentic sound of New Orleans jazz. Now there were new discoveries to be made. Chicago-style electric blues pioneered by artists like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley was rediscovered. All over the country aspiring singers and guitarists, tired of commercial rock 'n' roll and disillusioned with elitist jazz found themselves embarked on a blues crusade. R&B provided a wonderful opportunity to play exciting music that wasn't too complex, and would appeal to young audiences hungry for excitement. When the newly emerged Rolling Stones played in a tent at the 1963 National Jazz & Blues Festival at Richmond, the audience literally ran away from the big stage where Acker Bilk was playing, to seize upon the sensational new sounds of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman.

As a local newspaper reporter I had the great good fortune to be present at this historic moment. It was on a hot weekend in August when Rhythm & Blues achieved its great British break through. In my review I announced:

"Right from the first appearance by a little known Liverpool group The Mastersounds, it was clear the jazz bands were going to take second place in popularity to the savage beat of the R&B bands. Come Sunday evening, during the last few hours of the festival, a seething mass of fans jammed in a marquee at the rear of the grounds cheered and cheered again Richmond's own Rolling Stones, while Mr.Acker Bilk's band plunked dutifully on the main stage before docile jazz fans seated in neat rows. The compere for the show, Bill Carey secretary of the National Jazz Federation, viewed the swaying masses waiting impatiently for the Stones to set up their equipment. The expression on his face changed from delight to amazement, then bewilderment and worry. 'Shake it up,' he kept saying to the slow handclapping, yelling crowd. 'But look after yourselves. If anyone climbs on stage we will stop the show. If anybody faints pass them out over your heads."

As The Stones, all long hair, pouts and wiggles, tore into 'Come On' and 'I'm A Hog For Your Baby,' trad jazz with its clanking banjos became a distant memory. Mick Jagger shaking his tousled mass of hair and a pair of battered maracas had to be a more exciting spectacle than portly gentlemen studiously blowing clarinets.

The same day I saw the Cyril Davies All-Stars, Graham Bond with Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry and Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames. Everyone present was smitten by the "new" music and I wrote:

"It was easy to see why these new groups were so enormously successful at what was supposed to be a jazz festival. Most of the jazz offerings were polite, prissy and depressingly unoriginal. It may have been saddening for jazz fans to see many of their own number, hard-to-please beatniks, and Richmond's teenagers, now the first citizens of R&B, deserting the scholarly gentlemen of jazz in favour of the rebellious barbarians of rhythm and blues. But for this situation, jazzmen have only themselves to blame, having deserted the beat for so long, Bill Carey was shouting at the end of the festival: 'This has been rhythm and blues and you have made the Rolling Stones the stars of the festival!'"

Another new star at the festival as far as I was concerned was drummer Baker. The first impression I had of him was of a red haired kid, grinning and pounding away a huge ride cymbal, and tearing into his big old snare drum as if his life depended on it. He had become involved in R&B when he joined Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in August 1962, taking over the drum chair on the recommendation of Charlie Watts. Ginger told me later: "Charlie Watts is a nice guy and a very good player. Alexis Korner helped me become a non-monster."

Another musician who liked helped, and understood Baker, was modern jazz drummer the late great Phil Seamen. He came to hear Ginger one night and later they practised together and talked. Ginger would always pay tribute to Phil as one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time, and years later, after the success of Cream, he would take active steps to help revive Seamen's career.

Recalls Ginger: "Phil heard me play in the All-Niter Club which used to be the Flamingo on Wardour Street. Tubby Hayes (the sax player), had apparently been in there and heard me and ran over to Ronnie Scott's Club and told Phil to come down and hear me. When I got off stage I was suddenly confronted by my hero."

In February 1963 Ginger left Alexis with Graham Bond and Jack Bruce to form the Graham Bond Organisation. In the sequence of events, Bond had joined Blues Incorporated when Cyril Davies left to form his own band. (Cyril, one of the great blues harp players, died suddenly in 1964). Bond had been with the band for three months when one night they did a gig in Manchester which featured just Bond, Bruce and Baker. They went down a storm and in March 1963 they gave in their notice and quit Alexis to form the new band. Tenor sax man Dick Heckstall-Smith joined six months later and a classic British R&B band was born.

Ginger stayed with Bond for three and half years, until 1966 and the formation of Cream. The Bond years were tremendously exciting. Bill Bruford, drummer with Yes, one of the innovative bands of the Seventies, cited the band's instrumental recording of 'Wade In The Water' as crucially important. Apart from the passionate sax and keyboard playing, the rhythm section proved a revelation, with Jack Bruce creating an aggressive new sound on amplified 6-string bass guitar, and Baker attacking his kit with cataclysmic force. The whole piece swung with a fervour unknown in British jazz, and it was probably the first true jazz-rock fusion record.

Jack Bruce
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew

Jack and Ginger had first got together way back in 1961 when Baker was playing with trumpeter Bert Courtley's band. During a gig in Cambridge, Bruce had asked to sit in. Ginger had been against the idea until he heard how well Jack coped with the changes on a difficult ballad and then tore into a fast 12-bar blues. Although a clash of Scots and Irish temperaments would mar their relationship for years to come, nevertheless, they formed a mutual respect on a night which saw their musical destinies inextricably linked.

Jack Bruce was much more than a virtuoso bass player. He was a great singer, with a powerful, soulful style, and blew a mean harmonica. The first time I saw him singing with the Graham Bond Organisation at a loud, poorly attended gig at London's 100 Club, I wondered why he wasn't the lead vocalist. Graham, whose idea of singing was to bawl himself hoarse, tended to hog the vocal chores, but when ever Jack was allowed to sing, the effect was mesmerising.

He was born John Simon Asher Bruce, on May 14, 1943 in Bishopbriggs,, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

He had wanted to be a musician from childhood and his parents bought him a piano to encourage him to study music while at school. He left at 16 and at 17 won a scholarship to study 'cello at the Royal Scottish Academy Of Music in Glasgow.

Recalls Jack: "When I was a young school boy I always wanted to play the bass, but was put on the 'cello because I just wasn't big enough to handle the monster. At 15 having grown, I realised my first ambition and played bass in the school orchestra. I then went to music college but I didn't stay very long. They didn't dig what I was doing and I didn't particularly think what they were teaching me was going to help me very much. I got quite frustrated at the college, because it was very old fashioned. I was very interested in modern composers like Stravinsky and the teachers were very old—almost Victorians! A lot of them thought music had died with Richard Strauss. I was also getting into modern jazz and trying to get them to take it seriously was very hard. I liked the MJQ and I thought it was great that they were using classical forms. I'd bring in their records like 'The Golden Striker' and they would just pooh-pooh it."

Jack's mother was the main driving force in encouraging her son to study music. He had started off as a singer in choirs before becoming a boy soprano soloist. He would enter Scottish music festivals and won a few competitions.

"I used to get incredibly nervous though and almost throw up before hand. I still do get stage fright, but as I kid I couldn't handle it. It would be just me and a pianist, and they'd be marking me while singing Schubert. It was very competitive because the same half a dozen kids entered. My mother ensured that I had vocal training, which has stood me in good stead over the years. I learnt how to project like opera singers. I knew how to project from the abdomen as opposed to most pop singers who sing from the throat, which is why a lot of them have vocal problems."

This ensured Jack's vocal style would be imbued with unusual depth and power.

"It was something people either liked—or didn't like," recalls Bruce. "Frank Zappa liked it very much. But I don't think Eric was much in love with it. He thought in Cream it was the wrong kind of singing for that kind of music, but it's just the way I happen to sing! My feeling is you bring yourself to the music. You don't have to be anything. There are no rules. The kind of music we became involved in starts with self-expression, so I don't agree with him on that."

When Cream hit the road Jack was certainly equipped to take on the chores of singing lead, night after night, without fear of losing his voice, but says: "We did suffer, like most bands in those days, from the lack of a decent PA."

After quitting college, Jack went off to Italy to play double bass with a jazz band. He'd already had some experience playing in pit orchestras and his reading ability meant that despite his youth, he could get a gig with virtually any band he liked.

"I used to work in Glasgow in the Palais bands when I was still at college. In fact that's partly why I left because you weren't allowed to make a living from playing, while you were studying. They had a rule that you weren't allowed to do that. I didn't agree with that because I also liked the money! It was a question of either staying at college or gigging. I was getting great experience playing in jazz clubs as well and learning Thelonious Monk tunes, which for me was just as important as studying classical harmony. The college didn't agree, so I left."

In 1961 Bruce saw an advert in the Melody Maker placed by the Murray Campbell Big Band in Coventry. He traveled down for an audition at the Mecca Ballroom and played a difficult piece called 'One Bass Hit' recorded by celebrated bassist Ray Brown with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra.

"I was fresh from college and sight-read that—immediately. They were blown away and I got the gig. I went to Italy with that band but it became a small band in the style of Louis Prima, playing a shuffle type of rhythm & blues. It was very strange because we were playing variety theatres and the whole band were wearing kilts. Then somebody ran away with all the money and we got stranded in Milan and had to be repatriated. We spent six weeks in Milan with no money and lived on carrot stew!"

Jack returned to Glasgow then finally went to London for the first time. He went to straight to Archer Street. "I went down The Street, and got a gig at an American base—in Italy." Jack was just 17 and the deal was he had to go to France then drive the band to a town near Venice. "I had a driving license—but only just. I'd lied about my age. And I had to drive this 1940s Mercedes with a trailer on the back carrying a Lowry organ—over the Alps! I'd never really driven before. Anyway, we made it and stayed quite a while on this base."

On his return to the U.K. he joined Jim McHarg's Scotsville Jazz Band. "Jim McHarg was the bass player, but he got fired by his own band and I got the band leader's gig! We came in at the tail end of the trad boom. I was never a trad fan, and wanted to get into modern jazz. At least we didn't have to wear kilts."

Eric Clapton
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew

There had been guitar heroes before Eric Clapton. Jazz pioneers like Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Herb Ellis and Barney Kessell had all brought the electric guitar to prominence and shown its extraordinary versatility. There were the great blues guitarists like BB King, Freddie King and T-Bone Walker, while in rock 'n' roll the sidemen who backed the stars, achieved considerable status like Scotty Moore with Elvis Presley, who was described in a biography of Elvis as "The great unsung hero of Elvis Presley's life." In Britain during the early Sixties, Hank B. Marvin of The Shadows became hugely popular and widely admired by aspiring teenage guitarists for his clean cut, original sound. The Shadows achieved unparalleled chart success with instrumental hits like 'Apache' that hit number one in the U.K. in July 1960. But their dominance would be swept away by the arrival of The Beatles, and then Cream.

Eric Patrick Clapton, the guitarist who did most to define the sound of modern rock music, was born in Ripley, Surrey, a village thirty miles south of London, on March 30, 1945. His birth and up bringing reflected the upheavals caused by the Second World War. He was the son of Patricia Clapton and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier who had been stationed in England. Later Fryer, who was already married, went back to his wife in Canada. Patricia married another Canadian soldier and they both went off to Germany before settling in Canada. Eric was left in England in the care of his grandparents, Jack and Rose Clapp. Jack was a plasterer and bricklayer. Years later, at the height of his fame, Eric occasionally liked to refer to himself as a "musical labourer."

Clapton's grandparents didn't have much interest in music, although Rose always took a keen interest in his career and loved to hear him play.

Eric spent a quiet enough time at Ripley Primary School and later St. Bede's Secondary Modern.

When he was aged ten he started listening to pop music on the radio. One day a strangely powerful record called 'Fox Chase,’ by the blues duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee was played on a BBC children's radio programme.

It enthralled the young Clapton. He first saw a guitar being played when Jerry Lee Lewis and his band performed 'Great Balls Of Fire' on TV. Recalled Eric: 'It was like seeing someone from outer space. Here I was in this village that was never going to change, yet there on TV was something out of the future. And I wanted to go there!"

The "guitar" Eric had seen on TV was a Fender bass guitar, but he didn't know the difference.

He decided to try and build his own guitar. It was quite a craze at a time when schoolboys were forming their own skiffle groups. Most of them made simple acoustic models, but Eric tried to carve a Stratocaster from a block of wood. He was defeated by the problem of creating the neck and frets. Eric's grandparents doted on their boy and as Eric says: "I was the only child in the family, and they used to spoil me something terrible. So I badgered them until they bought me a plastic Elvis Presley guitar."

The guitar wouldn't stay in tune, but at least Eric could put on his favourite Gene Vincent records and mime to them in the bedroom mirror.

Eric enjoyed a happy childhood until one day when he was aged 12, his real mother turned up and he discovered the truth about his origins. It undermined his confidence and left him hurt and confused, especially as his mother had to be referred to as his "sister."

Said Eric later: "I was raised by my grandparents under the illusion that they were my parents. And so it was a kind of screwy set-up, which sorted itself out as I got older. But throughout my teens, I was very confused, angry and lonely." At school he felt himself an outsider, and as a result was given a hard time by pupils and teachers alike. Eventually he found a clique of friends who shared his burgeoning interest in rock 'n' roll.

Essentially a shy, sensitive and private person, he could easily be hurt and influenced by others. Yet he had an inner strength and a great sense of humour that delighted in the absurd.

He also had the ability to submerge himself in a role, which as a young man, enabled him to act out the part of a blues man, until he quite legitimately became one, accepted by his peers and even his own role models. His innate feeling for the blues, perhaps heightened by his own inner turmoil, gave his playing extraordinary strength, authenticity and conviction quite early on. There were louder, faster guitarists in the world, but none had the feeling and subtlety that Eric at his best would one day imbue in his playing.

His grandparents finally gave into pressure and gave him his first proper guitar, a Hofner acoustic, when he was 15. He had heard an album by blues man Big Bill Broonzy that made a tremendous impression. "I'd never heard anything like it," he recalled.

Playing the guitar like Big Bill proved much harder than he thought and he simply gave up trying. Understandably his grandparents thought it was just another schoolboy craze that would be quickly forgotten. The neck of his guitar began to warp as it lay abandoned for a couple of years.

After leaving school in 1962, he enrolled at Kingston School Of Art to study stained-glass design. As he had been interested in drawing since the age of six, his grandparents encouraged him, and he passed enough examinations to get a place. But Eric never really settled down to study.

His interest in the guitar revived when he heard records owned by fellow students. Their tastes veered towards the music of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry. He also learned to appreciate the work of a uniquely different rocker—Buddy Holly. This sudden upsurge of interest in the blues among English youth took root most strongly in the art colleges. They became breeding grounds for musicians who helped create the great rock boom.

Eric didn't just want to play records. He got out his old guitar and began practising. It was his downfall as far as the college was concerned. He drank heavily, played records all day and did hardly any work. After three months he was asked to leave and was struck off the register. Said Clapton later: "Actually I am quite proud of that. Not many people are kicked out of Art College. I was playing records most of the time, and getting drunk in the pub at lunch time. I was an undesirable influence on the other students."

Clutching his trusty acoustic guitar, Clapton spent his days busking around Kingston and Richmond, earning a reputation as the local hobo. He took a job for a while working as a labourer with his grandfather, but most of the time was spent learning how to master his guitar and making trips up to London and the West End.

He hung around in coffee bars and met people like Long John Baldry who played 12-string guitar and sang folk and blues. He got deeper into the blues discovering the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House and Skip James.

"I was playing guitar all the time, teaching myself things, learning from records. At first I played exactly like Chuck Berry." Then Eric got into the works of Robert Johnson and Blind Boy Fuller while he retained his love for Big Bill Broonzy. One of the first songs he learned was Broonzy's 'Walk Down The Lonesome Road.'

He also listened to Otis Rush and Blind Willie Johnson, then a friend played him an album featuring historic recordings by Robert Johnson called "King Of The Delta Blues Singers." Clapton was shocked by what he heard. "I couldn't take it. I thought it was really non-musical, very raw. Then I went back to it later, and got into it. At the first hearing thought, it was just too much anguish to take."

Finally he discovered B.B. King. Said Clapton: "When I came out of it, I was developing in a Chicago blues vein. But you can never reach the standards of the original, and after a while I knew I had to develop my own style. I would play something I heard on record and then add something of my own. Gradually my own things took over more and more."

The next step was to join a band and he teamed up with a newfound friend, guitarist Tom McGuinness, who would eventually achieve fame in Manfred Mann and went on to form McGuinness Flint.

They met at the Station Hotel Richmond, and formed a band called The Roosters. It was 1963 when Eric was just 18 years old. They started out playing at pubs and at parties for friends. The Roosters lasted from January to September and was probably the first full time British R&B group. They used to play John Lee Hooker's 'Boom Boom' and Muddy Waters' 'Hoochie Coochie Man.'

Tom McGuinness recalls the pioneering days with great fondness. "The Sixties were a magic period for us. Pop music then was accessible to a wide age group. The Beatles appealed to all ages—until John took up with that Yoko woman!"

As R&B began to challenge the dominance of pop music, there was some skepticism. Blues fans like Clapton and McGuinness were still in a tiny minority and most people had never heard of the original Black American artists they raved about.

Says McGuinness: 'I can remember when I wanted to go off and play R&B these guys saying: 'You're mad, you'll be back in six months. No one wants to hear that sort of music.' I had to find other people who knew abut John Lee Hooker. I saw an advert that said: 'Pianist wants to join rhythm & blues band.' I wrote to him and met the guy. It was Ben Palmer, who was trying to get a band together with Paul Jones. We kept in touch, and meanwhile a girlfriend introduced me to Eric Clapton. Ben, Eric and I formed The Roosters which lasted about nine months."

The rest of the Roosters were Robin Mason on drums and Terry Brennan (vocals).

Tom was the second guitarist and says: "We never recorded and we couldn't find a bass player, which illustrates how few people there were wanting to play R&B in 1963."

Eric made the switch from acoustic to electric to play with The Roosters and bought himself a Kay model guitar that he'd seen advertised. Eric had learned how to bend strings to alter notes and developed a "singing" quality by using very light strings. He kept breaking them during numbers and while he re-strung his guitar, audiences would begin a slow handclap, which resulted in his nickname "Slowhand Clapton."

The Roosters broke up due to lack of money and commitment from some of the band. Eric occasionally jammed with Alexis Korner at his Ealing Blues Club and then joined another group. Says Tom: 'Eric and I went to play with a guy from Liverpool called Casey Jones. That lasted only six weeks, then Eric joined The Yardbirds, and I got the call to join Manfred Mann on bass." Said Eric: "Casey Jones and the Engineers was a very heavy pop show and I couldn't stand that for very long. At that time I was such a purist and they were playing real top twenty stuff which was disastrous."

Eric's next move would help establish his name as a top lead guitar player, even though he wasn't entirely happy with the results.

The Rolling Stones had soared to ascendancy during the first frantic months of the R&B boom. Then in 1963 they left the Crawdaddy Club, at the Station Hotel, Richmond, Surrey where they had built up a fanatical following. The Stones were destined for greater things, and were replaced by the Yardbirds, fronted by singer Keith Relf. The band had grown out of an outfit called the Metropolitan Blues quartet, made up of Kingston Art college students who played local pubs and clubs. They had made their debut as the Yardbirds at a unique venue, a hotel on Eel Pie Island, in the middle of the river Thames. The band's guitarist was Anthony 'Top' Topham and the rest of the group include Chris Dreja (rhythm guitar), Paul Samwell-Smith (bass) and Jim McCarty (drums). Anthony was replaced by Eric Clapton a few weeks after the band's arrival at the Crawdaddy Club. Eric went to see them and was pretty scornful of Topham's limited technique. "I was watching them one week and playing with them the next," he recalls.

Topham was a blues enthusiast but he found the role of lead guitarist too demanding and he suffered considerable parental opposition. When he quit, Keith 'phoned Eric, who he had known at art school. They had previously talked about forming a group together.

Eric came down for a rehearsal at the South Western Hotel and quickly fitted in with the band's blues policy. He was a much more advanced player than Topham and knew many more numbers. His arrival gave the fledgling Yardbirds a big boost.

Said Clapton later: "I had only been with Casey Jones & The Engineers for three or four weeks when the Yardbirds asked me to go along to the Crawdaddy to listen to them and have a chat. I'd heard the group were interested in me joining them, so I went to the Crawdaddy, looked in and thought: 'What's this?' They were playing things like 'Can't Judge A Book' like R&B puppets. I thought it would be a cushy job, so I joined them. Eventually I got quite brainwashed with this commercial R&B."

Under the tutelage of a wild-eyed manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, the Yardbirds began a chequered but mostly successful and highly influential career. Giorgio was an emotional but enthusiastic man who loved the blues and encouraged his young charges. He was a Russian with a Swiss passport and spoke several different languages. He was a larger than life figure who recorded many of the pioneer British acts—often without their knowledge or permission—but he left a great musical legacy for historians.

For all his faults, which included driving cars the wrong way along one-way streets and talking anyone within earshot into the ground, he pushed the nervous suburban youths into achieving their musical potential. It was his ambition to make the Yardbirds even bigger than The Stones and for a while it looked as if they might succeed.

As well as producing hits like 'For Your Love,' 'Heart Full Of Soul' and 'Evil Hearted You' the band also became known as the hothouse that nurtured three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, Clapton, and his successors Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds propelled Clapton into the limelight and got him on record and out on tour. However, he always felt ambivalent about his role in the band. He enjoyed the attention during his first year on board. Apart from the Stones and Manfred Mann, the Yardies were one of the most successful bands of the period. Yet he became unsettled about his own playing and doubts began to creep in. Sometimes he was so shy about his guitar playing he wouldn't take any solos and would try to hide behind his amplifier. Then as his experience and technique improved, so did his confidence.

I met Eric for the first time in October 1964, not long after I joined the Melody Maker. An interview was scheduled for The Yardbirds and we assembled in the Kardomah coffee bar in Fleet Street. It was the first occasion I'd talked to a full group in-person, and quickly learned it was a bad idea to try and interview five people at once. They distract each other, indulge in in-jokes and badinage, and there is always one who is too shy to talk, and probably has the most interesting things to say, while the noisiest make mock of the whole ordeal. Then there is the usual problem of their insulting waitresses and creating "a scene."

In fact The Yardbirds were generally pleasant and well behaved, although I noticed that Eric was the most sensible and tended to smile at the exuberant prattle going on around him. The band had just released their second single 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' (a follow up to "I Wish You Would") and The Yardbirds were nervous about the effect having a hit single might have on their credibility with blues fans. The headline on the subsequent piece was "Oh No! Not A Hit Disc" It was just the "angle" the MM wanted, although it probably gave the band's management and record company palpitations.

The story ran: "A successful future is staring The Yardbirds right in the face—and it worries them! They're worried about losing the thousands of faithful rhythm and blues fans they have attracted—without the aid of a single hit record."

It was true the band a few problems. Their singer Keith Relf had recently collapsed with a perforated lung and the band had been out of action for months. The single had been recorded the previous March. But they had kept a grip on their all-important fan following as Eric was keen to explain: "Club audiences are very possessive and when records start selling the kids come up to you and say: 'We've lost you.' We left the Crawdaddy for a while to do a tour with Billy J.Kramer. When we played the Crawdaddy again it wasn't quite the same. Now we play at The Marquee and it's a complete rave. But we are worried like hell that we'll lose R&B fans if we get a hit record. We like pop fans, but we want both. We would look upon it as our biggest achievement if we could be the most popular band in the country without a hit record. But we are tired of the snobs who say they don't like an artist any more because he has a hit record. Why is it criminal to be successful? People actually say they don't like Chuck Berry any more because everybody else likes him—they've got to like somebody else. They don't like Hambone Willy Kneebone anymore—everybody has heard of him—so they say they like Rabbit Foot Walker instead!"

I liked all of the Yardbirds, particularly the frail and overwrought Keith Relf, but Eric was the one who gained most people's respect. He was both witty and charming and it was sad to see his early enthusiasm for the band eroded.

I went to see them at the Marquee—it may have been the same day of the interview—and saw the crowds of fans lining Wardour Street. Their performance was a flurry of shaking maracas, yelling blues vocals, and frantic drumming, while Eric's guitar was used to build up a crescendo of noise on a long version of 'Smokestack Lightning,' in a style known as "a rave up,' a precursor of the freak out, when all inhibitions are lost in a maelstrom of noise and rhythm. The excitement the Yardbirds created at The Marquee was partially captured on their album Five Live Yardbirds (Columbia), recorded in March 1964, and released in January 1965. They had actually recorded an earlier album, with authentic American blues singer Sonny Boy Williamson, at the Crawdaddy club, in October 1963, but it was not released until a couple of years later in January 1966. It was Giorgio's idea to lumber the Yardbirds with old Sonny Boy who drank lots of whiskey and terrified the English lads. He later went back home and told how none of them could play the blues. At least they could all play in the same key together.

The Yardbirds had indeed won a fanatical following during their early years and Eric Clapton's reputation as a star soloist spread across the country. His solos on such driving tunes as 'I Wish You Would' caused a sensation. But the rest of the Yardbirds, notably Paul Samwell-Smith the bass player wanted the band to move on from the blues to experiment with song writing and new recording techniques. Eric never seemed to share this enthusiasm and became a somewhat enigmatic figure as far as the rest were concerned. When the band wanted to wear long hair, he kept his short. While the others smiled cheerfully in photographs he scowled at the camera. He was constantly changing his image. One minute he was a mod and wore bouffant hair-dos. Then he become a moustachioed beatnik. It certainly helped to keep people guessing and ensured his photo file was invariably out of date.

I went to watch them recording 'For Your Love' at IBC Studios. London in December 1964. It was the first time I'd been in a recording studio. In those days this was the equivalent of gaining entry to Buckingham Palace or the inner sanctums of the BBC. It was fun to watch them devise 'For Your Love' with organist Brian Auger playing harpsichord and Denny Piercy adding bongos. It was a clever imaginative pop production, but Eric grew increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the band was taking. The Yardbirds were always arguing and resented their manager treating them like naughty children.

Eric confessed later: "Playing with The Yardbirds put me in a very strange frame of mind. I was all screwed up about my playing and I'd lost a lot of my original values. My attitude within the group got really sour and it was kind of hinted that it would be better for me to leave. I was withdrawing into myself, becoming intolerable, really dogmatic."

The Farewell
By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew

While rumours about discontent began to surface in the press the band carried on with their touring commitments. They were earning up to $60,000 a night where once they had only been paid #45 for a gig. The formerly starving musos certainly enjoyed the influx of riches. Says Jack: "We had done very well and suddenly we could buy a couple of houses and a Ferrari. It was very hard to take in. We went from getting a couple of pounds from playing the Flamingo Club to getting massive royalties from Platinum albums. It was a wonderful time really!"

Despite their good fortune and their huge and growing popularity, the decision was finally made to break up in May, 1968 when they were still only half way through their marathon US tour. The news was made public with an official statement from their management in July when it was announced they would make a farewell tour of America. There would be only two concerts in London in November. They would play at the Royal Albert Hall, and BBC documentary maker Tony Palmer would film the shows for the Omnibus arts programme. Eric tried to explain that although the band has been a thrill, the band had just run out of steam. "You can't be that inspired for that long." There was an outpouring of criticism from disappointed British fans, but it was too late for the band to change their minds.

Eric describes the final days of Cream as a painful period, which he tried to blot out. "I went under and blamed everybody."

Jack Bruce now feels Cream should have played more countries and more dates in Britain. "We should have played in Japan and Australia but we only really did the States. It was quite a tragedy really."

The band played 14 major US cities including Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Boston, earning an average of $25,000 a night. On November 1 they played the Spectrum. Philadelphia and on November 2 came a special show at Madison Square Garden, New York in front of 22,000 strong audience.

Jack: "Wheels Of Fire had been a huge hit and it was the first double album to sell a million and it became a Platinum disc. Ahmet Ertegun and Robert Stigwood presented it to us at Madison Square. It was a very strange gig on a revolving stage, which must have been horrible for the audience. They'd get a glimpse of the drums, guitar and bass and then they'd all go away again."

Bruce puts this among his list of 'bizarre gigs' that includes one at Streatham Ice Rink in London where the crowd was still skating and the Locarno Glasgow, where the band stepped out from another revolving stage "to a very small audience."

It was during this trip to Scotland that they visited Inverness and on an afternoon off, Jack suggested they all try to climb Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain. They met a Scottish piper on their hike through the glens and rarely was there a more fascinating photo opportunity, as the piper engaged Eric, Jack and Ginger clad in their finest Chelsea attire, in animated conversation. They capped a pleasantly surreal situation by running down the slopes of the mountain whilst tripping on acid. Jack remembers that it was very easy to start running, but impossible to stop. These were the fun times, when Cream was still enjoying each other's company. Eric described this at the peak time for the band. "That was the high point for me, we were so together and loved one another so much."

Jack: "We did just one farewell tour and when we to got the Royal Albert Hall for the last gig, the reaction was so great, we looked at each other and thought 'Are we doing the right thing?' There was a feeling of regret but nobody was able to step forward and say 'Oh, let's not do this!'"

Cream played their last show in America in Baltimore on November 4. Then on November 25 and 26, 1968 that the band played two shows at London's Royal Albert Hall supported by Yes and Taste. The band seemed surprised at the emotional send off they received from some 5,000 fans each night. "I didn't think anyone would remember us," said Eric.

The end of Cream was a blow for the founder member. Recalls Ginger Baker: "When we decided to finish the band and I told Stigwood—I don't think he believed us. Then we did 'Goodbye Cream' and the farewell tour. Our last gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London wasn't very good. I don't think it was. And Tony Palmer's film of the show for the BBC was appalling! Eric would never speak to Tony Palmer again after that. We'd be playing a number and all of a sudden we were wearing different clothes. He'd cut scenes from one show and put them into another. It was unbelievable. And all those zoom shots were very silly. It's sad that its what most people today see about Cream. We were much better than that.

I'm not sure if we were still on good terms when Cream broke up. I discovered later that my behaviour at the time used to scare Eric to death. I was always getting into scrapes. We parted on fairly good terms. I still have problems with Jack even today over the things that went on with Cream. But I miss it, there's no doubt about that."

Their trusty roadie Ben Palmer thought he now faced unemployment but ahead lay involvement with Blind Faith and Eric's own bands. By the time Cream split Palmer had grown used to the shenanigans of the rock'n'roll world. Although he was proud of Cream he wasn't overly impressed by what he saw as the debasement of blues music that such commercially successful rock bands represented. "I've always felt that a great opportunity was lost. I don't want to sound high-minded about this, but I do think that at the centre of the blues there is something which is nourishing and real. Along with jazz, it's the greatest gift that America has given the world. When I consider what the rock'n'roll movement has made of that material—well I never thought much of it frankly."

Palmer thinks that rock has always been inclined to pick up the trivial and the entertaining rather than life's more important matters. He believes that the best popular music should try to deal with people's lives as well as be entertaining.

"I don't think rock'n'roll has been that. The only group that came out of the whole thing that I have any lasting and deep respect for was The Band. They dealt with serious matters and lots of influences very well. They played wonderfully and how they managed to remain as pure as that in the middle of all the rest of it, I don't know.

As for Cream, I think Eric found a style of playing that the band demanded. There was something about that band which almost dictated the way it was going to be. It grew organically. Nobody talked about what it was going to do or planned its musical future. It just developed very quickly and powerfully. Eric was the kind of musician who could survive and triumph under that sort of pressure."

Although Ginger Baker wasn't happy with their last shows, the fans reacted with tremendous enthusiasm. As the last fans drifted away from the Albert Hall with the sound of 'White Room,' 'Sunshine Of Your Love' and 'Crossroads' ringing in their ears, they would only have their memories and a brace of farewell albums to savour. Goodbye was released in March, 1969 with a show biz style cover shot of the band posing in satin suits with top hats and canes. It was the first time they had all been seen smiling since the formation of the band.

...ВСЕ ЧИТАЙТЕ И НАСЛАЖДАЙТЕСЬ!

А здесь можно прочитать отзывы на "педальку" сделанную под руководством ЭРИКА...

http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Data/DigiTech/Crossroads_Eric_Clapton_Artist_Ser...

2SergeK:

>...ВСЕ ЧИТАЙТЕ И НАСЛАЖДАЙТЕСЬ!
Ни фига себе!
Стокма нового ! Окриметь можа! :)))