Eric Clapton and his music

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Diminished version of their former selves, but very, very good
By David Cheal
(Filed: 03/05/2005)

When I first heard that Cream were getting back together for a series of concerts at the Albert Hall, I called out across the arts desk: "I have to be there."

This, surely, was the mother of all reunions, the great sixties super group back together on stage 37 years after they called it a day - and in the very same concert hall where they performed their farewell show in 1968.

I had good reason to stake my claim to that precious reviewing slot: Best of Cream was the first album I ever bought, a precocious teenager hooked on the British blues boom of the sixties, but this one was personal.

Along with the excitement came the nagging worries. The three members of Cream are all now in their sixties. Drummer Ginger Baker has an arthritic knee. Bassist Jack Bruce has had a liver transplant. Would it be a night to recapture the magic of their famous semi-improvised jams, or would it be turn out to be an embarrassment, three wrinkly old rockers desperately trying to recapture their glorious youths?

Well, it didn't exactly hit the ground running. Having been greeted with a huge roar of affection from the crowd, they limbered up with the lightweight I'm So Glad. Eric Clapton rattled off a so so solo. Bruce sounded tense.

Song two, the slow, slinky blues of Spoonful, was more encouraging: Bruce's voice started to show some grit, the music began to click. Clapton's solo here was sharper, fiercer, more fluent. Strange, though, to see him as just one third of a band, rather than as the star of the show.

When they'd been on stage for 20 odd minutes I did begin to wonder whether this was going to be a bit of a letdown: another slow blues tune, Sleepy Time Baby, reinforced this impression.

Then came NSU, their first chance to embark on one of those famous instrumental excursions. Baker drove the song along in his utterly distinctive and deceptively easy going style, Bruce's fingers were flying, Clapton began to strut. Then came Badge, and Clapton gave us one of his yodels. Finally, Cream were up and running.

Politician was dark and groovy. Rolling and Tumbling, with Bruce on harmonica, was sensational, an express train of a song, hurtling along with purpose, power and unstoppable momentum. For the first of many occasions during the evening, I had to sit, blink, look around the stage and remind myself that I was watching Cream at the Albert Hall - and they were very, very good.

Inevitably, they were a diminished version of their former selves. There was less of the brutal physicality that used to be their hallmark. Bruce periodically reclined against a high stool, songs such as Crossroads were taken at a slower lick. They are not young men, and they were not playing, as they once did, as if their lives depended on it.

But they were never less than good, often brilliant, occasionally inspired. And they got better as the night went on. White Room was massive, glorious.

Many reunions are tawdry, half-baked affairs. But this one was different, special. It didn't quite live up to the expectation, but still: in years to come, I'll be able to say with pride: Cream, Albert Hall, 2005. I was there.

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Из сет-листа: Pressed Rat and Warp Hog - вас ист дас?

2Primal Scream:

Pressed Rat and Wart Hog - Cream - "Wheels of Fire"

Cream concert review from the NYTimes

May 2, 2005
ROCK REVIEW

With Egos Set Aside and Blues on Its Mind, Cream Reunites
By JON PARELES

LONDON, May 2 - Cream was a crisp, tautly rehearsed band on Monday night in
its first full-length concert since 1968. Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce
on bass and Ginger Baker on drums sounded as if they had every song mapped
out from introductory riff to precise finish. Their voices were strong;
their musicianship was impeccable. Their set list even had a few surprises.

Cream was back at the Royal Albert Hall, where it had played the final
concert of its two-year career on Nov. 26, 1968. Between then and now,
Cream's only reunion was to play three songs when it was inducted into the
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Monday's concert was the first of four
sold-out shows being filmed for the inevitable DVD; plans beyond that have
not been announced. Scalpers were getting $1,000 a ticket.

"Thanks for waiting all these years," Mr. Clapton said onstage. "We didn't
go very long. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune cut us off in our
prime."

Mr. Baker spoke up: "This is our prime, what do you mean?"

Yet the neatness and order of the music were precisely what made Cream's
first return engagement underwhelming. It wasn't unity that made Cream one
of the great 1960's rock bands. It was the same friction - of personalities,
methods and ambitions - that would soon tear the band apart.

>From July 1966 to November 1968, Cream came up with songs that were an
unlikely blend of Anglicized blues, eccentric pop structures, psychedelic
surrealism, melancholia and comic relief. Along with the Jimi Hendrix
Experience, Cream would define both power-trio rock and the potential of jam
bands.

In its most incendiary 1960's shows, Cream played like three simultaneous
soloists, relentlessly competitive and brilliantly volatile. Back then, Mr.
Clapton didn't need Robert Johnson's hellhound on his trail; he had Mr.
Baker and Mr. Bruce snapping at his heels, goading him with bass
countermelodies and bursts of polyrhythm. It was the brashness of youth in
sync with the experimental spirit of the era. Cream played with reckless
intensity, as if sure that all the risks would pay off; most often, they
did.

Since Cream broke up, Mr. Clapton has had million-selling albums, Grammy
Awards and regular arena tours; his music has grown more temperate. Mr.
Bruce followed his musicianly impulses, starting other rock trios (including
one in 1994 with Mr. Baker) while also delving into jazz and various
fusions. Mr. Baker joined Mr. Clapton's short-lived supergroup, Blind Faith,
and went on to build West Africa's first modern recording studio in Nigeria,
to farm olives in Tuscany and to run a club in Denver.

Mr. Clapton, at 60 the youngest member of Cream, was the most reluctant to
reunite the group, and on Monday night, the reunited Cream deferred to him.
Lately, his albums have circled back to the blues he has loved since the
beginning of his career, and Cream's concert set leaned toward blues. There
were borrowed ones, like "I'm So Glad," "Rollin' and Tumblin'," "Spoonful"
and "Outside Woman Blues" along with Cream's own blues, like "Politician,"
and a Clapton showcase that's not part of the Cream discography, "Stormy
Monday Blues." When Mr. Clapton took a guitar solo, he played the kind of
long-lined, melodic leads, moving from symmetrical phrases to wailing peaks,
that he unfolds with his own bands, while Mr. Bruce and Mr. Baker carefully
nailed down the riff and the beat. They didn't challenge him much.

Mr. Baker had some rambunctious moments, dropping sly snare-drum rolls into
"Sitting on Top of the World" and "Stormy Monday Blues." With his band mates
offstage, he took a five-minute drum solo during "Toad" that was
considerably shorter than the live recording from 1968. He also talk-sang
the most unexpected song in the set, "Pressed Rat and Warthog," about
shopkeepers with a peculiar inventory, then joked afterward about stocking
Cream T-shirts and memorabilia.

There were stretches in "Sweet Wine" and "Sunshine of Your Love" where Cream
started to hint at its old improvisatory free-for-all. But those passages
were brief, quickly heading back to the song. "Crossroads," which Cream once
turned into a psychedelic fireball, returned as straightforward blues-rock:
not bad, but not revelatory.

The other side of Cream's repertory - Mr. Bruce's songs, like "White Room,"
"N.S.U." and "Deserted Cities of the Heart" - has aged differently. They,
too, had a blues feeling, but more in their despondent lyrics then in their
music, which stretched pop structures. Nearly four decades later, the songs
have grown even more telling, as the mishaps of youth have given way to the
irrevocable losses and regrets of maturity. Mr. Bruce sings them no less
clearly now, but with far more poignancy. As Mr. Baker rolled mallets across
his tom-toms, Mr. Clapton played slow swells of guitar and Mr. Bruce rose to
the melody's falsetto peaks, "We're Going Wrong" - written on the way to
Cream's 1968 breakup - was lambent in its sorrow.

Perhaps Cream's caution reflected first-night jitters about living up to
decades of anticipation. In a set that lasted less than two hours, there was
ample room for songs to expand if the chemistry was right. With any luck,
Cream was just getting reignited.

Supergroup Cream rises again
After four decades, the legendary trio returns to the stage

By CNN's Gordon Isfeld

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 Posted: 9:13 AM EDT (1313 GMT)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It could have gone all terribly wrong. Jack Bruce could have passed out during his bass solo. Ginger Baker could have expired amid a flurry of drumsticks. Or the two could have just beaten each other silly right there on stage. All the while guitarist Eric Clapton would be gently weeping in the wings.

None of this would have surprised Cream fans in the 1960s -- the acrimony and excesses within the supergroup being as well known as their musical riffs.

But that was then, this is now.

Thirty-seven years ago after the group performed its final concert at Royal Albert Hall, the trio returned to the same venue on Monday, much changed but still very much revered.

"Thanks for waiting all these years," Clapton admonished the crowd during the first of four sold-out concerts in London. "We're going to play every song we know."

Well, not quite. In just over two hours, Cream ripped through 18 songs -- beginning with "I'm So Glad" and then on to "Spoonful," "Badge," "Born Under a Bad Sign," Sitting On Top of the World" and "White Room."

After a tentative start and strained vocals on the first song, the group grew tighter, more assured and even energized. It was during "White Room" and the encore offering of "Sunshine of Your Love" that the audience -- and the group -- seemed to be dragged (singing and swaying) from the past into the present, without missing a beat.

Cream burst onto the scene unexpectedly in 1966 -- three musicians little known outside their individual musical spheres but very much aware of their own abilities, as was evident in the choice of group's name. And for just over two years (from 1966 to 1968), they were indeed the crиme de la crиme.

Clapton, now 60, was still in his teens when he showed himself to be a guitar wizard with the Yardbirds and then legendary John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. It was Baker who first approached Clapton about forming a group. It was Clapton who suggested Bruce as the third member -- an idea that didn't go down well with Baker, who had fallen out with the Scotsman when they were both members of the Graham Bond Organisation, a British rhythm and blues band. Despite the animosity between the two -- something that would take on violent overtones and self-destructive behavior in years ahead -- Baker and Bruce agreed to work together again.

Gone on Monday was the acrimony, along with the extended improvisations and half-hour solos.

Somewhere in the vacuum of career transitions and personal crisis, Clapton and company appear to have become a group, perhaps really for the first time. Mature, paced and professional, and begging the question: How good would these guy have been in the early days if not for drugs, alcohol and egos?

Still, as Baker launched into his obligatory drum solo (at just six minutes, far shorter than his trademark outings), a fan yelled out, "You go old man." He didn't need the encouragement.

Why the three agreed to a reunion at this time and place is not yet clear. They're not talking publicly.

Clapton certainly doesn't need the money. The others clearly do, but at what cost to their physical well-being? Bruce had a liver transplant in 2003, while Baker reportedly suffers from arthritis.

But Clapton hinted at a possible reunion in 1993, when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and played a brief set for the audience. "I was moved," Clapton is quoted as saying in "To The Limits," a 2003 book by Forbes magazine's Jim Clash. "I was in some other place. It's been so long since I've been around something from somebody else that's inspired me." Up until then, he added, "it's been up to me to inspire me."

For his part, Bruce, 61, has admitted that cash has also been a factor but so has Cream's place in history." Apart from the money... that band tends to get overlooked these day," he says in Clash's book. "Led Zeppelin, for instance, has gotten a lot of recognition, and quite rightly so. But, it seems to be forgotten that Cream and (Jimi) Hendrix really created that audience. A reunion would help clarify that."

Baker, 65, who struggled with a heroin addiction for many years, had been less enthusiastic about getting back together. "A lot of people think I'm dead... But that's nothing new," he tells Clash. "There was a point where I wanted to do it, when I totally went broke.... That is not a reason to do something, you know." But they did do it, and now the question is: Why did anyone care? Earlier this month, the poet Pete Brown -- who, along with Bruce, wrote many of Cream's best-known songs -- told The Telegraph newspaper the band's enduring appeal was simply a matter of quality. "There's really no substitute for great playing and writing," he said. "You can chuck things into a computer and get people off the street who look great, but in the end they aren't going to do anything that lasts."

On a Monday evening in London, four decades on, that quality came through loud (but not too loud) and clear.

And to answer the question of why and why now on Clapton's behalf ... with many of his old friends and colleagues now dead, it's perhaps comforting to be encircled by those who helped get you where you are today. The comfort of friends reconciled and wiser ... while they last.

For those who missed Monday's concert, and the others, the marketers have been busy.

"I Feel Free - Ultimate Cream," a 2 CD set billed as "the definitive collection from the original supergroup," was released on Monday. They include in studio and live performances by Cream.

There's also a "Special Edition - Limited Deluxe" 3 CD box set, which includes BBC sessions and interviews with Clapton.

Cream reunion
Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce reformed Cream after 37 years to play London's Royal Albert Hall. Critics give their verdicts.

"Inevitably, at moments Cream sounded like a band out of time. But they proved there is no substitute for great musicianship. The chemistry, remarkably, was still there."

Adrian Thrills, Daily Mail

The Times
"Clapton, at 60, was not only the youngest and fittest of the three, but also the most comfortable in this elevated environment.

"You can't turn back the clock, and in truth they didn't try. But it was still a tremendous thrill to see the three of them together again after all these years."

David Sinclair

The Guardian
"Whether their reformation is enough to firm up Cream's shaky place in the pantheon of rock legends is a moot point.

"But as the crowd rises to cheer another Clapton solo, and coloured lights bounce off balding pates in the stalls, you suspect contemporary reappraisal is the last thing their fans are interested in."

Alexis Petridis

The Daily Telegraph
"Inevitably, they were a diminished version of their former selves. There was less of the brutal physicality that used to be their hallmark.

"But they were never less than good, often brilliant, occasionally inspired. And they got better as the night went on. White Room was massive, glorious."

David Cheal

The Independent
"This bus pass-qualifying edition of the heaviest group of the '60s was, if anything, better than its younger version, the three musicians playing with a subtlety that in their early days was lost in a barrage of sound.

"We shouldn't be surprised: all three have developed immeasurably.

Andy Gill

BBC Radio 4's Today Programme
"The performances were still there. The ability to play doesn't go away.

"They were the band who pioneered the concept of improvising around simple blues tunes and extending that up to 15 minutes. They didn't do 15 minutes last night, they kept all songs below 10 minutes. Attention spans have changed."

Hugh Fielder

Cream Rise in London

Rock & Roll Hall of Famers rediscover blues ancient and modern at Royal Albert Hall



On November 26, 1968, Cream walked off the stage at London's Royal Albert Hall for what they fully expected to be the last time. Exhausted by infighting and non-stop touring, their rare instrumental telepathy creeping into formula and all but obliterated by arena-PA volume, rock's first supergroup -- guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, already individual stars in Britain when they formed in 1966 -- held rock's first super-wake in this majestic Victorian concert hall, playing two final shows of what Clapton once described as "Blues Ancient and Modern" to audiences that literally begged them not to go, with massed cries of "God save the Cream!"
Those prayers were finally answered, thirty-seven years later. At 8:10 p.m. on May 2nd, Clapton, Bruce and Baker walked back on to that stage to a standing, delirious, disbelieving ovation, opening the first of four shows this week at the Albert Hall with the perfect, galloping sentiment: the Skip James blues "I'm So Glad," from their first album, Fresh Cream. This was, admittedly, not the breakneck, juggernaut Cream of the concert half of 1968's Wheels of Fire or the post-mortem live albums. Clapton's old wall of Marshall cabinets was gone; he played through just two small tube amps, with a Leslie for that majestic bridge lick in "Badge." And Clapton has long since exchanged the assaultive snarl of his original Cream weapons -- the Gibson SG and Les Paul -- for the cleaner ring and bite of a Stratocaster. There was less assault in the music, but more air, which allowed the original swing in Cream's power blues to come through: the conversational way Bruce improvised inside Clapton's slalom runs and grinding notes during the instrumental breaks in "Spoonful" and "N.S.U."; the taut fire of Baker's snare and tom-toms under Clapton's solo in "Sleepy Time Time."

Clapton's brief remarks to the crowd suggested lingering nerves and fears of overexpectation. "Thanks for waiting all these years," he said, after a rare live outing of "Outside Woman Blues," from Disraeli Gears. "I think we're going to do every song we know," quickly noting, "We'll play them as well as we can." But when Clapton pointed out that "the slings and arrows of misfortune cut us down in our prime," Bruce was having none of it. "What do you mean?" he interjected with needling glee. "This is our prime."

It was a bold claim for a band, which, with the exception of a brief reunion set at their 1991 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, had not played together in nearly four decades. And much that was once remarkable and unique to Cream -- the fusion and compression of jazz and blues dynamics into pop song; the instrumental democracy of the power trio; the license to jam at great length -- is now established rock & roll language and tradition. But the deliberate tautness of the performances tonight, sounding at first uncomfortably close to overrestraint, was probably closer to the way Cream first heard themselves in 1966 and early '67 -- a modern R&B trio of equal, virtuoso soloists; blues purists with futurist nerve -- before the live extremes and routines of '68 took over.

Many of the highpoints were in the details: the odd bent and time of Bruce's and Clapton's twinned riffing in "Politician" against Baker's straight, anchoring motion; the heightened tension of Bruce's high, choking bass notes and Baker's tom-tom bombs under Clapton's solo in "Sweet Wine." In a stunning exhumation of the trance-rock gem "We're Going Wrong," from Disraeli Gears, Baker's mallets rolled across his tom-toms in liquid 6/4 time as Bruce sang with operatic despair over the simple, climbing tension of Clapton's strumming. And at the end of the encore, "Sunshine of Your Love," Clapton, Bruce and Baker locked into a powerful, mounting suspense, a droning, one-chord crescendo that, frankly, climaxed too soon with a final reentry into that immortal riff.

The only venture outside Cream's recorded library was a cover of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday," a Clapton vocal-and-guitar showcase that made clear how the balance of power and celebrity has shifted since he was the band's junior genius and the quiet mediator between Bruce's and Baker's combative tempers. "Crossroads" also bore the matured Clapton's touch, taken at the country-funk gait he has long favored in his own shows. But the surprise of the night was the focused power and undiminished strength of Baker, who sat ramrod straight as he fired off precise, provocative accents -- cymbal stings, snare gunshots and double-kick-drum eruptions -- without loosening his grip on the pulse. Even in the inevitable "Toad," he soloed with startling control, never breaking the snapping, high-hat beat as his sticks flew over the rest of his kit.

And it was Baker who left the audience with the defining image of the night: stepping out from behind his drums after "Sunshine of Your Love" with a huge smile, pumping his fists in the air like a former championship boxer who had just gone twenty rounds with history -- and won.

The set list:

I'm So Glad
Spoonful
Outside Woman Blues
Pressed Rat and Warthog
Sleepy Time Time
N.S.U.
Badge
Politician
Sweet Wine
Rolling and Tumbling'
Stormy Monday
Deserted Cities of the Heart
Born Under a Bad Sign
We're Going Wrong'
Crossroads
Sitting on Top of the World
White Room
Toad

Sunshine of Your Love

DAVID FRICKE
(Posted май 03, 2005)

2 SergeK

А у Эрика-то еще одна "чернушка" в запасе.

2Primal Scream:
Это уже не то :((

Just got back from London.

First night review:

RAH was absolutely full. We had seats in the first row of stage seats just
behind the Jack's amplifiers. We were about 25 feet from Ginger and about
15 or 20 feet from Jack. When Eric turned towards Ginger, he was looking
right at us.

Jack played an old Gibson EB-0 violin bass for the first half of the concert
and then switched to his Warwicks. He played through a pair of Hartke amps,
each with what looked like eight ten-inch speakers.

Eric played four Strats, all black, one tuned in open-G -- that's what Lee's
sheet said -- through what looked like a tweed Twin and a large Leslie
cabinet. One of the three back-up amps -- the only one that was powered off
the entire concert -- only had three controls and Vox-style vents.

Ginger had his DW set with the usual double bass drums.

They played only Cream songs from way back when. No guests -- just the
three of them for just about two straight hours. It was simply wonderful to
see and hear them. Being so close to them we were privy to hear some of the
banter between them and also see their expressions during and between songs.

I'm sure others will post a set list -- if not, I'll do it later tonight.
I'll post some pictures when I have a moment to download my camera's data
card and edit them a bit.

A few hours before the show we saw a ticket scalper outside the hall turn
down a $1200 offer for a single ticket. We also saw people go to the RAH
Box Office and find that they could buy a last minute returned ticket at
face value.