Jack Bruce claimed Cream was two bands – live trio and studio group. Live, bassist Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker were renowned for their highly improvisatory, powerful performance that was unprecedented in rock. Moreover, they were actually a jazz group (“…we just didn’t tell Eric,” Bruce said), as exemplified by their excursions on blues-rock and pop songs with interactions stretched to the breaking point by Clapton’s virtuosic blues-based solos, Bruce’s complex contrapuntal lines, and Baker’s imaginative, dynamic play.
In the studio, Cream created the ambitious, progressive, exploratory original material on Wheels of Fire, Goodbye, and the archetypal Disraeli Gears. Boasting boldness and innovation, colorful psychedelic artwork, an inscrutable title (a malaprop of a bicycle’s gear derailleur) and defining tracks “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Strange Brew,” Disraeli Gears burst on the scene in November, 1967. It marked their finest hour – the metamorphosis of British Invasion pop into hard blues, progressive rock, and prototypical metal.
A genuine supergroup, Cream’s three musicians were deified in England, as implied by the name: “Cream of the crop.” In America, though, they were unknown when they debuted on Murray the K’s “Music in the 5th Dimension” concert series (March/April ’67) at the RKO 58th Street theatre in New York. Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun seized the opportunity to bring Cream (on subsidiary Atco) into the studio on April 3 to record “Lawdy Mama.” Encouraged by the results, he booked their return the following month to complete an album. Legendary engineer Tom Dowd, famed for recording Ray Charles and John Coltrane, ran the eight-track tape equipment but, accustomed to small studio amplifiers, was taken unprepared for Cream’s massive Marshall stacks, double bass drums, and sheer volume. Unhappy with their new progressive direction and departure from traditional blues material, Ertegun enlisted producer/musician Felix Pappalardi, more conversant with contemporary rock, as liaison. Real Cream began with Disraeli Gears, 11 tracks recorded in three days between May 8-19 while on a short visa; testament to their growing tightness and the conducive atmosphere of Atlantic’s studio.
Some material was culled from a missing March ’67 demo recorded at London’s Spot studio. Bruce presumed manager/producer Robert Stigwood suppressed the tape, feeling the music was uncommercial, overly modern, and directionless. Nonetheless, the demo emerged and four tunes deemed suitable were revisited, rearranged and re-recorded in May. Two of the most innovative but rejected songs later appeared in ’69 on Bruce’s first solo album and another on Question of Time (1990) while other tracks were added to the ’97 Cream compilation Those Were the Days.
“Strange Brew” featured Clapton’s lead vocals – his first on a single. Ertegun perceived EC as frontman and encouraged him to assume greater singing duties. His original 12-bar blues began as “Lawdy Mama” from the April session. Cream recorded two versions – a triplet-based shuffle closer to a Junior Wells/Buddy Guy contrafact, and a straight-four rock take. The latter was reworked into a pop song by co-writers Pappalardi and his wife, Gail Collins. Cream’s last single on the Reaction label (May ’67 U.K., July U.S.), it reached #17 in England. Journalists praised EC’s evolving blues style. Beyond prominent Freddie King/Buddy Guy mannerisms of his Beano period, he flaunted references to Albert King in the enriched 7#9 chords, underlying funkiness, and allusions to “Pretty Woman” in the solo with taut rhythmic punctuations and wide string bends. It remains an iconic piece in Clapton’s catalog.
“Sunshine of Your Love,” composed by Clapton, Bruce, and lyricist Pete Brown, melded hard rock, electric blues, and psychedelia. Cream’s most successful single (#5 U.S.), it was initially dismissed by Atlantic executives as “psychedelic hogwash,” but championed by Atco artists Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding, which helped earn re-evaluation. Bruce’s bluesy bass riff in D was his dedication to Hendrix (after seeing him at London’s Saville Theater) and remains one of the heaviest themes to menace Top 40 radio. Clapton contributed the driving eight-bar three-chord (A-C-G) chorus, expanding traditional I-IV changes into seminal hard rock that would inspire metal. Dowd suggested the tom-tom beat, which provided a distinctive one-and-three rhythmic emphasis, heavier than the two-and-four backbeat of most blues-rock. Clapton’s solo is among his most definitive, mixing blues and rock ingredients with a humorous opening quote of “Blue Moon.”
“Strange Brew” epitomized Cream’s penchant for reinventing blues in a hard-rock context. In the solo, Clapton reshapes the Albert King influence into a striking new but related descendant. He offers jabbing space-conscious lines – explicit in the rests separating his phrases – that morph Am pentatonic blues melody with rock intensity. Right out the gate, he pays homage to Albert with extremely wide string bends in the first three bars. These bends are a direct allusion to King and have since become staples of rock and metal. Note the variation of thematic blues licks from his intro solo in measures 6 and 11-12.
“World of Pain,” a Pappalardi/Collins song, meanders through an atypical chord progression and develops a psychedelic folk-rock-blues atmosphere heightened by amorphous harmony, feel changes, obscure lyrics, and Clapton’s use of the wah pedal. The track features elaborate overdubbed guitar parts. EC superimposes light wah colorations over emphatic strumming in verses and plays double-tracked blues lines and more-urgent rhythm guitar in choruses. His solo (1:37) and outro (2:42) are emblematic of the era’s loose double-lead orchestration, heard earlier in “Sweet Wine” and later in Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The free counterpoint of two overlapping guitars over Eric’s strumming and counter-line riff generates a dizzying soundscape in which the whole is greater than sum of the parts.
“Dance the Night Away,” a Bruce/Brown composition, bears the distinction of Clapton’s first use of a 12-string with Cream. Unlike an added/alternate timbre typical of Beatles’ and Byrds’ music, the guitars are electric, surpassing folk-rock’s jangle-pop quotient with extensive arpeggiations and strumming. EC expands the arrangement with tremolo-picked melodies reminiscent of raga rock in instrumental bridges (thematic solos) between verses for a decidedly ethnic effect in the otherwise tightly structured pop song.
“Blue Condition,” Ginger Baker’s original from Cream’s March demo, was prompted by encouragement from Clapton and Bruce and is the only Baker piece on the record. He handles lead vocals, though an outtake exists with Clapton singing. The song develops a plodding blues-rock mood with a slow 12/8 groove in G and rootsy urban/country blues gestures epitomized in EC’s restrained parallel-sixth and arpeggio figures. Only two chords are used (G in verses, C in choruses) assuring a minimal harmonic framework enlarged with restrained Clapton fills in the chorus and only one element of sophistication – the shifting 12/8-15/8-12/8 meters to accommodate Baker’s “no variation” phrase.
“Tales of Brave Ulysses” (B-side of “Strange Brew”) is a collaboration between Clapton and neighbor Martin Sharp, who designed the covers of Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire. The merging of Sharp’s mythological poetry and EC’s music, based on Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” progression, marks the official debut of the wah pedal in rock. Clapton’s “talking wah” approach inspired Hendrix and Zappa, foreshadowed “White Room” (which bears a similar descending progression: D-C-B-Bb) and Hendrix’s “Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” and continues to be a prevalent effect in rock, R&B and pop.
Clapton’s solo in “The Sunshine of Your Love” is iconic in rock history. This excerpt, played over the blues-oriented verse changes, features his woody flute-like tone and stands as a prime example of his scale-blending approach; note the mix of major and minor pentatonic sounds throughout. Particularly intriguing are the wide string bends in measures 9-10, the laid-back blues phrasing in 11-12, and the humorous “Blue Moon” quote that opens the solo.
“SWLABR” (She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow) sprang from a newspaper story of a scorned lover defacing his woman’s portrait. The Bruce/Brown composition was selected from the March demo, became the B-side of “Sunshine of Your Love,” and anticipates prog rock and metal styles. Animated by strong rhythmic accents, syncopations, shifting 4/4, 3/4 and 6/4 meter and unpredictable phrase lengths, it exploits Clapton’s “woman tone” for a vocalesque effect. The timbre is heard prominently in verse riffs, fills, and EC’s thematic blues-based double-tracked solo (1:17).
“We’re Going Wrong,” Bruce’s original from the demo, is a languid ballad with dark undertones enhanced by Clapton’s slinky woman-tone lines weaving through and complementing Bruce’s mournful vocals. The minimal lyrics are fleshed out with modal changes in E, an imaginative collision of minor-blues and major diatonic harmony, over a slower 3/4 groove and Baker’s incongruous hyperactive drumming. This was one of few Disraeli tunes to be played live (’67 BBC and 2005 Royal Albert Hall reunion), as most were dropped in favor of concert pieces that engendered lengthy improvisation.
“Outside Woman Blues” repurposes Arthur Reynolds’ 1929 recording, “Blind Joe.” Arranged and sung by Clapton, it exemplifies what he called “blues, ancient and modern,” the transformative updating heard on “Spoonful,” “Crossroads” and “Sitting on Top of the World” in Cream, pursued regularly throughout his career. The most traditional and harmonically simple piece on Disraeli Gears (only I and V chords occur in the 12-bar form), it reflects his devotion to the blues in a turbulent progressive period in rock, and was later performed onstage as solo artist. Faithful to the blues idiom, EC’s adaptations include mixed-mode rock riff in verses, extended 7#9 voicings, and thoughtful overdubbed guitars, particularly a thematic fill-in parallel octaves and thirds, again exploiting the woman tone. The definitive Clapton solo (1:30) contains stuttering rhythms, string bends, and soulful legato phrasing.
“Take It Back,” another Bruce/Brown piece from the demo, is a veiled protest to the Vietnam War, complete with crowd sounds and rendered as an altered-blues shuffle in D. Clapton assumes a rhythm-guitar ensemble role reminiscent of Chicago blues, allowing Bruce’s harmonica to function as lead instrument. EC plays the opening single-note riff an octave above Bruce, comps throughout, adds light chordal fills and sixth-interval patterns with an overdubbed guitar in choruses, and provides a solid R&B chord figure during the contrasting straight-four feel change for Bm verse sections.
In contrast to “Strange Brew” and “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Tales of Brave Ulysses” was futuristic and psychedelic and foreshadowed a new era. The first song to exploit the wah pedal, it serves as a virtual textbook of Clapton’s early wah playing. This excerpt features his playing in the aggressive hard-rock sections of the verse over the now-standard D5-Dsus2/C-G6/B-Bb6#11 progression. Against this pattern, EC plays a descending single-note line shadowing the changes and rocking the wah pedal in time. In measures 3-6, he adopts a looser talking-wah approach, moving the pedal in steady quarter-note rhythm while playing punchy blues licks in A minor pentatonic.
“Mother’s Lament,” spoofing English pub singalongs, taps into the droll Gilbert & Sullivan cabaret schtick of the genre, but goes further. Essentially a Cockney-laced vocal number with light piano, it seemed an odd piece to end an album of such consequence, but, typical of the ’60s freewheeling attitude. Sung in jest by Cream at an NYC bar between sessions, it stuck and served as whimsical closer.
Session photos reveal Clapton used two guitars – a black Les Paul Custom with three humbuckers and his ’64 Gibson SG Standard, “The Fool,” which replaced the Les Paul Standard played on Fresh Cream, seen on their “Ready Steady Go!” TV appearance in late ’66 then stolen in March ’67. Originally Cherry Red, its stock Vibrola tailpiece was converted to a screwed-down trapeze-type frame, and it was given an emblematic Summer of Love finish. The artwork EC called “a psychedelic fantasy,” was commissioned by Robert Stigwood and painted by Dutch artists Simon and Marijke, who later became known as The Fool design collective. The reference to the tarot card signifying truth, spiritual meaning, and the circle in which all things gravitate, grew into a visual metaphor for Eric’s authentic blues style reaching universal significance in pop culture. The first such painted guitar, it began a trend of artist-painted instruments such as Harrison’s “Rocky” Strat, Lennon’s J-160E, and Hendrix’s Flying V. Associated with Cream at the its zenith, it was played prominently in ’67-’68, given to Harrison then passed to Jackie Lomax by mid ‘68, and purchased by Todd Rundgren in ’71 for $500. Cited by Darren Julien as “one of the most important guitars in all of rock history,” it fetched $1.27 million at Julien’s November 2023 sale and holds the world record for the most-expensive of EC’s guitars to be auctioned.
Wolf Marshall is the founder and original Editor-In-Chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His latest book is Jazz Guitar Course: Mastering the Jazz Language. Others include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar. A list credits can be found at wolfmarshall.com.
This article originally appeared in VG’s May 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
