Cream

Cream (also "The Cream") was a 1960s British supergroup which featured guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker. The band were only together for two years, but have reunited twice in the following decades.

Celebrated as the first of the great power trios of rock, their sound was characterised by a melange of blues and psychedelia, combining Clapton's mastery of the genre with the airy voice of Jack Bruce and, at times, manic rhythms of Ginger Baker. The drug-addled imagery and ambience of the time abounds. Cream epitomised the high energy sound of the time, anchored in a familiar blues style; from the traditional blues classics such as "Crossroads" and "Born Under a Bad Sign," through more eccentric imagery found in "Strange Brew" and "Tales of Brave Ulysses," and culminating in the protracted indulgences of "Spoonful" and "Toad". Their biggest hits were "I Feel Free", "Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room", and "Badge", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison, who played guitar on the recording under the pseudonym 'L'Angelo Misterioso' for contractual reasons. The late Felix Pappalardi, producer (and later member of Mountain), sometimes called the 'fourth member' of Cream, is featured heavily on the Disraeli Gears album, fondly remembered for its striking design by Martin Sharp. British poet Pete Brown wrote the lyrics to many of the band's songs and was another important contributor.

While their studio work and songwriting were therefore relatively formal, in a live setting Cream were almost a completely different band, improvising constantly, with songs regularly surpassing the 20 minute mark. This gained them a reputation as (along with The Grateful Dead) the first jam band. Much of this stemmed from Bruce and Baker's origins as jazz musicians, although during an interview on The South Bank Show in the late 1980s Clapton attributed the extending soloing to their unwillingness or inability to stop playing and because none of the trio was officially the bandleader with the authority to rein in the other two. Considering their jazz roots, it is perhaps ironic that the band is also considered a pioneer of heavy metal music. Bruce has stated that without Clapton's influence the band would more likely have played a kind of jazz, although what they played in concert was indeed jazz-rock fusion, and Baker commented in a 2005 interview (included with the Cream reunion DVD) that he and Bruce consider Clapton a jazz musician, even if Clapton himself doesn't.

Cream broke up in November 1968 due to clashing egos and musical visions: Bruce and Baker were notorious for not getting along, and Clapton famously related how he once suddenly stopped playing in concert without either of the others noticing. Inspired by more song-based acts like The Band, Clapton went on to perform much different, less improvisational material with Delaney & Bonnie, Blind Faith, his own Derek and the Dominos, and in a long and varied solo career. (Blind Faith came about immediately after the demise of Cream following an attempt by Clapton to recruit Steve Winwood into Cream in the hope that Winwood would act as a buffer between Bruce and Baker; Cream broke up before Winwood could accept the offer.) On the night that Cream split, Jimi Hendrix was performing live on the Lulu show and cut short his own number, instead beginning an instrumental version of "Sunshine of Your Love" (which had, perhaps unknown to him, apparently been originally inspired by a Hendrix concert) which he dedicated to "the Cream".

The three members of Cream didn't play together again until 1993, when Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and played at the induction ceremony. The band reunited in May 2005 for a series of four shows at the Royal Albert Hall, where they had played their final concerts in 1968 (documented on the album Goodbye.) The reformed band also played at Madison Square Garden from October 24 - 26, 2005.

See Wikipedia, Cream (band), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream band