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NEW YORK - MAY 30: Musician Jack Bruce poses for a portrait on May 30, 2001 in New York City, New ... [+]
GETTY IMAGESIn 1997, I spent the day with Jack Bruce, the great Cream bassist/vocalist, and his family at London’s famed Savoy Hotel. We discussed many things music there, among them the possibility of a Cream reunion. The band, the first supergroup and arguably the greatest rock trio of all time, had avoided the reunion scene, all the rage at the time, and hadn’t played together since their breakup in 1968 at Royal Albert Hall.
"Apart from the money, that band tends to get overlooked these days," said Bruce at the time. “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."
The reunion indeed, did happen, in 2005, first for four nights at Royal Albert in the spring, later for three nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden in the fall. Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker finally put it all together again. The concerts won critical acclaim, showing the three virtuosos still had their chops. Scalped tickets, even the cheap seats, fetched thousands of dollars. I was at both venues, courtesy of Bruce’s widow, Margrit Seyffer.
Bruce passed in 2014, Baker in 2019, but what the former had to say 26 years ago about Cream and its significant impact on rock music - despite the band’s short, two-year life - is important, historical stuff, and hasn’t changed.
This interview has been published in various parts over the years, but here, below, for the first time the chat is exhibited in its entirety, with light edits. I found Bruce to be charming, witty, and with a great, self-deprecating sense of humor.
LONDON - 26th NOVEMBER: L-R, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton from Cream pose together on ... [+]
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Jim Clash: Take us back to when Cream first came over to the U.S. at the tail-end of the British Invasion.
Jack Bruce: We did a seven-month tour of America, playing places like Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, I think it was - just every little club. That's how we did it, physically by going on the road. We actually created that so- called underground audience. When we got to the Fillmore in '67 was when the band really began to happen.
But it all tends to get overlooked now, maybe not necessarily in a musical way, but in the fact of being a catalyst to make other [musical] things happen. We got to be very good. Sometimes there was so much power from that band that it was incredible. There were only two groups I've been in that had a similar kind of energy: Cream, and the one with Tony Williams, John McLaughlin and Larry Young [Tony Williams Lifetime].
Clash: You wrote a lot of Cream's material. How did, “Sunshine Of Your Love’’ come about?
View of Atlantic Records President and co-founder Ahmet Ertegun (1923 - 2006) (left) and Rock ... [+]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Bruce: We were in my flat in Hempstead [England], Pete Brown and myself. We had been working all night trying to come up with material for the next album, Disraeli Gears I think. Normally, I would just play on acoustic guitar or piano and get ideas that way, but we hadn't really got anywhere.
I just picked up my string bass and played the riff. We kind of both looked out the window, and the sun was just coming up. Pete wrote, "It's getting near dawn." It's one of those things where it actually happened that way [laughs]. Once we had the riff and a bunch of lyrics, we didn't have a way of ending the sequence. That was Eric's [Clapton] contribution - to come up with chords, very important.
Then the problem became convincing people like [Atlantic Records] Ahmet Ertegun that this was a commercial proposition. He didn't see it at all. I was very lucky that Booker T [Jones] came into the session. When he heard “Sunshine,’’ he said, "That's a hit."
Clash: And the rest is history.
Bruce: It turned out to be Atlantic's biggest single up to that point. It's also wonderful that people still remember it. There were a couple of uses that I love. One was [Martin] Scorsese’s Goodfellas. When [Robert] DeNiro is in the bar, it starts playing and I'm going, "Oh no!" The most horrible scene in that movie when DeNiro whacks the guy, and there's my riff [laughs]. Also, there's a very strange use of it in the movie, True Lies. The little daughter is playing it on her walkman. Things like that really knock me out.
Clash: There was the association of Cream with hard drugs.
Bruce: That was really exaggerated. The '60s for me wasn't a time of heavy hard drug use. In my experience, people got into that more in the '70s. But there was a lot of pot around, especially when we got to San Francisco, but it was kind of light- hearted.
I can only speak for myself, not for Ginger [Baker] or Eric, obviously. But there was no [collective] band hard drug use, no getting-down- together sort of thing. I hate to use the word professional, but I think we took it too seriously to be out of it on stage. Don't get me wrong, there were a couple of times we experimented with some acid [LSD]. With that band [Cream] as far as I remember, I only played once under the influence of that, and it was impossible.
Clash: Do you remember which gig?
Bruce: I do. It was at Liverpool University. I don't remember why, but we were traveling from somewhere to there, and we dropped acid together. I had a really interesting journey, very hallucinogenic. We were in a car, and I remember it kind of rubbery going around this bend, like a cartoon car.
When it came to actually playing, the same thing was going on with the bass. The neck was not solid anymore [laughs]. I've got recordings of things later from similar situations, with Jim Keltner and other people at the Record Plant in New York, and the tempo is so slow. It's one…two...I didn't enjoy that at all, and I wouldn't recommend it. I go with the Charlie Parker way of looking at it - drugs may make you think you're playing better, but the best way to play is straight.
UNITED KINGDOM - AUGUST 13: WINDSOR FESTIVAL Photo of CREAM and Ginger BAKER, with Cream, ... [+]
Clash: How would you describe your longtime relationship with Ginger Baker?
Bruce: There had always been problems between Ginger and myself. We're kind of like brothers. When it's nice it's great, but then sometimes, as with siblings, it can go really wrong. He took it upon himself to fire me from the Graham Bond Organisation, although he wasn't the band leader [laughs].
He said I was playing, "too busy." I think I was just finding myself and a style very much influenced by James Jamerson, people like that who played melodically. I was interested in trying to take the bass guitar out of the rhythm section. I was also influenced by jazz: Scott LaFaro, Charlie Mingus, the sort of people I looked up to. So yeah, I probably was playing a lot of notes. He [Baker] didn't quite agree with that [laughs].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Clash: What finally did Cream in?
Bruce: It was this seven-month [American] tour that sowed the seeds of destruction. I think everybody in the band would agree that we were very unfortunate to have [Robert] Stigwood as manager. He might have been successful in some ways, but he wasn't good in the sense that he knew how to encourage a band to continue.
There was never any, "You want to do a record, why don't you take two or three months and go somewhere and write some material." It was on the road, then straight into the studio, then straight on the road again. Let's milk this thing for what it's worth while it lasts, which is very shortsighted.
The band probably would have gone on longer. What we could have done was split up, done our own projects, then come together as a band every now and again and do something. But because of the way it ended, a kind of bitter ending, it didn't.
Clash: Bitterness implies more than just a frenetic schedule.
Bruce: Well, the touring was too much, but there was quite a lot of bad feeling about the fact that most of the material was mine and Pete Brown's. That wasn't a deliberate thing, me going in and insisting we do my material. It's just that's what it was.
When we went into the studio, I would have maybe 20 songs, Eric might have one song and Ginger might have one idea. That would be the proportion. Eric started to write more things towards the end. Again, what we should have done was gone away, I don't know to Jamaica or somewhere, and been together in a more social way. We could have written things together. Very few songs were written by the three of us.
LONDON - 26th NOVEMBER: Eric Clapton performs live on stage with Cream during their farewell ... [+]
REDFERNSClash: What did you think when people were calling Eric Clapton, "God?’’
Bruce: That was earlier, the "Eric Clapton is God’’ thing, when he was part of the Yardbirds and John Mayall. Somebody chalked it up on a wall somewhere in London, and it kind of caught on. It didn't bother me because he was a good guitar player, you know?
Clash: Could anyone other than Clapton have pulled off the lead guitar role in Cream?
Bruce: I think that band couldn't have happened if it had been any other drummer, another bass player, singer, guitarist. I think with all successful musical groups, it's the individual personalities. It's like Duke Ellington and his great bands - you can't imagine Cootie Williams not being there, or Sam Woodyard. I couldn't imagine anyone else being in Cream.
But I would have to own up that it was Eric really who made the band as commercial as it was. I've never been a commercially-minded person - I'm not pushy, I'm not ambitious in that way for huge success. Eric made those kinds of things happen.
NEW YORK - APRIL 1967: Rock and roll guitarist Eric Clapton of the rock band "Cream" recording the ... [+]
GETTYClash: Give us an example.
Bruce: He was very fashion-conscious. Because of that, we started the hairstyles and flared trousers. We actually went to an Army-Navy store and bought U.S. Navy whites with huge bellbottoms. There are some black-and-white publicity pictures of us on the Thames [River] wearing those [laughs].
I had problems with the hair. I have such fine hair that when it got long it just went into big knots, and I'd find things living in it [laughs]. I remember Eric saying after we met Jimi [Hendrix] that one of us had to have that kind of afro. I said, "It ain't going to be me, mate." So Eric got the perm. Things happened in that band by default.
Clash: Really, what else?
Bruce: When we first got together, we had a competition to see who wouldn't be the singer. I didn't want to be singer, Eric didn't want to either. I guess I lost [laughs].
Clash: But you have a great voice?
Bruce: I started off singing in church choirs, then solo'd with Benjamin Britten conducting, things like this. But then I became a musician, and musicians, particularly jazz musicians, have this kind of snobbishness where they look down on singers. I sang some songs with Graham Bond, a couple of blues things, but I didn't really find the range in my voice. That came later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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