A look back at Cream

[Dave W]

Talking about a revolution: the story of Cream and two years that changed rock

[BTL]

Thank you, I enjoyed that.

[Rob]

Nice read!

[Grog]

+2 

[westen44]

Great article.  That writer knows a lot about Cream, Hendrix and the Who. 

[Pilgrim]

Really enjoyed that article!

[uwe]

Robbie Robertson and The Band are to blame for Cream's demise! When Clapton heard The Band for the first time, it was all over for him.

But people tend to forget that Clapton always had the singer/songwriter/blues guitarist-all-rolled-into-one genes in him. Just expressing himself with lead guitar wasn't sufficient. Leaving Cream was logical from his musical ambition/tastes. And though never a great vocalist like Bruce or Winwood, he prefers to sing himself. And unlike Bruce and Baker, Eric's musical tastes are not at all cutting edge or off-the-wall. He likes to keep things very traditional. In hindsight, it is a miracle that he (i) joined Cream at all, (ii) stayed as long as he did. Thank you for those two years though.

None of this takes anything away from Cream's first mover influence. Bruce's vocal style influenced Ian Gillan more than Robert Plant, those 20 minute improvisations on one song were lifted straight from Cream's rule book by DP (who opened for them in the US, but got eventually fired for being cocky) and even in 1974 you could still here overt Cream influences on DP albums:

[Dave W]

A connection to Deep Purple? What a shock! 

[Pilgrim]

A connection to Deep Purple? What a shock! 

What about Kevin Bacon?

[uwe]

A connection to Deep Purple? What a shock! 

Not at all, they only stole from the best! That of course automatically excluded Led Zeppelin.

[uwe]

What about Kevin Bacon?

And Deep Purple? Gosh, that is a hard one even for me. Much as I liked Loggins & Messina, I was never aware of a Purple connection, help me out!



Nor with Bacon's own - very good - music.



He's an underrated actor too IMHO. I hated it when he become typecast as the neurotic bad guy for a while, but it probably earned him good money.

[4stringer77]

Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton were in Blind Faith with Steve Winwood who wrote the song Gimme Some Lovin by the Spencer Davis group which was a song featured on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Sleepers starring Kevin Bacon. 

[uwe]

Now that closes the circle, danke, I should have known, once again we culminate with Deep Purple:

The drummer of Spencer Davis was of course the inimitable Pete York who - a German resident for many decades - has been a part of the "larger DP family" since the 70ies. He's played on Jon Lord solo albums,



has collaborated with Ian Paice on (in Germany) televised drummer clinics and his own band features Roger Glover on bass, when Roger has off-time from his day job.





Ah, I got another far-fetched Cream-Purple connection! Both Clapton and Lord were friends with George Harrison - all three (besides being rock star mansion neighbours in Henley-on-Thames) had a cameo appearance in Harrison's 80ies and now largely forgotten comedy film production "Water!" - no Pete York though, but rather some no-name drummer from Harrison's uneventful musical past (the other one was the slightly better known Ray Cooper):

[westen44]

^^^

I never saw it, but if the movie "Water" is now largely forgotten, there may be a good reason for it.  It's just my opinion, but George Harrison may have been better off not getting involved in the movie production business.  Movies like "Shanghai Surprise" for instance were awful and there were others that should have never seen the light of day.  He may have done a lot of interesting stuff with music, but when it comes to movies, give me Ingmar Bergman, not George Harrison.  There were some good movies by Handmade Films, but too many box office bombs. 

[Dave W]

^^^

Without George, Life of Brian and Time Bandits wouldn't have been made. IMHO that more than makes up for the later failures.