Disraeli Gears

[Dave W]

Still one of my three most played albums,

"I think that the whole band was kind of misunderstood by everybody, and it gave us a sort of an edge, you know"

[Pilgrim]

Interesting read. Over the past few years, I've learned a lot about what Jack Bruce did for Cream. I hadn't realized how critical his part was.

[uwe]

I think even without the touring stress, Cream wouldn't have lasted forever. Clapton left the Yardbirds, he left John Mayall, he left Cream, he left Delaney & Bonnie, he left Blind Faith and he left Derek & The Dominos - not because he is an inconsistent journeyman, I think he always had that singer/songwriter/lead guitarist/British gentleman's blues role in him and he was striving for it, it just took him a while to find it.

And while his type of adult lightweight bluesy AOR (often approaching the Yacht Rock genre) isn't really my taste, I believe he is 100% sincere with it. It's what he really wants to do and enough people like it.

[uwe]

I further believe that the key word in the chasm that developed between Jack's and Eric's post-Cream careers is accessibility. Jack might forever be the more profound and daring musician with a much broader range than Eric, also the stronger singer and multi-instrumentalist, but Eric had a knack of pleasing mainstream rock and pop listeners and never overtaxing them with anything too esoteric. I don't even think that he tried to appeal consciously to them, it was just that his taste was by and large their taste. Jack never latched onto the taste of the wider public - because he both didn't want to and also because he couldn't, his musical interests are too eclectic, the jazz influence too prominent.

Even Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker couldn't really teach Eric jazz, he ploughs a much narrower field - essentially singer-songwriter pop rock with a bluesy vibe, it has served him well.

Eric also had a better hand at forging and sustaining a solo career, Jack's failed excursions into rejuvenating the Cream magic via West, Bruce & Laing or Baker Bruce Moore/BBM in hindsight distracted from his solo career - once you are an established solo artist, people don't really want you to retreat into a band collective again (unless, perhaps, you are a former Beatle) - David Bowie learned that with Tin Machine. It struck me with the Cream reunion that while Ginger and Jack tried to project the old band again, Eric was still "Layla", "Lay Down Sally" & "Tears In Heaven"-Eric Clapton, now just playing with one of his former bands. He had become too large and successful even for Cream.

None of this shall take anything away from what Cream achieved - no Cream back then, no Metallica today, it is that simple. And I have even forgiven them for kicking a fledgling Deep Purple (Mk I) off their Farewell Tour in 1968 for going down too well after a few dates. 

[saltymonkey]

100%! Clapton is a radio friendly singer songwriter and talented blues guitarist. Jack was an eclectic musician's musician.

[ajkula66]

Clapton was the weakest link in Cream - IMO - but actually ended up sounding good on many occasions because the other two pushed him across the borders of his own limitations.

After Layla he was just outright boring. Once again, IMO.

[uwe]

No one ever said that Eric Clapton's music post-Cream was exciting, not even him. Just look at his audience, they are not looking for excitement either. Neither were fans of Mark Knopfler. I've never met an Eric Clapton or Dire Straits fan who sought excitement in music, only Wohlklang.

That is not knocking Clapton or Knopfler, but their general aim is music that soothes rather than excites. Coupled with some lyrical content painting a picture perhaps, but it is essentially pastoral rock/pop.

But as I said: Clapton didn't go there because that is where the money was, he went there because it is his nature. He could have asked Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice to join him instead (and they would have even had an ok singer then) and make shitloads of money on the stadium circuit in the 70ies belting out Cream chestnuts, but he didn't, instead he wrote Wonderful Tonight.

Clapton's most revealing sentence about Cream was IMHO: "I'd stop playing and the other two wouldn't notice." He didn't see that as a blissfully frenzied, yet trance-like state to aspire for, he saw it as wanking. Each to his own, this is after all a man who preferred The Band to his own music with Cream or to The Who or to Led Zeppelin.

[Dave W]

Reminds me of the time in the early 90s that one of my sisters asked me if I had heard the acoustic version of Layla that "some clown" had put out. I told her that the clown was Clapton. She just said "how sad!"

[TBird1958]

Clapton was the weakest link in Cream - IMO - but actually ended up sounding good on many occasions because the other two pushed him across the borders of his own limitations.

After Layla he was just outright boring. Once again, IMO.

Have to agree, Baker and Bruce (plus drugs and playing Gibsons) made Clapton a better player in Cream. yeah, Layla is good - everything else is a snooze. He needs to keep his mouth shut too.

[uwe]

Millions of people like boring. Boring Clapton sells out every German venue irrespective of size. Jack Bruce toured clubs.

But my favorite post-Cream project is actually the Baker Gurvitz Army.



Baker was an even better drummer than Jack Bruce was a bassist or Eric Clapton was a guitarist. That's saying something.

Why these guys fell through all cracks is beyond me.

[Dave W]

Millions of people like boring. Boring Clapton sells out every German venue irrespective of size. Jack Bruce toured clubs.

But my favorite post-Cream project is actually the Baker Gurvitz Army.



Baker was an even better drummer than Jack Bruce was a bassist or Eric Clapton was a guitarist. That's saying something.

Why these guys fell through all cracks is beyond me.

I like this, but I never even heard of their existence.

[uwe]

Oh, that surprises me, their exposure in the US must have been even worse than I thought then! It's not like they were a household name in Germany or anything, somewhere between 2nd and 3rd league in popularity, but if you knew who Ginger Baker was, then there was a certain likelihood you would have heard of them. Baker was with them for three albums and two years (1974-76) - not bad by his standards! - and the band didn't end in acrimony, but in frustration, their manager died and none of their albums charted in either the UK or the US.

They were even a supergroup of sorts, lead vocalist Snips came from the Sharks (of Andy Fraser and Chris Spedding almost-fame) and the Gurvitz Brothers (guitarist and bassist) had of course been behind Gun.



In fact, initially Baker Gurvitz Army were Gun + Ginger as the new drummer, Snips only came in after their debut because the record company felt the band needed a lead singer.



I actually thought their music quite special and an interesting mix, a bit PROG, a bit Brit blues rock, even a touch of US West Coast, the art rock influence of Snips and of course Ginger's über-animated way of conducting a percussive discussion with the rest of the music.

[Alanko]

Clapton was the weakest link in Cream - IMO - but actually ended up sounding good on many occasions because the other two pushed him across the borders of his own limitations.

After Layla he was just outright boring. Once again, IMO.

I feel that Clapton was uncomfortable in Cream, knowing that he was getting accolades for gluing together blues licks from generally overlooked blues masters. Perhaps due to his slightly dysfunctional upbringing, there seems to be a yearning in him for authenticity and a sense of genuine identity that plagued him; trying to work out what he actually wanted and who he was, and Cream wasn't helping. Being praised for something that didn't feel right. Instead he seems to have wanted to become Robbie Robertson, playing rootsy music while dressed as a farmer, or he was fascinated by somebody like JJ Cale who had a fully formed sense of artistry but who could also melt away anonymously into the crowds.

[uwe]

He shied away from being a guitar hero and rather wanted to play music for people who want a guitar to sound just pleasant and not solo too long. That was 56 years ago and people still haven't forgiven him. 

Clapton never wanted to be a Hendrix, Beck, Page, Blackmore or EvH. Alan is right, he didn't find that fulfilling.

[gearHed289]

I'm typically in the minority on Clapton in that I rather like his 70s solo stuff. A couple of high school friends were really into him, so I'd hear it pretty regularly hanging out with them. For me, it went downhill after his 1980 live album "Just One Night".