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CREAM – Disraeli Gears

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What does it sound like?:

Make no mistake, 1967 was an exciting time to be alive. And it was an even better time to be alive if you were living in London, then the white-hot epicentre of a youth-driven cultural revolution that saw an unprecedented flourishing in art, music and fashion.

Musically speaking 1967 was Year Zero for psychedelia, the British Blues Boom, acid folk and, whisper it, heavy metal. Forget 1971, THIS was the year we saw massively important, career-defining albums by the Beatles, Stones, Velvet Underground, Donovan, Zappa, the Incredible String Band and countless others. If that weren’t enough, we also got the debut LP by a new band named Pink Floyd and no less than two life-changing albums from Jimi Hendrix. An embarrassment of riches you might say. Then, in November 1967, as the flickering embers of the summer of love were about to be extinguished and we thought things couldn’t get much better, we got arguably the album of the year: Cream’s Disraeli Gears.

Cue Kenneth Wolstenholme: 1967? They think it’s all over! It is now!

Discounting live LPs and leftover compilations, Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker released just three full albums during their short, two-and-a-half-year tenure together as rock’s first supergroup. Their much-anticipated debut Fresh Cream arrived in late 1966 and while it was certainly a breakthrough album in many ways (the seeds of heavy rock can be found here), it was basically just their stage act committed to vinyl. The sleeve photo was dull and in a nod to a rapidly fading era, Fresh Cream even contained some self-conscious sleeve notes on the back. Without a hint of irony, we were told that Eric Clapton “Epitomises all that is ‘blues’. From far shores he is hailed as brilliant, and he is truly a great guitarist and personality. Originally a rustic, Eric pursued his musical ideas and became a figurehead with The Yardbirds and John Mayall”. To this day, I still have no idea what “Originally a rustic” means. Of course, even as Fresh Cream hit the stores a young American guitarist landed in London and prepared to lay waste to the British rock scene. Jimi had arrived.

Until Hendrix burst on the London scene, Cream had been kings of all they surveyed, but that was about to change. Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton and all the other British guitar pretenders were instantly forced onto the back foot by Jimi’s arrival. Hendrix was doing things with the guitar that their inbuilt British reserve simply wouldn’t allow them to do. Playing behind his head, dry-humping it and even setting fire to the thing. Jimi was cool enough to get away with such antics, but well-bred English art school boys, no matter how talented, were simply too inhibited to throw caution to the wind like that. It was time for a rethink.

Psychedelia was in the air in early 1967 and everyone, including Jimi, was caught up and swept along in the acid-tinged undertow. But in what now looks like a shameless attempt to copy Hendrix, Clapton permed his hair and along with Jack and Ginger, jettisoned his jeans and buckskin jackets in favour of the latest far-out King’s Road threads. Eric and Jack also had their guitars hand-painted by the Dutch art collective known as The Fool, known for their work with the Beatles.

It was this new dandified Cream that went to New York’s Atlantic studios in April 1967 to record their second album. Although their manager Robert Stigwood had been credited as producer on Fresh Cream his involvement was minimal and almost certainly more administrative than musical. What’s more their debut had been recorded jointly at a Chalk Farm rehearsal room and a tiny studio above a chemist shop in Mayfair (which they couldn’t use within shop hours because of the noise). This time around they planned to get serious. With legendary engineer Tom Dowd at the controls they brought in a young producer named Felix Pappalardi. Roughly the same age as the band members, Pappalardi didn’t have a lot of big-name experience, his only production of note before this being the debut album by the Youngbloods, but he was a talented musician and arranger and Atlantic boss Ahmet Ertegun felt he could work well with the British band. Pappalardi ended up with two co-writing credits on the album. It should be remembered that Cream were signed to Atlantic records in the USA as part of the label’s move away from their black soul/R&B roots into the burgeoning white rock market. Within a year or two Atlantic would sign Led Zeppelin, Yes and other hugely successful rock/prog bands.

The recordings got off to a poor start when Ahmet Ertegun described Sunshine Of Your Love as “psychedelic hogwash”. Ertegun had originally been attracted to Clapton’s Beano Album blues guitar playing and was under the mistaken impression that Cream was Eric’s new band and he was the leader. We can only imagine how this went down with Jack and Ginger.

The first track to be recorded was the blues standard Lawdy Mama with Ertegun himself as producer. This didn’t turn out as planned, so Felix Pappalardi took over for the rest of the two recording sessions running over just six days in April/May 1967.

Pappalardi took the tapes of Lawdy Mama and with new lyrics by his wife Gail Collins, got Clapton to overdub a revised vocal and add some Albert King style guitar lines. The result was the album’s powerful opening track Strange Brew. Issued as a single in June 1967, five months before the album was released, it scraped into the UK top 20. Despite this promising start, Jack Bruce was never really happy with Strange Brew pointing out that the slight change in the chord progression had thrown his pre-recorded bass line out of kilter. Hardly anyone but Jack appeared to notice, however.

Guitarist note: Strange Brew was the first time we got to hear Clapton’s famous “woman tone” a deliciously liquid guitar distortion obtained by rolling all the treble off the neck pickup of his psychedelic Gibson SG and playing it through an overdriven Marshall amp. Soon guitarists across the land would be falling over themselves to copy Clapton’s signature “woman tone”, just as they had when he popularised the Gibson Les Paul on the Beano Album.

With scarcely time to digest the majesty of Strange Brew it’s straight into track two and possibly the most famous Cream track of them all. Mostly written by Jack Bruce and Cream’s in-house lyricist Pete Brown, with additions by Eric Clapton, Sunshine Of Your Love features one of rock’s timeless guitar riffs and a great co-vocal from Eric and Jack. And, yet along with Stairway To Heaven and the other overplayed rock anthems, it long ago achieved peak saturation status on classic rock radio. Familiarity may have bred contempt for many but I’m one who will always turn up the car radio whenever Sunshine Of Your Love comes on. This track has survived numerous and diverse cover versions over the years, from Ella Fitzgerald’s 1968 big band jazz take, via Frank Zappa’s 1988 irreverent Thing-Fish-style patois version, to Santana’s ill-conceived heavy metal hatchet job on the album Guitar Heaven in 2010. None of them came within a country mile of the Disraeli Gears original. Listen to the way Ginger’s loose, swaggering drum pattern cuts across that stiff, wooden guitar riff and show me another rock anthem to compare with this.

World Of Pain is the second Felix Pappalardi/Gail Collins co-composition. Light on substance, it’s rescued by Eric’s backwards wah-wah guitar and some massive drumming from Ginger. Likewise, the pop psych of Dance The Night Away would be a throwaway track in the hands of any another band, but the sheer musicianship of Cream saves the day.

Blue Condition is Ginger’s only writing credit on the album and to the dismay of many (even at the time), he elected to sing it as well. Just like Ringo with the Beatles, Ginger was allowed a song or two on every Cream outing, no matter how, er, unusual the results. This one is not quite up there with Pressed Rat and Warthog from Wheels Of Fire but it’s close. The deluxe edition of Disraeli Gears features an alternate take of Blue Condition with Eric on vocals which works much better.

With music by Clapton and lyrics by Australian artist Martin Sharp, side two kicks off with Tales Of Brave Ulysses the third absolute stone cold classic track on the album. The story goes that Sharp wrote the lyrics as a poem in Greece en route overland from Australia to the UK. In London he met with Eric Clapton at the Speakeasy club and give him the poem written on a napkin. Eric loved it and added music to it. Voilà, the psychedelic wah-wah extravaganza that is Tales of Brave Ulysses was born. I suspect something like that wouldn’t happen today. Sharp also did the eyewatering Day-Glo sleeve artwork for Disraeli Gears and the follow-up Wheels Of Fire as well as the first album by Ginger Baker’s Airforce. The descending chord sequence of Ulysses gives full rein to Jack Bruce’s blood and thunder bass work which sits perfectly alongside Eric’s snaking wah-wah lines.

SWLABR is next up and the hits just keep on coming. This Bruce/Brown full-tilt rocker with a killer double tracked solo from Eric appeared as the B-side of the Sunshine Of Your Love single which reached top five in the US, but barely made the top 30 in the UK. For decades we thought that SWLABR was an acronym for “She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow”, but Jack Bruce later remarked that the W stood for “Was” rather than “Walks” and this corrected title was also referenced by Pete Brown in a 2006 interview.

The slow minor key psychedelic drone of We’re Going Wrong is the only Jack Bruce track on the album written without Pete Brown. The slow pace of the song is belied by Ginger’s drumming, which is frenetic throughout and when performed live, played on timpani with mallets. This was a highlight of the 2005 Cream reunion concerts.

Outside Woman Blues is an old Arthur Reynolds song dating back to 1929. It’s unrecognisable here though as it receives the full fat Cream heavy rock makeover in the same way that Crossroads would the following year. Eric is in top form here and the compression is turned up to eleven as he delivers an epic paint-stripping wah-wah guitar solo. Another nailed-on classic track.

We’re on the home stretch now and Take It Back sounds like it might have been at home on Jack’s first solo album Songs For A Tailor. No guitar solos to speak of here, just harmonica and plenty of party noises in the background, a la Dylan’s Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.

And so to the last song Mother’s Lament. It must have seemed like a great wheeze at the time, but this boozy, sub-Chas & Dave piano-led Cockney knees-up was never more than the flimsiest of throwaway tracks and really doesn’t belong on an album of this importance. One of the greatest albums of 1967 ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

I know you’ve been wondering about that album title, so here’s what Ginger had to say about it. “You know how the title came about – Disraeli Gears – yeah? We had this Austin Westminster (car), and Mick Turner was one of the road crew who’d been with me a long time, and he was driving along. Eric Clapton was talking about getting a racing bicycle. Mick, driving, went ‘Oh yeah – Disraeli gears!’ meaning Derailleur gears…We all just fell over…We said “that’s got to be the album title””.

What does it all *mean*?

50 years on, this album sounds as fresh and vital as the day it was recorded.

Goes well with…

All the other Cream albums

Release Date:

Might suit people who like…

Great musicianship and lots of guitar

8

Comments

  2. Excellent review JC. I still have my (single) copy of DG – must dig it out and give it a spin. I always thought “woman tone” was both pickups on with the treble rolled off the ridge pickup, but I bow to your greater knowledge. It’s a great sound anyways. I always imagine Clapton played most of it on his SG though of course he probably used a number of different instruments – but it’s interesting he moved away from the Beano tone (maxed out Marshall combo) to something much more smooth sounding for the new band. Great album!

    • Hi @Twang: FWIW I’m with Johnny on this one – neck pickup only, tone all the way down, volume all the way up, cooking amp (bit of artificial boost if necessary)….

      [Aside: what you are describing (both pickups on, bridge tone rolled off) is my basic 4001 sound when I have round-wounds on it….]

        • I notice that Eric talks of “taking all the bass off” with the tone knobs. Surely he means taking all the treble off?

          Someone should write a retro review of the Tony Palmer Cream film. Seldom have I been so disappointed with a film which promised so much. The fast cutting and constant zooming in and out left me nauseous. The editing is clumsy and inaccurate. At one point we see Eric wearing a coat and playing a Gibson 335, then a few seconds later the coat is off and he’s using a Gibson Firebird. Then we’re back to the 335 again, all in the same song!

          And those interviews were clearly filmed many months before the Albert Hall shows since Eric looks like a different person with his long hair and moustache.

          Close enough for rock & roll, I suppose?

          • Yes he’s taking the treble off. No active electronics in those days and all guitar controls do is roll treble off anyway. Send it to earth actually. 🙂

          • I can only think of two live concert videos that I’ve ever wanted to watch more than once.
            “Stop Making Sense” and “The Last Waltz” are the two. The marvellous “Jazz On a Summer’s Day” is not included as it isn’t just the performances but a view of the whole event and it’s location.
            The rest that I’ve seen are pretty dull affairs, riddled with the same limited repertoire of visual clichés, cropping up again and again in video after video.

  3. You could be right there Twang. I’ve always thought it was neck pick-up only, but I may be wrong. I’ll check it out.

    The pictures of Eric in Atlantic studios during the DG sessions show him with a black 3 pick-up Les Paul Custom circa 1957-60. So I wonder how much of the album was done with that?

  4. Funny as I was always drawn to that cover photo of Fresh Cream . Thought it was excellent.

    Excellent review by the way. As discussed previously never owned it but will be buying now- any version/format recommended.

    • I think the Fresh Cream cover flew in the face of the wave of psychedelia we were about to witness. Eric and Jack appear to be wearing WWII fighter plane leather helmets and goggles which reminded me of the war games we played as kids.

          • Someone explained that to me recently. It seems it was a union thing, whereby the printers had to use locally produced images and weren’t allowed to import negatives or artwork in order to protect local jobs.

            So what they did was take a UK or US LP sleeve, photograph it and make the printing plates from that. Unfortunately going down that one generation had terrible results in some cases. Instead of the vivid Day-Glo orange the Aussie Disraeli Gears turned out more like muddy brown.

            The second Beatles LP sleeve proved to be impossible to photograph well enough to print from so they had to make a totally new design just for Australia.

  5. Here’s the Fresh Cream sleeve. It’s Jack who is wearing the leather flying helmet. Not sure what Ginger is wearing on his head, but I like that military jacket. Pre-Hendrix too.

    Record collector’s note. The UK sleeve showed the title as a dollop of cream shaped image, while the US version had it in a square.

    And that camera Eric is showing off was probably state of the art in 1966, but now it belongs on my “obsolete technology on LP sleeves thread” of a while ago

    http://i.imgur.com/xdcEeJi.jpg

    • there’s an emperor’s new clothes thing going on here. Surely everyone can see that the DG cover, front and back, is ghastly? Step away from nostalgia and see the light…

        • I’ve said before around here that WOF is inspired, enigmatic and memorable. DG is just a nursey-school cut out and paste session that some kid has spilt their orange juice over. Awful! Air Force is somehow terrible yet memorable – probably as good a representation of a bloated, self-indulgent temporarily-rich-muso-at-a-loose-end project as any. He certainly captured Ginger’s personality in the ‘O’ of the band name!

          Incidentally, in Ginger’s autobiography [cue AWers saying ‘it’s no good’] he reveals that he was briefly a member of Pete Deuchar’s band, and at the same time as John McLaughlin, circa 1960 – quitting before a tour of Germany to take a better paid gig with Diz Disley. Ironically, from what I can make out from other sources, Disley had replaced Deuchar in Ken Colyer’s band while on an extended tour in Germany c.1956.

          • Really can’t understand why you think the art work is ghastly @Colin-H . Classic psychedelia just like the posters from San Francisco.

            JC – back to your review. This mystified me “What’s more their debut had been recorded jointly at a Chalk Farm rehearsal room and a tiny studio above a chemist shop in Mayfair (which they couldn’t use within shop hours because of the noise).”

            Why would a supposed supergroup have to record and rehearse in such modest circumstances?

            • I guess they were a supergroup in name only at first with no money behind them. It wasn’t until the stadium tours of America got underway that Cream started to make real money. In the U.K. They were still a club band. That Mayfair studio was on South Moulton Street which at its Bond Street end was home to One Stop Records of Danny Baker fame

                • Alexis Korner’s ‘Sky High’, featuring Duffy Power, was recorded at the same place, in 1965. Its opening track, ‘Long Black Train’, is sensational. The rest less so.

                  • I didn’t know that, thanks Colin. Something to look out for.

                    Speaking of money, there’s the well-worn story about how Cream was formed.

                    Ginger had received £2,000 in royalties from a song he’d co-written and blew it on a then highly desirable Rover 2000. He drove the car to Oxford to watch Clapton with Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and afterwards gave Eric a lift back to London. During the journey the two discussed forming a band together. Eric was well impressed by Ginger’s car and suggested bringing Jack in on bass, much to Ginger’s consternation.

                    This much we know.

                    However, what exactly was the song Ginger co-wrote to earn him the money for the Rover? I’ve seen it variously described as a “Georgie Fame B-side” and the Graham Bond instrumental recording Waltz For A Pig which ended up on the flip side of The Who’s Substitute.

                    As for the Rover 2000. Ginger later wrote it off after falling asleep at the wheel and used the insurance money to buy another one exactly the same.

  7. I spent hours in my youth perusing the front and back covers of Disraeli Gears while I listened to it. Partly because in those impoverished days I had few albums and so those I bought got a listened to a lot.
    This album was my introduction to Eric Clapton and despite periods of perhaps years when he has disappeared from my listening choices he’s come back and I’m quite partial to this year’s I Still Do.
    I don’t agree with your observation that Take It Back would fit on Songs For A Tailor. The atmosphere, with the party noises etc. is so different from, the best description of the overall mood of SFAT that occurs to me is, the density of it.
    But an excellent overview of a key album of that era.

    • Thanks Carl. The Take It Back observation was perhaps hasty, but I’ve always found that track to be a little more poppy than the rest of the album and SFAT leapt instantly to mind. Probably wrongly.

  8. I bought it for the first time a few years ago and quite like it, but when I look at it now all I can think of is how ruddy awful Mother’s Lament is. Much easier to listen to the iPod, where Mother’s Lament is left off, rather than scrambling for the eject button when listening to the CD!

  9. Good one JC. I’ve never actually owned DG and keep meaning to rectify that. Cream alwats seemed such a curate’s egg – Crossroads, Badge, NSU and Sunshine yes, Tales, Strange Brew, Toad etc a big no. Maybe time to finally take the (vinyl) plunge.

      • They were on a Clapton double LP best of I bought as a teen – my one and only foray into the world of mail order record clubs. I never liked either, an opinion that’s never changed. Partly JB’s shivering slow vocal and the silly lyrics (Tales) and maybe a preference for Lawdy Mama plus the disjointed riff and Clapton’s weedy sounding rhythm guitar (SB).

        • I’m with you on ‘Tales’ at least, Bart – as I’ve discussed with JC round here before; dreadful lyrics, tedious riff. It’s as if Eric got a wah-wah pedal, played a few chords and thought, ‘Wow! Result…’ But he was wrong.

          • Having said all that, it seems to me Portishead’s entire canon is based on the Tales riff slowed down to 16rpm with woozy chanteusing over it, and yet that generally sounds good. Curious.

            • Wasn’t there a band named We’ve got a Fuzzbox And We’re Not afraid to use it? Maybe Eric was planning an early Wah-Wah equivalent. Seriously though in 1967 Wah Wah pedals were like black magic. We could hardly believe such a thing could exist, no wonder some people got carried away with them. It was technology beyond our wildest dreams

  10. I too, JC, in my torrent of nit-pickery, have neglected to also say ‘great review’! 🙂

    I’ll be playing some Cream as a result this afternoon (though I always end up feeling they promise more than they deliver – like Ten Years After, in my view; I keep trying but there are only ever fleeting glimpses of greatness…).

    • I’ve argued in the past, although I don’t think I’ve done so here, that TYA were one of the luckiest bands in the world.
      It was their good fortune to be playing at Woodstock, possibly because of delays in the running order they also appeared at night when they might have been on earlier, agreeing to appear in the film and then benefitting from Martin Scorsese’s editing job.
      To my young eyes (and to many others) they looked amazing in the split screen views with the stage lighting adding drama and all this managed to distract from the song which was pretty uninspired.
      Later hearing Cricklewood Green I was taken aback by how uninspired the whole thing was.

      • Colin may disagree but I enjoyed the first two or three TYA albums when they were still a blues band. It was when they moved into prog and began writing their own songs that I lost interest. But I agree they struck lucky with Woodstock. Fair play to Alvin though he did that one thing really really well – the lightning fast 12 bar blues boogie thing

  11. Inspired by yourself, JC, I’ve just listened to the Fresh Cream section of the TWTD box set, well, up until ‘Toad’, and I’d suggest that it’s UNDER-rated. Much more enjoyable as a listen than ‘DG’, just as ‘WOF’ is in my view. Could it be what we may call ‘the Sgt Pepper syndrome’, where albums made by a given act in 1966 and 68 are actually much better or at least more enjoyable to hear, years on, than the one from 1967?

    Sgt Pepper is a gloopy, day-glo affectation, like much of DG, which may have been a big deal at the time, while Revolver and the White Album are surely the albums more ‘reached for’ by listeners in the 21st century. I’m sure there are other examples…

    Meanwhile, JC, you might enjoy this: I noticed a familiar motif in the middle of Cream’s ‘Sleepy Time Time’, starting at 1:12. Jethro Tull managed to get a whole song out of it a couple of years later (as well as recording a much better version of ‘Cat’s Squirrel’!):

    Cream:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odH64A9GUgg

    Tull:

      • Only just listened to this. Yes, an entire song based on the Sleepy Time Time motif. Sounds like out and out theft, but Tull would probably argue it’s just a pentatonic blues run. I’ve always had a soft spot for the first Tull album and Mick Abrahams in particular.

        Just to complete the set, here’s the 1961 original of Cat’s Squirrel by Doctor Ross, covered by both Cream and Tull.

        • I love Cats Squirrel. One of my favourite Cream songs. I think they really improved and fleshed out the original. Wasn’t aware Jethro Tull had recorded it – will need to have a listen!

          • Sorting out and listening to the Blues Collection CDs and, rather pleasingly, there is a Dr. Ross edition (no. 89).

            I’ve never been so disappointed with a 60s album than DG – the sleeve promises “Axis” or “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” the disc didn’t seem to deliver on that promise at all.

            Got rid, but re-bought it and “Wheels” on CD last year for 10p each. At that price I wasn’t really losing out!

            Like Colin, I really rather enjoyed the studio half of “Wheels,” far more than I thought I would, but as my favourite two songs are “Wrapping Paper” and “Anyone For Tennis” I guess I’m never really going to fully appreciate them.

            I still don’t think Clapton should have left The Yardbirds, I put them way ahead of Cream!

  12. Good review, @johnny-concheroo. Cream were always a bit of a curate’s egg, but I think we (or I, at any rate, if not Colin) were always prepared to give them a pass because of the moments of transcendent rock ‘n’ roll gold, most of which were concentrated on Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears. I hardly ever played Wheels of Fire disc 1, and the live disc probably only once. I was much more interested in The Band by then.

    Point of order, though: I’ve always known SWLABR stood for She Was Like a Bearded Rainbow, though I’ve no idea how I knew.

          • Drum solos were de rigueur by every “serious” band back then and while most were disposable and tiresome, I could just about sit through one of Ginger’s if I was in the right mood. He really was the best rock drummer (although he’d probably bridle at that description).

              • I’ve never been convinced personally. Maybe he’s technically more adept, but as a rock drummer, I’d plum for Moony or Bonzo every time. Chuck in Nick Mason and we might even have had a more listenable Blind Faith album – who knows, maybe even a follow-up…

                  • Another Ginger quote from the same event:

                    “Oh for god’s sake, I’ve never played rock,” Mr. Baker snapped. “Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn’t come from drugs, either—it was from me. It was jazz.”

                    • That’s all I ever have to go on with GB – his inflated opinion of hid abilities and that somehow we should appreciate his condescending to play music that’s apparently beneath him. Rick wasn’t beneath Bonzo, Keith Moon or Mitch Mitchell and maybe that’s what makes them better rock drummers.

  13. Great stuff, Johnny, putting us right in the middle of things. My own go-to Cream album was and still is their concise, nugget-heavy Best Of, basically all the good stuff off Disraeli Gears, while usefully adding their hits I Feel Free and Badge, and compact takes of Spoonful, Crossroads, and Born Under A Bad Sign, The sleeve is obviously execrable with its half-drawn vegetables (WTF?) but Bruce’s paisley shirt exactly matching the of-its-time wallpaper on the back cover is well droll.

    The Stigwood organisation presumubly leaned heavily on them for product, how else do you want to justify this little peach then (fortunately, with Wrapping Paper, not included)?

    My own late-’67 favourite was in fact Traffic’s Mr Fantasy, good left-field pop with a sprinkling of drugs and strawberries and fields. The packaging, as with Disraeli Gears, says it all. Keep well clear, Colin.

  14. Felix Pappalardi.

    It’s worth noting here that working with Cream left such an impression on the Disraeli Gears producer that in 1969 he formed the Cream sound-alike band Mountain with guitarist Leslie West.
    They had several line-ups but most of the time they operated as a quartet.

    One of their tracks was titled Crossroader. I wonder where the inspiration for that came from?

  15. Cream are a band I dearly love, almost because of their flaws rather than despite of them. I don’t think they made a wholly satisfying album (best served by a Best Of), but I kind of love how they went pedal to metal for a rollercoaster two years before it all ended in them falling out.

    I think their debut album is underrated, if anything. It’s the most satisfying of all the British blues boom records I’ve heard (sorry, Beano fans). I think because it has such a raw, stripped down quality. It also showcases Jack Bruce’s harmonica playing more than their other albums – and man, he could really wail on that blues harp.

    When I’m in a certain frame of mind, the live recordings hit the spot, fifteen minute drum solos and all. I think live music SHOULD be overblown and excessive.

    But I also think threaded through their recording history is a run of great pop tunes that would give Ray Davies a run for his money: Strange Brew, Badge, Anyone For Tennis, I Feel Free…

    Great review, JC, which makes me want to listen to Disraeli Gears again. And yes, the cover IS brilliant.

  17. Here’s Vince with Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs (mid-60s original line-up) on the Long Way To The Top tour a few years back. Original suits, original moves… not a meat or potato in sight, JC!

    Billy plus Vince Melouney, Tony Barber, Bluey Watson, Col Baigent. (those last two sound like fictional Australians!)

  21. I think ‘Politician’ is one of the most lumpen slabs in the Cream canon, but this 2012 performance by Jack with Spectrum Road (his Tony Williams tribute band) and a one-off appearance by John McLaughlin manages to squeeze more music out of it (starts at 25:15). It’s a cautious start, but this is the first time John and Jack had played together – possibly even met – since 1979. They play ‘Vashkar’ after it, with a brief chat by the drums as the rest of the band play the changes; I like to think Jack says, ‘So, John, how have you been?’ ‘Yeah, Jack, okay. Yourself?’

    Curiously, John had actually recorded ‘Politician’ back in 1969 – with Betty Davis – a bit of info (and audio) that has only come to light this year.

  23. As chance would have it today a friend of mine sent me a Spotify playlist, his ‘Best of the Eighties’ (which seems to contain a lot of 60s and 70s). I didn’t play all 237-ish tracks but generally I was rather impressed by how little stuff from the likes of Prefab Sprout, Haircut 100, Sade and even, blow me down, The Carpenters had dated. Most of it was pleasant enough, some of it very good indeed.

    Then as soon as Mrs W left the building I fired up Disraeli Gears Deluxe. By golly, this is like opening up a time capsule! Did I really once think Cream were the Bees Knees (no granny, Knees not Gees) ? I’ve got reasonably high-end equipment (get back, Mini, I’m spoken for) but it all sounded remarkably tinny. I have to admit the playing throughout is excellent and some really fab interchanges but the same cannot be said about the singing: cringe and double-cringe. And the lyrics really do appear to be have come out of a 1960s hippy-dippy word generator.

    Thanks again for the review JC but it looks like another 40 years before I listen to Cream again.

    • I’ve just pulled out my copy (US Atco) and my good quality Sondek/Ittok/Karma turntable says that it sounds, well, quite good: the production clearly biases the pop tendencies of Cream, so voices and lead guitar and upper-register bass clearly up front while Baker’s thunderous double kick drum (I seem to remember) is well-curtailed to non-existent. You need the live stuff to appreciate this muddy wonder. It was possible back then to get a decent drum sound, and Baker, being Baker, does cut through, but I suspect there was a deliberate decision to get them on the radio and/or not to shock people listening through a typical weedy stereo. Bet he wasn’t a bit pleased with the final mix.

      So the vinyl dispenses largely with the noisy drum aspect of a rock power trio. Transfer this to CD or MP3 and the likelihood of a thin and tinny sound is rather obvious. QED.

  25. Aside from Mountain and Kahvas Jute, the third in the trio of great Cream-a-like acts that came along just after the group disbanded was Colosseum. They managed to make music more redolent of the quirky studio side of Cream than the tedious blues jams of Cream’s live shows but Colosseum could recreate these unusual songs and deft arrangements onstage (which Cream, being only three people, never could). Also, they recorded material by both Mike Taylor and Pete Brown, as Cream did, further adding to the similarities.

    Here’s a Mike Taylor composition performed by Colosseum, ‘Jumping Off The Sun’.you can imagine Cream playing this, can’t you?

  26. Suits you sir!

    Calling @Mikethep

    I found this picture today and immediately thought of you. It shows Cream out shopping for those western tassel jackets we coveted so much. Funny how we can date this stuff just by the haircuts. Eric hasn’t gone for the perm yet, so that places it in late 1966 or very early 1967.

    Those jackets cost about two weeks wages in the mid-60s, so they were out of reach for the likes of us.

    Sadly the effect of the jacket is kind of ruined by his flowery mod tie and smart trousers.

    I’m guessing this picture was taken in a boutique that sold jeans and cowboy gear on Old Compton Street (Jack’s already got the hat). They had fake saloon swing door on the changing rooms to add to the western effect. Or it could be Carnaby Street, perhaps.

    The quote is from the Cream song NSU on the first album.

    http://i.imgur.com/tAK7RMM.jpg

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