Four super Cream albums before it was time to move on
Bringing Bruce and Baker together again was a great idea, but also a bad one. Bruce played a key role for Cream, he was their main songwriter and singer. Cream did cover a lot of older blues songs, Baker wrote a handful of new songs and Clapton added some new ones which became classics. He wrote “Badge” (with a co-credit for George Harrison), and “Strange Brew” while collaborating with Bruce and Pete Brown to “Sunshine Of Your Love”.
Cream played their first dates in July 1966 and their last, a couple of farewells at the Royal Albert Hall, London in November 1968. They’d already decided to split by then and had recorded their final album Goodbye, to be released in 1969. It may only have been a couple of years but with three albums, Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, and Wheels Of Fire before that final release, they were quite prolific.
What caused the breakup? Well, that bad part of the idea of pairing up Baker and Bruce wasn’t the entire reason, but it played a significant part. Musical differences are the unexciting and polite reason. Baker and Bruce antagonizing each other and irritating Clapton is another. Clapton has spoken of a point in a gig where he stopped playing, Baker and Bruce had their own onstage battle to see who could play the loudest, and neither noticed Clapton had dropped out.
They managed to agree to call a halt to the band, play out a farewell tour, and get that last album out. You might wonder what Cream would have gone on to as a group if they hadn't quit. But then we wouldn't have had a couple of other supergroups and the music they brought to us.
We did get a fresh taste of their brilliance as a group when Baker, Clapton, and Bruce got back together for a series of concerts back at the Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden in 2005. You can hear how they sounded on the live album Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005.
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