Cream: Disraeli Gears

CREAM: DISRAELI GEARS (1967)

1) Strange Brew; 2) Sunshine Of Your Love; 3) World Of Pain; 4) Dance The Night Away; 5) Blue Condition; 6) Tales Of Brave Ulysses; 7) SWLABR; 8) We're Going Wrong; 9) Outside Woman Blues; 10) Take It Back; 11) Mother's Lament.

General verdict: Psychedelic blues-rock has never been more catchy, intelligent, AND, most importantly, bittersweet than this.

Few things illustrate that unique magic of 1967 better than the creative process that resulted in the first track on Disraeli Gears. In the beginning... well, not really in the beginning, but somewhere in the middle of the road, there was a Junior Wells / Buddy Guy reworking of the old blues standard ʽHey Lawdy Mamaʼ that they recorded for Junior's 1965 classic LP Hoodoo Man Blues: a cool, upbeat blues-rocker, made somewhat special by the combination of Junior's idiosyncratic harmonica style with Buddy's chuckling-chugging electric guitar. Good enough for 1965 — but not something that couldn't have been recorded in 1964... or even 1963... or...

...anyway, it got picked up by Cream soon after they came together, and was played in much the same variant, only without the harmonica, in concert (you can hear an early version on the BBC Sessions). Nothing special, either — Eric Clapton still in his Bluesbreakers shoes. As they went into the studio in mid-'67 to put it to tape, though, the song had changed drastically, mostly under the influence of several outstanding Albert King singles such as ʽCrosscut Sawʼ. Eric was now in his Albert King period, playing thinner, sharper, edgier leads; but together with Jack, they were already thinking as well about how to make the formula less formulaic — how to latch on to that «frightening» component of classic blues and make it even more explicit. So you get the electric ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! from the rhythm guitar, and you get the don't-mess-with-me gruffness of the bass guitar, and you get the tricky drum pattern that transforms the regular 4/4 into something more somber and ritualistic.

But you are still not quite there, because in the end this ʽLawdy Mamaʼ, as heard on the Live Cream record, is still primarily a blues tune. Enter Felix Pappalardi, a 28-year old freelancer with a keen eye and ear for new trends in contemporary music, and his wife, Gail Collins, a skilled lyricist with a tiny strain of proto-Stevie Nicks in her — and the transformation is complete. A new production style is upon us: echo, fuzz, reverb, «woman tone», all conspiring to turn the song into a mind-bending witchy brew. And with that, come new lyrics, still in touch with the old blues foundation, but just as strongly in touch with the psychedelic era — "she's a witch of trouble..." (old school) "...in electric blue" (new school), "she's some kind of demon" (old school) "...messin' in the glue" (new school). And the vocals? Eric now delivers most of them in a seduc­tively dangerous falsetto, a perfect contrastive fit for the still-ZAPping rhythm guitar. The only thing that still directly ties the song to the past is the guitar solo — a deadpan, though slightly more sharp and complex, Albert King imitation. Everything else has been turned to glittery, otherworldly magic. Take the polish off, of course, and the blues foundation is as plain as day; but why should you want to take the polish off? The old ʽLawdy Mamaʼ played with your feels; the new one takes you to a different reality.

This, in a nutshell, is what's so cool about Disraeli Gears, the only album by Cream that can be directly and unequivocally called «psychedelic» (Wheels Of Fire would only retain bits and patches of this atmosphere, not to mention that Bruce and Clapton were already clearly heading in different directions by that time). Like The Rolling Stones, like The Hollies, like a thousand other British bands sucked inside that vortex in 1967, Cream were entangled in the psychedelic revolution by accident — all they really wanted was to propagate the values of blues (and, to a smaller extent, jazz) music without being hardass-conservative about it; and if you are not being hardass-conservative about something, you will roll along with the times, want it or not.

Hence, Disraeli Gears, an album whose very title came along by accident (a mispronounced take on derailleur gears from one of the band's roadies) and probably left stupefied even all those people who are quite familiar with the history of 19th century Britain, let alone those who are only capable of getting an association with Israel or just stare at the title with complete bewilder­ment. A record with its own unique sound, influenced by many but reproduced by none; a record that feels slightly wiser, more introspective, more restrained, more ironic, than most of its com­petition (including both The Beatles and Hendrix); a record where the combination of a modest, but brilliant blues guitarist, a melancholic, but hard-working jazz bassist, and an eccentric, but iron-disciplined drummer brought about an almost mathematically perfect formula for the ultimate Apollonian psychedelic experience — as opposed to the typically Dionysian psychedelic experience of just about everybody else (Beatles excluded, but The Beatles' brand of psychedelia was generally much lighter and more «child-like»).

It will probably also go down in history as the single least generic-12-bar-blues-oriented project that Eric Clapton has ever been involved in — although I, for one, would not necessarily judge this as an obvious virtue. Altogether, there are but two standard blues tunes here, and we have already seen the miraculous transformation undergone by ʽStrange Brewʼ. The other one, ʽOutside Woman Bluesʼ, remains more traditional: lifted by Eric from a 1929 record by Blind Joe Reynolds, it even preserves the original's distinctive slide guitar riff playing off the vocal lines, although application of the «woman tone» still gives the phrase a much more psychedelic flavor. However, everything else has been reworked: a new syncopated rhythm guitar track (also based on the same ZAP! technique as ʽStrange Brewʼ), Jack's free-flowing jazzy bass, and Ginger's calm, disciplined, but complex drum rolls that keep drawing attention away from the string players — generic 12-bar blues had rarely been this exciting.

On the whole, however, Disraeli Gears is more of a landmark in the evolution of hard rock (and, consequently, heavy metal) than generic blues-rock. While it may be hard to observe the direct influence that Hendrix had on succeeding waves of hard rock bands (for most of whom he was more of a symbol/mascot than a guitar teacher), the direct influence of something like ʽSunshine On Your Loveʼ can hardly be denied — we can probably find dozens of songs that had adopted its riff as their foundation (at the moment, the clearest example in my head is Black Sabbath's ʽN.I.B.ʼ, but I'm sure there are others). In fact, the very art of the «massive», «elephantine» riff driving the song probably originated with ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ — we can find plenty of great rock riffs in previous years, but I have a hard time thinking of one that would boast this kind of thickness, stability, sheer epicness: the slow, lumbering, brutal monster at the heart of the song that makes all of its other aspects look insignificant in comparison.

The difference between Cream and Sabbath, though, is that Sabbath would use slow, lumbering, brutal riffs to construct slow, lumbering, brutal moods: ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ, in comparison, is really a romantic tune, one that never pretended to expressing any other feels than love and longing and yearning and... okay, that line about how "I'll stay with you 'til my seeds are dried up" does suggest something pretty physical, but still, the odd disbalance between the innocent lyrics and the ominous riff (it really used to creep me out a bit when I was little) remains an intriguing feature. Perhaps Jack and Eric still felt uncomfortable, at that point, to be writing songs about sex that would openly and unequivocally state so — a taboo soon to be broken with ʽWhole Lotta Loveʼ and the like — and so it came about that one of the heaviest numbers of 1967 took on the guise of a nearly elegiac, romantic serenade.

But ultimately, what makes Disraeli Gears truly lovable is that behind all the professionalism, behind all the psychedelic flavor, behind all the innovative riffage, behind all the fluctuation between bluesy, jazzy and poppy structures lies a sensitive soul. Fresh Cream, for all its merits, was an album that was hardly endowed with a lot of personality — it was too much of a «let's take all those awesome influences and take it from here» record, a starting point that showed promise but did not yet fully deliver the goods. Disraeli Gears is where Jack Bruce arrives as a successful artist, and the entire team (not just Eric and Ginger, but also Pappalardi, Gail Collins, and lyricist Pete Brown) rallies behind him to help maintain and solidify that personality. Disra­eli Gears is not a concept album, but it is an escapist album — like Piper and like Electric Ladyland, it is busy constructing its own alternate universe for you to take refuge in when the going gets too rough. In this world of pain, see, we're going wrong, so take it back, take that thing right out of here and dance the night away. With some tales of brave Ulysses, if possible.

For that matter, ʽDance The Night Awayʼ, to me, is unquestionably the best song on the album today — not ʽSunshineʼ, not ʽUlyssesʼ, but this unabashedly poppy, and also unbelievably sad ode to disillusionment and reclusiveness. The verse melody, punctuated by Eric's power chords and Ginger's resounding tom-toms, has the protagonist blindly circling around, bumping into corners — then, in the chorus, Clapton launches a guitar rocket across the sky, reaching higher and higher with each new refrain until it finally (probably) disappears out of view somewhere beyond the horizon: "dance myself to nothing, vanish from this place" indeed. It's one of those brilliant combinations of words and music where sadness and joy are so tightly intertwined that you can offer half a dozen different emotional interpretations of what is going on, from orgasmic to suicidal; not even the best psychedelic music of 1967 could consistently contain that many different layers of meaning.

Songs that are less ambivalent can still retain a degree of uniqueness: ʽWe're Going Wrongʼ is a deeply internalized lament, musically engineered in such a way as to picture a genuine emotional thunderstorm — Ginger's ferocious pouncing, Eric's angry power chords and desperately high-pitched blueswailing solos — over a slow, almost ceremonial tempo and vocals that suggest an atmosphere of deep mourning rather than tumultuous aggression. Nowhere near as explicit in its bleakness as, say, contemporary Doors material, ʽWe're Going Wrongʼ manages to build up a wall of dreariness that is just as successful (if not as titillating) as ʽWhen The Music's Overʼ. And maybe the song is not even about the end of the world — maybe it is about the end of a romance, or about the future of Cream themselves — but who could doubt that "I found out today we're going wrong" could not be applicable to every single year so far after 1967, especially when set to those deep earth rumblings generated by Eric?

In short, there is no better way to summarize that awesome mix of colorful psychedelia and existential sadness scattered throughout Disraeli Gears than with the chorus of ʽSWLABRʼ: "you've got that rainbow feel — but the rainbow has a beard". Even the band's sense of humor has a bitterness to it: they let us down gently, with the twin funny pack of ʽTake It Backʼ and ʽMother's Lamentʼ, but ʽTake It Backʼ is funny-hysterical and ʽMother's Lamentʼ is, after all, a moral tale with a sad-happy ending. (Come to think of it, ʽMother's Lamentʼ is just the traditional folk root of ʽDance The Night Awayʼ — "your baby is perfectly happy, he won't need a bath anymore" sits in the same house as "gonna dance myself to nothing, vanish from this place"). This is what separates great psychedelia from run-of-the-mill psychedelia — mixed emotions, no straight answers, an overall subtle intelligence that lets you look at the same song from different angles and shape it in accordance with your own inner world.

Personally, I have not always loved this album — I grew to appreciate it quite gradually, as compared to instant loves like The Beatles or Creedence Clearwater Revival — but even at the tender age of 10-12 I could feel there was something very, very special about it, some sort of odd magic that was not there in anything else I'd heard. That magic was never properly recaptured, though small traces of it can be found on Wheels Of Fire and some of Bruce's early solo albums; apparently, it took a lucky star alignment to produce Disraeli Gears. And this, precisely, is what makes me feel so angry inside whenever I (occasionally) see people dismissing the record as too boring, too bluesy, too unadventurous, too derivative — I mean, just because Clapton refused to maniacally let loose with feedback à la Hendrix or Syd Barrett, preferring cleaner and more restrained tones, does not mean that he was incapable of conveying comparable depth of feeling; and just because Jack Bruce's artistic personality was not as bent on self-destruction does not mean that it was incapable of reaching the same levels of high tragicness. In some respects, I would say that Disraeli Gears relates to Are You Experienced? and the like in the same way as Pet Sounds relates to Revolver — a «cleaner», «calmer», more lyrical take on worldly (and otherworldly) issues that prefers to blow your mind in a subtler, less obvious manner. Strange brew, kill what's inside of you — or, at least, rearrange some of it.

Cream: Fresh Cream

CREAM: FRESH CREAM (1966)

1*) I Feel Free; 2) N.S.U.; 3) Sleepy Time Time; 4) Dreaming; 5) Sweet Wine; 6) Spoonful; 7) Cat's Squirrel; 8) Four Until Late; 9) Rollin' And Tumblin'; 10) I'm So Glad; 11) Toad; 12*) The Coffee Song; 13*) Wrapping Paper.

In 1965, Eric Clapton left The Yardbirds because, instead of playing the blues, they decided to play pop. In 1966, Eric Clapton left John Mayall's Bluesbreakers because they played nothing but the blues — and joined a supergroup whose first album was far poppier than anything Eric had ever been previously engaged in. Inconsistency? Not really; more like a case of self-deception, when, in any situation where his creative ambitions felt stiffed and strangled by his subordinate position, his first instinct was to break free, regardless of the context.

Cream was the first band in which Clapton was an equal partner, though, as of yet, far from un­disputed leader. Leaving aside the immensely talented and artistic drummer — who, despite all the immense artistry, was still only a drummer — Cream reflected the vision of Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in more or less equal proportion. One might even argue that it was primarily Jack's project, since during all two years of Cream's existence, Bruce was both the primary songwriter and singer, in addition to all the magnificent innovations in the sphere of bass guitar playing that he contributed. But even if Eric did not write much, he was the driving wheel behind the reima­gining and modernizing of most of the blues covers they played; and with the minimal guitar-bass-drum setup that they had, most of the melodic power behind the songs ended up coming from Clapton anyway, let alone all the experimentation with guitar tones, effects, and various studio trickery. As we look back at this from half a century of experience, it becomes clear that much of this experimentation had to do with the spirit of the times rather than Clapton's own inquisitive nature — back in 1966-68, it was clearly important to him to keep up with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, and other guitar innovators. But even a conservative musical talent, when linked to the proper spirit of the proper time, can sometimes work marvels. (I mean, hell, look at Ted Nugent around 1967!).

Anyway, here is what they wanted to do. Eric Clapton wanted to continue playing the blues, albeit in an admittedly more experimental manner, exploring new technological possibilities of the electric guitar. Jack Bruce, who had just finished a brief stint with Manfred Mann, got interes­ted in exploring the artistic side of pop music and how a decent pop hook with commercial poten­tial could be combined with intricate jazzy flourishes and bits and pieces of improvised freedom. And Ginger Baker, fresh from the Graham Bond Organisation (where he'd already managed to spoil his relationship with Jack one year earlier), just wanted to play a drum solo.

All of them got their wishes fulfilled on Fresh Cream, a record that seems slightly confused and misdirected in the overall context of 1966, but, like so much from that era, charming and exciting regardless of — or maybe even because of — said confusion. The three songs that sometimes bookmark its later CD counterparts at both ends are very indicative here. ʽWrapping Paperʼ, the first single Cream ever released, is a fluffy piece of vaudeville jazz with Jack at his purriest and Eric more noticeable as a syrupy provider of backing harmonies than a guitar player — a song that Ginger apparently hated and that they never ever played live, but one of those adorable Jack Bruce whimsical bits that still manages to weave an atmosphere of tenderness, sadness, and con­templativeness, even if they probably released it mainly to confuse the audience. ʽThe Coffee Songʼ is an outtake that was only released on the original Swedish edition of the album, but later began to be attached to many CD pressings — written by British musicians Tony Colton and Ray Smith, it is a slow, semi-humorous folk-pop song with exactly one musical phrase that was pro­bably tried out by Jack, Eric, and Ginger just for the sake of finding out which musical formulas they could or should tackle.

Finally, there's ʽI Feel Freeʼ, their breakthrough single in the UK that loudly and proudly announ­ced Cream's arrival not as a hardcore blues-rock supergroup, but as a blues-based psycho-pop ensemble — replete with colorful flowery outfits and wildly frizzed hair, as seen on TV (and might I add that Eric cut a pretty dashing figure those days with that hair). This is where Jack introduces his «clean» falsetto, weakly backed by Eric, and the entire song gets by on the contrast between the chilled-out, spaced-out chorus of "I feel free" and the nervous, almost hysterical verses — the impression being that the cool drugs that the singer is on keep on wearing down by the end of each chorus, and that he has to pop a few fresh ones before the next one starts. This is also the true beginning of Eric's «woman tone», which he may have perfected in direct response to Bruce's falsetto — though the genius of that guitar solo is that for the last bar he drops the woman tone altogether and forces a «wake-up» wailing shriek from the guitar instead, so as to properly prepare the transition into the next hysterical verse. This is Cream at their finest, a song that could have, perhaps, been written by anybody with a bit of talent, but could never have been played so perfectly by anybody other than those three. (And, for the sake of justice, pay close attention to the nimble bass picking style on the verses).

ʽI Feel Freeʼ was clearly an anthem — the title alone says it all — but when it came to recording a whole LP, the band still seemed to be somewhat locked in on the «single-based mentality», since there is hardly any material on Fresh Cream that would rival ʽI Feel Freeʼ in terms of grandness and, well, sense of purpose. Most of its songs fall into two categories: pop ditties writ­ten by Bruce (or Baker), and blues covers largely controlled by Eric, though sometimes also by Jack. The pop ditties, since they are completely original, seem more important: ʽN.S.U.ʼ and ʽSweet Wineʼ in particular are quite catchy and energetic, but even in the studio they give the impression that the most important thing about them is how they begin in fluffy mode, then sud­denly transition into dark improvised sequences, then return to fluffy mode like nothing happened. On stage, when they would be extended into 10-to-20-minute long jams, this was made even more obvious — the main themes would simply look like mere excuses for jamming; here, the main themes take on more importance, but still, what are you left with at the end of ʽSweet Wineʼ? Are you left thinking "hey, these serious blues-jazz dudes just wrote a song that goes ʽbap-pa, pa-doo-bap-pa, pa-doo-bap-pa pa-pa-doo-baʼ! Cool!"? Personally, I am left thinking "man, it's really bizarre how this silly bap-pa pa-doo-bap-pa song turns into such an evil scary deep jungle voodoo jam in the middle, and then goes back to being silly! And, more importantly, how these two parts have so absolutely nothing to do with each other!".

But this is Cream for you — you either have to deal with the fact that many of their songs consist of logically incompatible parts, or this band is not for you. Of course, if one of these parts sucked, that would be a different matter. But the fact is that Bruce and Baker write catchy pop themes, and then Eric comes in and starts doing his bad-acid-trip solo schtick, and I tend to think about it the same way I'd think about a master surrealist hooligan sneaking in after dark and ruining the half-ready masterpiece of his master expressionist colleague, only to have the colleague come in the next day and restoring the canvas to its former shape. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty awesome analogy if both colleagues are from the big leagues.

In a way, it also works for songs like ʽSpoonfulʼ, which begins as if it belonged to Jack, with his strong post-Chicago harmonica blowing, massive bass, and wicked singing — well, not exactly Howlin' Wolf, but in some way, Jack gets even more excited and entranced when singing about the joys of that lovin' spoonful than old Wolf. Then, midway through the song, Clapton takes it away from Jack with a solo that sounds like a three-headed Cerberus attack from Hell — heavier and angrier than almost anything at the time, and, I would say, with more darkness and evil lurking within those overtones than on any given Hendrix tune; not until Jimmy Page unleashed his own demons onto the world with his early Led Zep recordings did electric blues guitar begin to sound that mean once again. By the time the solo is over, Jack has to struggle to regain full control over the song, and he never quite manages to do that, since, once aroused, that lead guitar is fairly hard to tame back, you know.

On the other hand, the only completely Clapton-controlled blues song here is one of their weakest: the cover of Robert Johnson's ʽFrom Until Lateʼ, for some reason, is re-conceived as a limp, piti­fully friendly hoedown dance number, with a weak Eric vocal, a so-so harmonica solo from Jack, and no lead guitar whatsoever. Much better is their ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ, which they cover with two specific purposes: (a) build a perfect showcase for Jack's harmonica playing (if there was ever a song to which the metaphor of having rough, brutal sex with a mouth harp could be applied without hesitation, it is this song) and (b) show that the three-piece Cream can have a kick-ass noisy rave-up that would put the five-piece Yardbirds to shame (for about two minutes, they sound like they are going to explode or at least drop down dead any second). And as for Skip James' ʽI'm So Gladʼ, well, there's creativity for you — they took an old acoustic blues number and turned it into yet another incarnation of ʽN.S.U.ʼ/ʽSweet Wineʼ, with a psycho-poppy falsetto-laden sung section and an almost completely unrelated acid blues improv section. (On a very generous note, Eric made sure that old Skip got all the royalties from the song, despite it having almost nothing to do with the original — guess he didn't really have the business sense of a Jimmy Page).

As for the great and inimitable Ginger Baker, I am not entirely sure if ʽToadʼ marked the first ever apparition of an extended drum solo improvisation on a «pop» (rather than jazz) record, but I do believe this is the earliest example known to me, and while no sane person, I think, can be a devoted fan of the drum solo genre, this particular solo — still reasonably short, as compared to later live versions — is symbolic, as it formally places the drummer on equal footing with the rest of the team, and is perhaps not so great per se as simply to remind us of the immense role that Ginger plays on all these songs, from the opening thunderous beats of ʽN.S.U.ʼ and right down to the last closing fill on ʽToadʼ. So he started a bad tradition — from now on, every half-assed drummer thought it his God-given right to place a boring drum solo somewhere on an album — but, like all great people who start bad traditions, he is somehow not to be held responsible for it. Anyway, ʽToadʼ is OK, though tough-going hard rockers will probably never choose it over ʽMoby Dickʼ, because, you know, which do you prefer — a drummer impersonating a toad or a drummer impersonating a whale that choked on its own blubber?

With all the confusion and the somewhat uncertain experimentation and the lack of coherence in song structure, Fresh Cream is the sound of a band that seems poised on greatness, but does not yet properly understand how to nail it. They want to do some blues, and some pop, and some of that new-fangled psychedelic stuff, and show off their individual and collective skills, but they cannot yet properly construct a unified message from all those constituents. Nevertheless, as a creative mess, Fresh Cream remains cool — I will still take its disjointed brilliance over the coherent mediocrity of, say, 90% of contemporary American psychedelic bands any time; and in terms of the sheer number of terrific Clapton solos or unforgettable Bruce vocal hooks it can proudly stand its ground along with Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire. Consequently, the rating is an unquestionable thumbs up. (But some points have to be docked for Jack allowing his wife to pen those crappy lyrics for ʽSleepy Time Timeʼ and ʽSweet Wineʼ. Didn't anybody tell him women cannot be trusted with such delicate jobs? Next thing you know, they'll start singing about free men in Paris, stoned soul picnics, and wuthering heights, oh my!).