Jack Bruce’s EB-1 bass guitar is going on show at the Gibson Garage London as the Nashville-based guitar brand marks the first anniversary of its UK flagship retail store and concert space with the Gibson Garage Fest.

The late Cream bassist’s EB-1 violin bass will be on display from 20 February, with the month-long exhibition opening with an intimate all-star Jam For Jack concert featuring the likes of Level 42 bass icon Mark King, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, long-time Bruce collaborator and Level 42 alumnus Gary Husband, plus members of Jack Bruce’s Big Blues Band and friends and family.

There are just 80 tickets available, with all proceeds going to the Jack Bruce Foundation, which helps young people access music education. The fundraiser will also feature a bass guitar auction.

“We are very excited to be collaborating with the Gibson Garage Fest to celebrate Jack’s incredible legacy and to aid the new Foundation, with the display and ‘Jam For Jack,’” said Bruce’s family in a statement. “It will be wonderful for Jack’s fans to be able to view his iconic EB-1 violin bass in exhibition. This bass guitar has always been on display at the family home, it meant a great deal to him and remains one of our most beloved of Jack’s treasures.”

The EB-1 is also a treasure for Gibson history buffs. It takes the Gibson bass guitar story right to the start. Launched in 1953, in response to Fender’s Precision Bass, and to the changing tastes in popular music as western swing and country groups grew more electrified, it was simple and effective, with a player-friendly 30.5” scale length and a solitary single-coil pickup.

Gibson called it “a revelation in rhythm” and promised “lightning fast action”. Players such Dave Reiser of the Reiser Brothers Trio were early adopters and were used in Gibson’s marketing materials of the time. Then came the first wave of the rock ’n’ roll revolution.

By the mid ‘60s a new generation of rock players were changing music in real time. The EB-1 proved just as capable with the volume turned up. John Entwistle of the Who played one. Later, Geddy Lee and Bob Daisley would be known to play them. Most recently, Bruce played his onstage at the 2005 Cream reunion shows with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker.

This exhibition raises an interesting question. The EB-1 is no longer in the Gibson catalogue. Might it be coming back? Or could we see a replica of Jack Bruce’s bass in the near future?

Time will tell. Other events scheduled for the Gibson Garage Fest include an all-day acoustic festival on 22 February headlined by Ben Ellis, with more to be announced.

“We are excited to celebrate the first anniversary of the Gibson Garage London,” Cesar Gueikian, president and CEO, Gibson. “The Garage was designed to be a part of the local music community, and has had an extraordinary impact on the music scene, becoming a global music destination.

“London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities and influential musical ecosystems in the world, and with Gibson Garage Fest, we look forward to a week of celebration for all music fans!”

Find out more at Gibson Garage London.

• “I think that the whole band was kind of misunderstood by everybody, and it gave us a sort of an edge, you know": The story of Cream's Disraeli Gears
• Why the Gibson Garage London is a timely reminder that nothing rivals expert knowledge and hands-on experience

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2024: Their volatile genius burned fast and bright, but after three albums and two years of non-stop touring, Cream were finally brought down by blinkered management and a gig schedule that would have felled an ox.

The apex of that short but brilliant career was the 1967 album Disraeli Gears. Epic in scope, it fused the blues and jazz together in a searing, psychedelic blast of 100-watt Marshall tone.

Jack Bruce sadly passed sadly passed away in 2014 but two years before his death he gave a detailed account of the album’s making to Guitarist magazine. Here we collect those exclusive insights from Jack and poet Pete Brown – who wrote classic tracks such as Sunshine Of Your Love together – about the making of the album.

When Guitarist called up Jack Bruce to talk about Cream’s 1967 classic album Disraeli Gears, he leaves us in little doubt about the unique chemistry that fired an equally unique group. “I think that the whole band was kind of misunderstood by everybody, and it gave us a sort of an edge, you know,” the bass legend muses.

“I think Eric thought he was going to have this little blues trio and he would be sort of like Buddy Guy standing out the front. And then I thought: great, I can be a composer and get some songs out there. And I think Ginger just wanted to conquer the world, basically, like Genghis Khan or somebody. We had different ideas.

“Meanwhile, the management – the dire management of Robert Stigwood – was thinking, Let’s milk this for all it’s worth because it ain’t going to last. So let’s get them out there and make them play every toilet in the US for as long as they’ll last before they go barmy or kill each other…”

Listening to Bruce recalling the birth of Cream, you’d be forgiven for wondering how the greatest supergroup of the sixties – arguably of all time – lasted through the average week, let alone long enough to cut a masterpiece such as Disraeli Gears. Yet beneath Bruce’s wry recollections lies an intense and wholly justified pride in what the group achieved.

During Cream’s brief two-year lifespan, they had it all: in Eric Clapton a supremely talented guitarist whose only serious rival was Jimi Hendrix; in Jack Bruce a star bassist with the chops and vision of a jazz maestro; and in Ginger Baker a volatile but brilliant drummer capable of welding their contrasting talents together. Yet, initially, some doubted whether the band would produce anything more notable than a short-lived stream of cash.

Pete Brown, the visionary London poet who co-wrote some of Cream’s greatest tracks, including Sunshine Of Your Love and White Room, was the fourth key figure in the story of Disraeli Gears. Today, he agrees that the degree to which the band shook up rock music shocked cynics.

“Cream’s management thought it was going to be an all-star band that would fill the blues clubs, and maybe be a nice festival attraction. They never thought it would spread; they never thought it would get to America; they never thought we’d have hit songs. They had absolutely no bloody idea. And when you look at it, it’s a miracle that it happened.”

Power trio

In the end, the mouthwatering prospect of what Jack Bruce could add to the band’s music overcame Baker’s objections. In March 1966 the trio met secretly for a first rehearsal at Ginger’s house in Neasden. As Clapton later noted, whatever tension existed between them “all just turned to magic” as soon as they started to play.

Jack Bruce was convinced that they had all the ingredients they needed to forge a new sound. “I did have grandiose conversations with Eric at the very beginning of the band, trying to come up with a kind of musical philosophy,” Bruce recalls.

“Eric was really into the blues and he knew a lot of stuff that I didn’t know. So I was being a bit presumptuous by saying, I love the blues, but I’d want to take it a step further and use the language of the blues as a way to write music for us.

“Eric understood, but he probably thought I was getting a lot on myself to say something like that,” Bruce reflects. “But I was always like that anyway, when I was young. I always thought I could really change the world through music.”

Pete Brown argues that despite Clapton’s abundant talent and ferocious chops, working with jazz-trained players such as Bruce and Baker helped take his playing to another level.

“The one thing they never did, which I’m sure they got from [Alexis Korner band leader] Graham Bond, was that they didn’t put Eric down,” he adds. “They didn’t say, 'You don’t know enough about chords, or, You don’t know enough about jazz to play with us.' What they did say was: 'You’re a terrific player with terrific feeling, and if you play with us then this thing will happen – the magic will come.'” And it did.

Cream’s first album, Fresh Cream, was released in December 1966, reaching number six in the British charts and a single, I Feel Free, was picked up by ATCO – a subsidiary of US label Atlantic Records.

Ahmet Ertegun, the head of Atlantic, was influential and had Helped launch the careers of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. A way to break into America beckoned, although as Jack Bruce ruefully recalls: “It’s very important to remember that Cream were originally signed to Atlantic as a rider on the Bee Gees contract.”

Nine chaotic dates at the RKO Theater in New York followed in March 1967, plus one day at Atlantic Studios, where they recorded a Buddy Guy track, Hey Lawdy Mama, that would later evolve into Strange Brew. The next time Cream returned to New York, a month later, it would be to record Disraeli Gears.

Midnight express 

When the band returned to London, Jack Bruce and Pete Brown met up to write. With studio dates for Disraeli Gears just days away, the pressure was on to deliver new material. “They were milking us for every penny, so we never had any time to rest, or write, or live,” Jack Bruce explains.

“So Pete and me had to come up with some material for what was to be the next record. But we didn’t know what it was going to be. We were just desperately trying to find time to write songs, which usually entailed staying up all night in between gigs.”

Jack Bruce had already worked with Brown on earlier Cream hits, such as the single I Feel Free, for which Bruce scored out the song’s pop-rock melody on paper like a composer, while Brown provided the epic poetry of the lyrics.

“I don’t know why they needed me, because Jack and Ginger are both very, very intelligent people – and Eric too, though Eric wasn’t writing, hardly,” Brown reflects. “But then, I suppose I had a lot of chops as a writer by then. I as a well-known poet, and I wrote and practised a lot.” Bruce and Brown resumed their writing partnership as preparations for Disraeli Gears hit full swing, with songs written in the small hours and road-tested at gigs.

“Basically you’d come up with a song, then go into the studio and see if the guys liked it,” Jack Bruce recalls. “And if they did, it would go straight into the live act.”

Working on Sunshine

This high-intensity approach was how Cream’s most famous track, Sunshine Of Your Love, came about, Bruce explains.

“Pete and me were doing an all-night session at my place in Hampstead, at the flat, and we hadn’t really come up with anything,” he recalls. “And I picked up my double bass, which was lying there, and played the riff of Sunshine. Pete looked out the window and it was getting near dawn so he wrote, It’s getting near dawn. So there we had the first part, which is the part where the riff is, and we had the words of that. But we didn’t have a song. So we took it into rehearsal and Eric came up with the turnaround. Pete wrote the words for that and we had a song.”

“Later on our writing became more complex,” Pete Brown says. “But in that period of time it was a question of getting good alternatives: stuff that Jack felt happy singing. He had to feel good about the sounds of the words. “Sunshine Of Your Love really is a song about being on the road,” he adds, “coming home after you’ve done a gig and arguing with your girlfriend, who’s going to be in a receptive mood to have a nice little scene after you’ve been doing your hard work. It’s a gig song.”

Some may be surprised by how workmanlike the writing process was, with gigs and deadlines driving the creativity more than the band’s experiences. As Pete Brown explains, even the more tripped-out tracks on Disraeli Gears, such as She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow, were not actually inspired by drugs.

“I remember this very psychedelic person saying to me when Disraeli Gears came out, Ah, that lyric, So many fantastic colours, on SWLABR. You must have been tripping when you wrote that,” and I said “No actually, it’s a completely sexual image to me. It’s about sensuality, and the colours that come to mind when you’re having great sex.”

Return to New York 

When May came around, the band were exhausted, but otherwise ready to cut the album. Although Bruce and Brown had done the lion’s share of the songwriting, Clapton had teamed up with Australian artist Martin Sharp to write Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which became a pillar of Cream’s live set. Sharp also designed the striking cover art for Disraeli Gears, highlighting what a melting-pot of sixties counterculture the album was.

When the band got to New York to record at Atlantic’s studio there, they were joined by two studio professionals who would further shape the sound of Disraeli Gears – producer Felix Pappalardi, who would later play bass in Mountain, and crack sound engineer Tom Dowd. With just one week of studio time in which to cut the album, their contributions would prove vital.

“The philosophy at Atlantic Studios was not, Let’s have this really great song or, Let’s have this riff,” Jack Bruce says. “It was, Let’s make a record. Tom Dowd was one of the all-time geniuses of recording and that’s what you had to do: you had to convince him that what you had was a proper record.”

Dowd and Pappalardi took the band’s gig-focused song arrangements and helped sculpt them into something that was more complex and satisfying for album listeners.

“When we played Sunshine Of Your Love live, before we went in the studio, it was much more of a straight-ahead rock feel,” Bruce recalls. “But Tom Dowd came up with an idea. He said, Why don’t you play it like in those Westerns where the Indians’ drums go: Boom boom boom. So Ginger tried that. Then it gave it a new life.”

Brewing up trouble 

The move to Atlantic Studios saw Cream’s music evolve rapidly – it introduced record label politics. Bruce was dismayed to find that Clapton was viewed as the band leader by Atlantic executives, which influenced how another famous track from the album, Strange Brew, was recorded.

“The way that came about was quite strange because we had already made a recording of a blues song called Hey Lawdy Mama,” Bruce recalls. “But then Felix Pappalardi was told there had been an executive decision that Eric had to front the band and I was going to be the bass-player guy who stood in the background quietly.

"So all of my material was sort of ‘non grata’, and they had to come up with a song for Eric to sing. So Felix took Lawdy Mama home and came back the next day with Strange Brew, which he had co-written with his wife, Gail. So that was how that came about. I was well pissed off, because the bass part that I had didn’t fit the new structure of this new song, although it was used.

"It still pisses me off because it sounds like the bass is playing the wrong tune throughout – which it wasn’t for the original thing. It was very much against my wishes, but I had absolutely no power in the band, in the studio – because Ahmet Ertegun was more or less in love with Eric. He thought Eric should be the frontman.”

The intervention by Atlantic executives was a reminder that, despite the obvious vision and talent of the band, Atlantic still had their eye on commercial hits driven by the fan-appeal of the band’s star guitarist. Nonetheless, when the week’s recording ended, it was clear to anyone with functioning ears that the band had cut a game-changing rock album.

Hitting top gear

When Disraeli Gears went on sale in late 1967, it was a hit in Britain – reaching number five in the charts – and an even bigger success in the States, where it went to number four. This prompted a punishing round of touring in America that signalled the beginning of the end for the band.

“It was enjoyable until they broke the band’s spirit by putting us on the one-nighters for seven months without anybody to help us,” Jack Bruce recalls. “That was what destroyed us – that and the lack of PA.”

The band cut two more albums at a breakneck pace in 1968 – Wheels Of Fire and their aptly named final recording, Goodbye. When Cream played their last British gigs at The Royal Albert Hall on 26 November everyone in the band was exhausted and ready to move on.

Disraeli Gears had undoubtedly been the highwater mark of the band’s astonishing two-year career. Looking back, what does Bruce feel about the album now? “I think you always would like another go,” he concludes, philosophically. “You’re never quite happy about it. There’s definitely things that could be changed and obviously you only hear the mistakes. But once it’s finished, it’s finished.”

• “It was very much against my wishes but at that moment I had absolutely no power in the band, in the studio” – Cream and the troubled birth of Strange Brew

Is Eric Clapton’s solo in Cream’s version of Crossroads the greatest live blues-rock solo ever recorded?

Here, we pose the question - and bust a few myths in the process.

Robert Johnson’s Delta blues masterpiece, originally titled Cross Road Blues, was recorded by Cream at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium on 10 March 1968, and featured on the trio’s platinum-selling double album Wheels Of Fire.

This electrifying live version of Crossroads stands out for its break-neck tempo, the memorable open-position riff that Clapton devised, and a speedy turnaround lick that he refers to and refines throughout.

Jack Bruce’s bass playing is fierce, adventurous, and downright terrifying, while Ginger Baker pounds the skins as only he can, holding down the tempo and tying the three competing titans together. However, the track’s crowning glory is unquestionably Clapton’s solo - performed in two fabulous but deeply contrasting parts.

Robert Johnson recorded two takes of Cross Road Blues in 1936, two years prior to his death, aged just 27, with one released the following year and the other on a 1961 compilation.

The song’s legend is that of a man selling his soul to the devil in return for unworldly musical ability. The more likely truth is that when Johnson left the Robinsonville, Mississippi area where he was living, having already gained a few ideas from blues contemporary Son House, he stayed with Isiah ‘Ike’ Zimmerman in

Hazelhurst, Mississippi, from whom he picked up another, different set of techniques.

When Johnson returned to Robinsville a year later his playing was transformed, leading to the ‘devil’ myth.

Equally, there are various myths surrounding the Cream version of Crossroads.

Where was it actually recorded? Which guitar did Eric play? And was the final version a clever edit, as has been proposed?

In order to get to the bottom of this triple conundrum we spoke to Italian author and teacher Edoardo Genzolini, whose excellent book, Cream: Clapton, Bruce & Baker Sitting On Top Of The World: February-March 1968 (Schiffer Publishing LTD, 2023), is a nerd’s paradise.

We asked Edoardo why, considering there’s so much live footage of Cream, that there’s no film of this legendary performance?

“No, the only footage we have from when Cream played in San Francisco is in Tony Palmer's 1968 documentary, All My Loving,” he confirms. “According to Tony's journal, he and his BBC crew filmed Cream on 16mm at Winterland on Saturday, 2 March, and Saturday, 9 March. The 9 March shows were also professionally recorded for an official live release, and songs from that night such as Sleepy Time Time, Sunshine Of Your Love and NSU, appeared respectively on the later releases, Live Cream, Live Cream Volume II, and the box set Those Were The Days.”

Sadly, while Cream did play Crossroads on Palmer’s recorded performances (the band played a punishing two shows a night), it was the subsequent evening’s first set on 10 March that spawned the version we know and love, and no known film of that show exists.

“It does!” you may scream. “I’ve seen it!” Unfortunately, what you’ve almost certainly seen is a later Royal Albert Hall performance (Clapton wearing shorter hair and no moustache) with the Wheels Of Fire ‘Fillmore’ soundtrack cleverly edited beneath it.

Look around and you can find the original Albert Hall version; same video but a far scrappier Crossroads.

Another confusion surrounds whether the definitive Crossroads was recorded at San Francisco’s Winterland or Fillmore Auditorium. The fact is that Cream played both venues between 7-10 March.

As Genzolini explains, “The wording ‘Live at the Fillmore’ on Wheels Of Fire’s sleeve is mostly correct and applies to all the live songs except Traintime, which is from Winterland, 8 March. And, as sound engineer Bill Halverson reports in my book, ‘That string of shows had been booked for four nights at Fillmore. Bill Graham overbooked it, but Winterland [a much larger venue] was available, so we had to do Thursday 7 March at Fillmore, tear everything down, go Friday and Saturday at Winterland, tear it all down again and go back to Fillmore for Sunday 10 March.’”

As for which guitar Clapton played, the aforementioned Royal Albert Hall edited version, and many other mis-statings in magazine articles and websites, have it as Clapton’s red 1964 Gibson ES-335. However, all the photographic evidence - and Genzolini himself has unearthed many never before seen shots - shows that it was Eric’s psychedelically painted 1964 Gibson ‘Fool’ SG.

Genzolini explains: “The dozens upon dozens of photos I have discovered unarguably support this information: photos taken by the late Jim Marshall [not to be confused with the maker of Clapton’s 100-watt amps] from 10 March clearly show the band playing a venue that’s unquestionably the Fillmore. Also the black and white negatives of Frank M. Stapleton from the Fillmore show display a sequence of songs that’s easily recognisable by Clapton's finger positions on the fretboard, and which match the official setlist of 10 March from the Atlantic Records logs.”

So there’s little doubt the only guitar he had on this leg of the show was the fabled SG.

Genzolini concurs: “Eric played the ‘Fool SG until 12 April, the first of a three-night residence at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. On 13 April, he bought a Gibson Firebird I at the local Music City store and played the rest of the tour with that guitar.”

And for our final diversion from the music, despite various music historians claiming Crossroads to be an edited, overdubbed or shortened version, the evidence reveals it to be a straight take - exactly as heard on Wheels Of Fire.

Genzolini again: “[Fillmore promoter] Bill Graham's recording on reel-to-reel from the first set of 10 March, preserved at Wolfgang's Vault [a website dedicated to vintage posters, nostalgia and archive recordings], as well as an audience recording of the complete 10 March sets, proves it to be unedited.”

Wolfgang’s Vault itself underscores this view, saying, “Many have claimed Clapton's blistering solo is a result of studio overdubbing, but here it is on this raw two-track recording, fully intact, exactly as it went down, proving that one of the most blazing guitar solos of all time was indeed done spontaneously, live on stage.”

But back to the music - and Clapton’s solo. The first part, a tasteful 24-bar, mostly major pentatonic workout that was pretty quick by 1968 standards, is both perfectly paced and superbly executed.

Eric begins down at the 2nd fret, fourth string, and climbs up the fretboard until he climaxes with a B.B. King-style flurry between 9th and 12th frets. He finishes off with a neat sliding blues lick that takes him back to his 5th fret, pentatonic ‘home’.

It’s a gloriously wholesome 24 bars with a clear beginning, middle and end; a succinct story that, even on its own, represents a stunning moment in blues-rock. This clearly deliberate, if not necessarily conscious tactic, keeps Eric’s powder dry and ready for his second, rather more unfettered outburst.

Here, Clapton takes the roof off with a 36-bar break that starts with unison bends and double-stops, building inexorably to a frenzied climax with a final reworking of his turnaround lick. All this action takes place between the 15th and 18th frets. Among the techniques employed are hammer-ons, pull-offs, Eric’s trademark bends and vibrato, various forms of double-stops and much more. It’s on-the-spot composing of the highest order.

While analysing Crossroads musically is all well and good, it misses the point that here is a band of supreme equals, improvising at the ultimate peak of its powers. And remember, Clapton had yet to turn 23 years old and this recording, which still stands as a shining monument to blues-rock, was made 56 years ago!

Until their brief reunion in 2005, Cream’s 1968 ‘farewell’ tour which culminated on 26 November at London’s Royal Albert Hall, would be the last time the trio played together as a unit.

Clapton himself never liked his playing on Crossroads. “I actually have about zero tolerance for most of my old material, especially Crossroads,” he told MusicRadar in 2004. “The popularity of that song with Cream has always been mystifying to me.”

What annoys Eric is that during his second break he found himself playing over the wrong beat. While to most of us this creates an exciting tension that Clapton expertly releases as he finds his way back into time, it leaves the guitarist bemused at our adulation of his mis-step.

As Clapton told Mojo magazine: “Most of that solo is on the wrong beat... Instead of playing on the two and four, I’m playing on the one and three and thinking, ‘that’s the off beat’... No wonder people think it’s so good - because it’s wrong!"

Back to Edoardo Genzolini: “It undoubtedly is one of the best solos ever conceived for its lyricism, and its recognisable structure building up to a unique climax,” he says. “And what makes it one of the best is the fact that it was captured live on stage. It was clearly a good night for Cream, and we are lucky that [engineer] Bill Halverson and [Cream producer] Felix Pappalardi were there to record it.”

Wolfgang’s Vault’s agrees: “This is a blistering performance, in which Clapton, Bruce, and Baker all seem to be soloing simultaneously. Crossroads is a dazzling display of their fury and bravado when Cream was at the pinnacle of their powers.”

Whether or not we’ve convinced you that Crossroads is indeed the finest live blues performance on record, let’s leave the final word to another legendary six-stringer, the unashamed Clapton fan Edward Van Halen who called it simply, “one of the best live recorded songs ever.”

That’ll do for us!

Bedecked with the eyecatching, trippy, day-glow cover art of Aussie counter-culturalist Martin Sharp, Cream’s second album Disraeli Gears was always going to turn heads when it hit the shelves. Its unique and formidable blend of blues riffing and psychedelic freak-out caught the ears of the world’s record-buying public, too, and made its tracks stand out like purple-red flashes on the radio.

Almost from the moment phenomenal jazz drummer Ginger Baker approached former Yardbird and Bluesbreaker Eric Clapton about starting a band back in mid-1966, Cream – whose line-up was completed by ace bassist, singer and songwriter Jack Bruce – were soon signed up by Robert Stigwood’s Reaction Records label in the UK and Atlantic’s Atco imprint in the US. Their debut Fresh Cream did well on home turf, but only just cracked the Top 40 over the pond.

Disraeli Gears, released in November 1967, speedily eclipsed the success of its predecessor and, aided by the incendiary brilliance of its standout track (and second single) Sunshine Of Your Love, helped make Cream one of the most significant bands of the decade. Strange Brew was not only the long-player’s first track, it also served as the lead single.

Months before that, when Cream were about to lay down tracks for the as-yet-untitled second album, late Atlantic Records chief Ahmet Ertegun knew exactly what he wanted.

“They made the first record Fresh Cream and it was not a tremendous hit and I was kind of disappointed in the thrust of it,” Ahmet said in the Classic Albums: Disraeli Gears documentary. “So, for the second record, they agreed to come to America and record in our studio.”

The first Disraeli Gears recording sessions took place at Atlantic Studios in New York on 3 and 4 April 1967, following Cream’s brief US debut performances at Murray Kaufman’s infamously chaotic promo concerts at the Big Apple’s RKO theatre. The plan was for the three-piece to lay down a single and then to return in May to complete the rest of the recordings. 

Ertegun produced the first day’s session himself and, in response to his request for a blues cover, Cream dutifully dished out a version of Hey Lawdy Mama, originally recorded as Oh Lawdy Mama by Buddy Moss in 1934.

“This came from hearing an album that Buddy Guy and Junior Wells did together,” Clapton explained in the Classic Albums documentary. “And he did Hey Lawdy Mama on that but that riff is from another song, I think a Little Walter song called Everything’s Gonna Be Alright. What we did is we took it from shuffle to straight-time… so we took that riff then just [put] the song over that.”

After a few takes, young producer (and future Mountain bassist) Felix Pappalardi entered the Atlantic fray and told Ertegun he thought the track was lacking something. The next morning, Felix returned with a new set of lyrics he’d penned overnight with his wife, Gail Collins, and told the band that these words would fit well over the original Lawdy Mama blues groove. 

"It wasn’t solely the lyrics that Pappalardi wanted to change, though – he also persuaded Eric to take over the lead vocal from Jack Bruce. The more poppy, psych-fuelled Strange Brew was born, and Pappalardi was consequently installed as the record’s producer.

“[Felix] took that really from a blues, just a standard 12-bar, and turned it into a kind
of McCartney-esque pop song,” continued Clapton. “I wasn’t that mad [about it] and I’m still not that mad about it, as a form, but I respected the fact that it could be done and he knew how to do it… and, of course, he let me play a guitar solo which was… almost like an unspoken deal that if I gave in and played on this kind of pop song, I could play an Albert King guitar solo.”

“It was very much against my wishes but at that moment I had absolutely no power in the band, in the studio,” Jack Bruce told Guitarist magazine in 2012 regarding the changes Felix initiated. “That was just the way it was at that point, because Ahmet Ertegun was more or less in love with Eric. He thought Eric should be the frontman… Things like that happen in bands. If they’re not manufactured, they don’t always work out the way that the powers that be want them to.”

During the sometimes tense atmosphere of the Disraeli Gears sessions, Cream did manage to stamp their authority in one way, by refusing to use the smaller amps that legendary American engineer Tom Dowd had proffered them. Instead, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton, who plugged in with his psychedelic paint-daubed ‘Fool’ Gibson SG, insisted on using the amps that gave them such a monstrous live sound.

“There was a particular way of working [at the studio],” Jack Bruce explained in Classic Albums. “For instance, the bass player would use a little Ampeg amp… and it would be the same amp for everybody. So for us to come in with Marshall stacks – [Tom Dowd] wasn’t used to it but he very quickly got used to it.”

“They’re one of the groups that are partially responsible for my not hearing as well as I used to!” added Ahmet Ertegun.

Cream were one of the most important bands of the '60s, helping pave the way for heavier acts like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, as well as inspiring the newly emergent prog rockers with their endless onstage improvisation. But, towards the end of 1968, the band shocked the rock world by calling it a day, partly due to Clapton’s desire to get back to a more pure and ‘honest’ form of blues. Cream achieved more in two years than most bands could ever dream of during an entire career, and their legacy continues to burn bright.

• Jack Bruce talks beloved basses, Baker and blowing speakers

Guitar Center has put together an exclusive run of limited edition acoustic and electric guitars to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, and among them are a trio of signature Martins for Slowhand himself.

To launch the collection, Guitar Center’s Michael Doyle dropped in on Clapton to present him with a pair of Martins to get his seal of approval. First up was a D-28 with a build inspired by Clapton’s 000 signature guitar; Sitka spruce on top, Indian rosewood on the back and sides, herringbone rosette and purfling, ebony fingerboard with diamonds-and-squares inlaid in abalone pearl, and Clapton’s signature inlaid in MOP at the top of the fingerboard. 

They’re only making 60 of these, each priced $4,499. The sight of has Clapton recalling his long love affair with the storied acoustic guitar brand, and how they were like an “exotic creature” when he first laid eyes on them.

“It was a D-28 way back in the early ‘60s, and someone said, ‘I’ve got a Martin. Do you want to see it?’ And a group of people formed a circle to look at this thing.”

Next up was a real high-end acoustic guitar, a D-45 with Madagascan rosewood on the back and sides. A limited run of just 25, it is the D-45 replica of the ’68 model that Clapton played onstage with Derek and the Dominoes legendary charity gig on 14 June 1970. It comes with special hard-shell guitar case stencilled with “Eric Clapton Group. Delicate electronic instrument. Handle with care.” 

Clapton recalls that Lyceum gig coming around just as he was warming to a change of pace post-Cream and performing with a little less volume onstage.

“That gig was a charity event, and it was just an excuse to take what we’d been mucking around with," he says. "And I had fallen in love with the whole idea of playing acoustic onstage, having been part of Cream where it was really loud, and two 100-watt Marshalls behind me. Unbelievable. And I’d have one of them one and the other one off, but I’d turn the other one on for the solos. What was I thinking? A 100-watts extra for the solo! [Laughs] So playing acoustic, I fell in love with Martin.”

This D-45 has all the finery bestowed upon it. There is the slightly rounded headstock edges, the abalone rosette and purfling, the abalone ‘hexagon’ inlays, period-correct gold Grover tuners, with Madagascan rosewood on the headstock facing. Clapton has signed the label on the inside of the guitar. It costs $15,499, and Eric Clapton is a big fan of it.

“Lovely. Lovely tone. It’s great actually,” he says. “Beautiful. Nice neck. Great action. Yeah, that’s all right with me. Yeah, this is fantastic.”

All approved. What we don’t see in the video, however, is a one-of-one Martin D-45 with Brazilian rosewood. A truly high-end guitar for the collector’s market, it was listed at $74,999. 

You can’t have a special Clapton release without a Fender Stratocaster, and Guitar Center has also hooked up with Fender for a couple of signature Strats to mark the occasion.

Again, we’ve got high-end and then very high-end options. The Eric Clapton CRASH Stratocaster is the more affordable at $3,499, and takes its name – and design – from NYC street artist John “CRASH” Matos. 

Limited to 60 instruments, it has an alder body, a bolt-on V profile neck, vintage frets, a blocked synchronized tremolo as per Clapton’s preference, and a trio of Vintage Noiseless Strate single-coils. There is a custom-engraved Crossroads neck plate and it ships in a custom tweed case.

Now for the Custom Shop Strat, a guitar put together by Fender Master Builder Todd Krause. Finished in Blu Scozia, this is limited to 25, has the soft V profile neck, the Noiseless pickups, and once more the vibrato unit is blocked. But there are some differences. 

The build quality will be off the charts, of course. There is also an active mid boost control that can add up to 25dB, so no need to be running that second Marshall head for the solos. The COA is signed by both Krause and Clapton. As Strats go, this is a latter-day holy grail and is priced accordingly at $14,999.

Rounding out the collecting is a PRS Private Stock Carlos Santana 1, which comes with a personal letter from Santana himself, and the suspicion that this could well be the original that Paul Reed Smith built the electric guitar icon back in the ‘80s. It has a pre ’85 spec. There’s Brazilian rosewood on the fingerboard. 

There’s custom abalone Santana OM inlay on the truss rod cover. The maple top is a work of art. And there are only 10 of these worldwide. Priced $14,999, they are available exclusively from Guitar Center, which is where you should head for more information and to order.

A portion of the proceeds from these guitars will go to the Crossroads At Antigua addiction recovery centre. The Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023 is also in aid of the centre and takes place on 23 and 24 September, with Clapton performing on both nights and joined by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr, Cheryl Crow, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales and more. See Crossroads Guitar Festival for more details.

"I feel safe to talk to you," Eric Clapton tells YouTuber The Real Music Observer in the video below. By his own admission, the post-COVID Slowhand is now only agreeing to interviewers with him and not established mainstream "journalists", but he's in an open and honest mood, keen to talk about his past and the monumental figures he made history with.

He recounts first hearing The Big Pink by The Band on the best "Mexican grass" he'd ever had in his life and being transported to "another dimension". The impact immediately made him feel deflated about his work with Cream at the time.

"I just thought, 'Oh man, what am I doing this [for] when that has already been going on?'".

While he admitted he'd softened on his feelings about Cream's achievements in retrospect, he was also keen to pay tribute to his late friend and The Band's guitarist, Robbie Robertson. 

"The Band to me was amazing because they were all giants," Clapton reflected. "Every one of them was a giant on his own, and [Robbie] was the visionary. I have no doubt that he wrote all those songs."

Clapton even repeated his desire to join The Band's ranks, despite knowing it could never have worked.

"If you had taken that to its conclusion and Robbie had said, 'Do you want to join?' when I was up there, I may have said yes. But I wouldn't have done that because I was already a celebrity [at the time] and none of them personally, individually, were celebrities. That was their thing – even their name was [about] anonymity. That was also what was magnetic for me because I always wanted anonymity, I wanted to be in the rhythm section. And if that would have been possible to sneak in, even if I'm disguised, and played rhythm guitar then we could have done it. But it was never gonna happen."

Clapton also shared his desire to pay tribute to Robertson by playing a couple of The Band's songs at upcoming solo shows ahead of his appearance at the September 23 and 24 Crossroads festival in LA  – an event Robertson was billed to perform at. However, Clapton admits it will be a challenge to play some of his friend's guitar parts. 

"When people underestimate what he does – they want to try doing it," he notes. "The intros to songs, the little things that sound like they're scrappy and off the cuff, which is part of his unique attractiveness to me – he sounds like he's only just now working out that this will work. I'm sure it's a lot more crafted out than that. I know him well enough to know he was really precise about what he did. It's so difficult to recreate that kind of on the edge of expression [feel] and not making a mistake, not blowing it. It's really, really difficult."

Slowhand also remembered Robertson had a particularly unusual ability for a guitar player. 

"He had hands like a Boxer, said Clapton. "He could play piano but he had very, very wide fingers. Not fat but there's a lot of soul guitar players who do that thing with two strings sliding at the same time, they usually do that thing with [two fingers] sideways on. With one finger he could cover two strings and that's really unusual. "

"He was a dear friend," Clapton added elsewhere. "He had told me about being ill but I never asked him what it was. And I don't really know that I want to know, other than he's gone and it's very very sad. People will never know what a hole it's left for those of us who were around at the time." 

• "I said, ‘Well, it’ll just be a back-up song in case some other things don’t work out’" – How Robbie Robertson wrote The Band's classic song, The Weight

The Cream drummer and co-founder Ginger Baker has died, aged 80. His death was confirmed on his Facebook page in a statement that said he “passed away peacefully” on Sunday morning.

Baker had been in critically ill in hospital, and has had a series of health problems over the past few years, causing him to retire from the drum stool. Baker suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, from years of smoking, and had osteoarthritis. In July 2016 he underwent open heart surgery. He also took a bad fall.

Baker was irascible, brilliant, a visionary. He took a jazz style and took it into rock, and his dynamic playing formed the backbone of one of the most-celebrated rock acts of the late 1960s. 

Born Peter Edward Baker – and how uncanny that a man prone to eruptions should share a name with one of the world's preeminent volcanologists – he started playing the drums in his teens and took lessons from the great Phil Seamen. 

This grounding in the fundamentals of jazz drumming stood him in good stead and his first serious project came soon after, when he played alongside future Cream bandmate bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce in the Graham Bond Organisation. With Eric Clapton, the pair founded Cream in 1966. 

If Baker and Bruce enjoyed a combustible relationship that ended the band within a couple of years, the tension certainly added a frisson of urgency to Cream’s arrangements. Baker’s drumming then made him a star. His use of two kick drums prefigured the double-kick drum approach ubiquitous in heavy metal, which may have horrified him.

Many things horrified him. Other people, mainly. Baker was fire made flesh. It’s part of his legend. The 2012 documentary, Beware Of Mr Baker, directed by Jay Bulger, saw Bulger live with Baker on his South African ranch while working on the famous Rolling Stone article The Devil And Ginger Baker, took its title from the sign outside Baker’s property. The documentary also gave the uninitiated an idea of Baker’s importance to rock music.

When Cream split in 1968, Baker and Clapton formed Blind Faith with Steve Winwood of Traffic on keyboards and vocals and Ric Grech from Family on bass, recording one album, playing a legendary debut show in front of 100,000 people in Hyde Park, London. 

Baker further explored the nexus of jazz and rock with Ginger Baker’s Air Force. In 1971 he set up a studio in Lagos, Nigeria. He travelled across Africa, was the subject of filmmaker Tony Palmer’s documentary Ginger Baker In Africa, and amassed a knowledge of African rhythms.

He worked with an extraordinary array of musicians and worked in many different styles. Here was the man who played RnB with the Graham Bond Organisation and defined hard rock with Cream, and he played with Fela Kuti, Public Image Ltd, and Hawkwind. 

Projects were often short-lived. Like BBM, a power-trio that saw a Baker and Bruce reunited in the company of Gary Moore for the 1994 blues-rock album Around The Next Dream.

Baker and Cream did play together again. In 2005, they performed a series of dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden and London’s Albert Hall. In the later years of his career, Baker played with Ginger Baker Jazz Confusion, playing as recently as 2015.

Ginger Baker, the brilliant and mercurial drummer and co-founder of Cream, is critically ill in hospital.

His family shared the news via twitter yesterday evening, 25 September. There are no further details as to his condition, but Baker, who turned 80 last month, has had a series of health problems in recent years, suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis. In July 2016 he underwent open heart surgery; he also took a bad fall.

But such is Baker's pugilistic character, his legend, these seemed but trifles, and the Baker family's tweet was initially met with disbelief.

Baker has amassed a formidable legacy. His early years were grounded in jazz, learning under Phil Seamen and playing in The Graham Bond Organisation alongside Jack Bruce. Baker, Bruce and Eric Clapton formed Cream with in 1966, with Baker's protean style underpinning the band's power.

Two years later it was all over. Baker and Clapton formed Blind Faith alongside bassist Ric Grech from Family and Traffic's Steve Winwood on keyboards and vocals. One self-titled album later and Blind Faith was over. 

Volatility is forever a constant with Baker. A superstar drummer and fiery, restless talent, he sought out new projects. There was jazz-fusion with Ginger Bakers Air Force. He also opened a studio in Lagos, Nigeria, travelled across Africa, and incorporated the continent's rhythms into his playing.

He has collaborated with Fela Kuti, brought Afrobeat into the rock in the mid-'70s with Baker Gurvitz Army. In 2005, Cream reunited for a series of shows at New York's Madison Square Garden and London's Albert Hall.

Baker, meanwhile, kept on playing, touring with his Ginger Baker Jazz Confusion quartet as recently as 2015. 

The London Guitar Festival has a reputation for bringing some of the world's most distinguished guitar players to London's cultural hub, the Southbank Centre, and this year's shindig is no exception. Celebrating 60 years of blues in Britain, 2011's performing highlights include Joe Bonamassa, Jack Bruce and Eric Bib

Cream legend Jack Bruce and his Big Blues Band (with special guest Joe Bonamassa) will be taking to the Royal Festival Hall on 4 June, while blues troubadour Eric Bibb plays Elizabeth Hall on 3 June.

Classic artists include Nigel North, Tom Kerstens and Graham Devine.

Workshops

As well as the usual top-notch workshops for blues, metal and acoustic guitarists, our very own Neville Marten - alongside Guitarist's esteemed Editor Mick Taylor - will be presenting a special workshop on British blues.

GT contributor John Wheatcroft will be taking a look at the best British rock players of the last 40 years while Matt Buchanan looks at the history and legacy of the British folk revival through the music of Davey Graham, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, Andy McKee, Tommy Emmanuel and Newton Faulkner.

The event also marks the return of the Guitarist Of The Year and The Young Guitarist Of the Year competitions - keep an eye on Guitarist for more on that.

Full lineup and tickets

Check out the International Guitar Foundation's dedicated London Guitar Festival page for the full lineup, and see Southbank Centre for tickets.