{"id":2596,"date":"2022-08-15T16:54:16","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T16:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2022-08-15T16:57:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T16:57:23","slug":"ftv-cream-of-the-crop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2596","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Cream of the Crop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is no doubt that guitarist Eric Clapton is a complex soul.\u00a0 As a long time admirer of the band Cream, my mental image of that band was colored by what they did on record and on stage.\u00a0 I was a 14 year-old drummer in training when <\/span>Sunshine of Your Love <\/span><\/i>(from their second album <\/span>Disraeli Gears – <\/span><\/i>released November 2, 1967) dominated AM radio.\u00a0 When my first band, The Twig, began playing paying gigs three years later, we gravitated to songs from that album and their first release, <\/span>Fresh Cream <\/span><\/i>(1966) because a) they were great songs and b) they were a power trio.\u00a0 As we were also a bass, guitar, and drum trio, their music translated wonderfully to what we were trying to do.\u00a0 I have read several of author Philip Norman\u2019s books about rock stars in the past, so when I found a copy of <\/span>Slowhand – The Life and Times of Eric Clapton <\/span><\/i>(2018 – Little Brown Books), I could not resist picking it up.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just as I cracked the cover, there were reports that Clapton had come down with COVID 19 even though he had been vaccinated.\u00a0 He had to cancel part of his tour out of concern for his band, crew, promoters, and fans (a pattern repeated by many artists as they tried to get back on the road).\u00a0 I could not quite figure out, however, why he then went on a tear spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines, complaining about lockdown measures, and then finally announcing he would not play at any venue that required attendees to show proof of vaccination.\u00a0 He even went as far as joining fellow musician Van Morrison in producing a series of songs protesting, \u201cBS vaccines and pandemic safety measures.\u201d\u00a0 I set the book aside for a long time and wondered if I really wanted to know much more about Eric Clapton\u2019s views.\u00a0 If he could not see the big picture during a time that saw millions around the world die from COVID, then I really did not want to know more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The pull of Norman\u2019s writing eventually overcame my reservations and I found answers to a lot of my questions about what makes Clapton tick.\u00a0 We all make mistakes in life and with any luck at all, we learn from them.\u00a0 I learned Eric Clapton came from a tough upbringing where he was raised by his grandparents and spent his early life pretending his real mother was his sister.\u00a0 There is probably a PhD thesis in psychology bound up in that statement alone, but it must have affected Clapton deeply.\u00a0 I will leave it at that.\u00a0 I still respect the man\u2019s music but I can not quite wrap my head around his inability to (for lack of a better phrase) \u2018grow up\u2019.\u00a0 If you want all the sordid details, the book will be living at the Ontonagon Township Library by the time you read this.\u00a0 Since Cream was one of my favorite bands (and still is), I thought I would focus on the period of Clapton\u2019s career up through his association with that band.\u00a0 As you will see, what happened with Cream\u00a0 wasn\u2019t all Clapton\u2019s fault, but he surely was given more than one third of the blame for what transpired.\u00a0 We will pick up the story just as the blues began to overshadow trad jazz in England and just before the \u2018Swinging London\u2019 era began in earnest.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It all started quite innocently enough in 1962.\u00a0 Former jazz banjo-player Alexis Korner became enthralled with the blues.\u00a0 Having caught the \u2018blues bug\u2019, Korner formed England\u2019s first band truly dedicated to the genre, Blues Incorporated.\u00a0 The jazz clubs in London stiff-armed them, ignored their music, and labeled Korner a \u2018traitor\u2019.\u00a0 Never one to give up easily, he still managed to find a regular gig at a new club located below an ABC bakery in Ealing.\u00a0 It was at this Ealing club that two friends from Dartford, Kent joined the throng who would assemble to hear this new, remarkable music.\u00a0 Keith Richard and Mick Jagger were struggling to form a band they first called \u2018Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys\u2019 when they met Brian Jones at the same club.\u00a0 It was Jones who broadened their understanding of the blues, eventually joining them in a little band that would become known as The Rolling Stones.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Eric Clapton spent many hours in the audience studying the technique of whichever guitarist happened to be in Blues Incorporated at the time.\u00a0 The membership was, as Norman labels it, \u201cfluid\u201d and over time included, \u201cA pink-faced blond beanpole known as Long John Baldry;\u00a0 an Oxford University undergraduate named Paul Pond (later Paul Jones of Manfred Mann); a former child skiffler named Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin; a diminutive Scot who played upright bass named Jack Bruce, and an unruly red-haired drummer named Ginger Baker.\u201d\u00a0 Clapton couldn\u2019t know at the time he would eventually team up with this powerhouse Bruce \/ Baker rhythm section much later.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the first outbreaks of Beatlemania began in the winter of 1962-63, Clapton would find himself joining some like-minded blues fans in a band called The Roosters.\u00a0 As The Beatles rose up the record charts with <\/span>Please Please Me, <\/span><\/i>the Roosters huddled around one small amp trying to find their own sound.\u00a0 They wanted to separate themselves completely from the \u2018mindless commercial pop\u2019 that was inducing female fans into hysterical gyrations.\u00a0 Though they were huge R&B fans themselves, The Beatles\u2019 songwriting took their music in a different direction, soon to be followed by other pop bands who wanted a share of the screaming and adulation.\u00a0 Even though London\u2019s Marquee Club wasn\u2019t into the blues scene, something about The Beatles\u2019 success turned the club away from pop music.\u00a0 The plethora of bands performing cookie cutter music patterned after the Fab Four began a sort of counter revolution.\u00a0 The marching music of this revolution was deeply rooted in the one truly American musical art-form called \u2018the blues\u2019. \u00a0 When the Marquee began booking blues artists like John Mayall and Graham Bond, fans of this growing musical movement followed.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, Bond was the former keyboard player in Blues Incorporated and his new band, the Graham Bond Organization, included the aforementioned Bruce and Baker.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jagger seemed to have embraced the movement to preserve and spread blues music.\u00a0 He and Clapton became good enough friends that during one of the solo troubadour shows Eric was performing outside of The Roosters, Mick lent him his personal microphone for the gig.\u00a0 The mic Mick carried around in his back pocket did not include a stand and when Clapton got to the club, he found they didn\u2019t have one either.\u00a0 Undaunted, he stacked two chairs and taped the mic to them.\u00a0 The Roosters advertised themselves in <\/span>Melody Maker<\/span><\/i> with the slogan \u2018Can\u2019t Be Beat\u2019, yet they only played about a dozen gigs during their short time together between early spring and summer.\u00a0 Fellow Rooster Tom McGuinness recalled their time together fondly for Norman:\u00a0 \u201cLooking back, it all seems incredibly innocent.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t take drugs.\u00a0 We hardly drank.\u00a0 The greatest self-indulgence I can remember is a dough-nut eating contest Eric and I once had on Brighton pier.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0McGuinness and Clapton garnered enough attention in The Roosters to be offered a job in a professional band called Casey Jones and the Engineers.\u00a0 Norman\u2019s explanation of how their tenure ended with that band is an eerie fore-shadowing of what was to come in Clapton\u2019s career:\u00a0 \u201cThough Eric liked Casey, and later said he gained much valuable experience with the Engineers, he soon developed the itchy feet he would be associated with during his career.\u00a0 The band was booked to appear at The Scene in London, but Eric failed to turn up and they never saw him again.\u00a0 McGuinness quit a day later, soon afterwards switching from guitar to playing bass in Manfred Mann.\u201d\u00a0 The \u2018itchy feet\u2019 syndrome would repeat itself numerous times before Cream teamed up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next landing spot for Clapton was in The Yardbirds whom he joined in October of 1963.\u00a0 First off, he had to assume the debt to pay off the amplifier he inherited from the \u2018Birds departed guitarist Top Topham.\u00a0 His grandparents-turned-parents needed to sign for the eighteen-year old Eric in order for him to sign the contract.\u00a0 Rose and Jack were fine with him turning professional, but in his mind, Jack figured it was only a matter of time before the boy came to his senses and returned to the trades.\u00a0 After all, when Eric was booted from Kingston Art College, he had shown great promise in Jack\u2019s field, plastering and bricklaying (but just the same, the 20 pounds weekly wage Eric was earning with the Yardbirds impressed Jack).\u00a0 With a repertoire that included Howlin\u2019 Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs, he was a bit nervous upon his debut, but a natural fit.\u00a0 The \u2018Birds\u2019 manager Giiorgio Gomelsky (who would eventually become Eric\u2019s manager as well) kept them working at his string of CrawDaddy clubs almost every night.\u00a0 Gomelsky celebrated Eric\u2019s signing by gifting him a red Fender Telecaster.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Yardbirds were handed the opportunity to back Sonny Boy Williamson when he was imported to perform at Gomelsky\u2019s clubs.\u00a0 This was actually \u2018Sonny Boy II\u2019 as the Sonny Boy who had pioneered blues harmonica back in the states and written the blues standard <\/span>Good Moring Little Schoolgirl<\/span><\/i> had been murdered in Chicago in 1948.\u00a0 The substitute Sonny Boy borrowed the original\u2019s career and Gomelsky\u2019s intent was to have the \u2018Birds record a live album with \u2018II\u2019.\u00a0 Clapton learned an early lesson about dealing with the old guys when SBII pulled a pen knife on him when Eric inquired, \u201cIsn\u2019t your real name Rice Miller?\u201d\u00a0 Gomelsky\u2019s other contribution to Clapton lore was coining his nickname \u2018Slowhand\u2019.\u00a0 Over time it was turned into a compliment as people thought it had to do with his deliberate way of phrasing solos.\u00a0 In truth, Gomelsky dubbed him \u2018Slow-handclapton\u2019 because it took him forever to change a broken string, causing the audience to break into a slow handclap to show their impatience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the Beatles stormed the American shores in 1964, The Yardbirds found themselves being booked in a brutal, haphazard manner by their manager.\u00a0 The \u2018Birds crossed paths with the Beatles when they were booked as part of the Fab Four\u2019s Christmas Show giving Clapton an opportunity to get to know the shy Beatle, George Harrison.\u00a0 The \u2018Birds\u2019 record sales were modest and at the dawn of 1965, even groups who started up as blues bands began doing more \u2018pop\u2019 arrangements (like\u00a0 Manfred Mann (<\/span>Do Wah Diddy Diddy)<\/span><\/i>, and The Animals (<\/span>House of the Rising Sun<\/span><\/i>)).\u00a0 According to bassist Paul Samewell-Smith, Clapton wasn\u2019t the only one in the group who resisted their label\u2019s attempts to get them to go the pop route:\u00a0 \u201cNone of us felt comfortable about being pushed towards becoming a pop group.\u00a0 We were all equally pissed off about it.\u201d\u00a0 When pressed to suggest a song to get them on the charts, Clapton reluctantly offered up <\/span>Hang On Sloopy.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 He was voted down by the rest of the band only to see it become a monster hit for Ohio\u2019s own The McCoys a few months later.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Samwell-Smith overruled the rest of the \u2018Birds\u2019 ideas and chose a Graham Goulman (later of the seventies band 10cc) tune called <\/span>For Your Love.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The sessions were the beginning of the end for Clapton\u2019s time as a Yardbird.\u00a0 Not only did he feel they were \u2018selling out\u2019 (from the blues), he had to watch another band sell out.\u00a0 As The Rolling Stones climbed the charts with the Jagger\/Richards\u2019 collaboration, <\/span>The Last TIme, <\/span><\/i>it put the writing on the wall for Eric.\u00a0 He made everyone else in the \u2018Birds so miserable Gomelsky told him he was free to leave if he wanted to.\u00a0 Leave he did, and within a month, <\/span>For Your Love <\/span><\/i>hit No. 1 on the <\/span>NME <\/span><\/i>Top 30.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Adrift without art college or a band, the twenty year old Clapton went back to Rose and Jack\u2019s home.\u00a0 While waiting for his next opportunity, he immersed himself in the world of Tolkien\u2019s <\/span>Lord of the Rings<\/span><\/i> trilogy until out of the blue, he was invited to join John Mayall\u2019s Bluesbreakers.\u00a0 Joining in April of 1965 with no formal audition, Eric signed on for a weekly salary of 35 pounds.\u00a0 Managed by the tough Gunnell brothers (who ran a mobster-like empire that included clubs and band management), the Bluesbreakers set out on a schedule that made the Yardbirds\u2019 feel like a part time job.\u00a0 Eric recalled, \u201cIf there had been eight nights a week, we would have played them with two shows on a Sunday.\u201d\u00a0 Regardless of the grind, Clapton accepted his lot as he lived to perform.\u00a0 He had an immediate impact on the Bluebreakers\u2019 sound.\u00a0 The press, on the other hand, could not let go of his past with headlines like \u2018The Yardbird Who Got Left Behind\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After a short sabbatical to travel to Greece with a throw-together group they called The Glands, Clapton returned to the Bluesbreakers only to leave again.\u00a0 Both times he left, Mayall replaced him with Peter Green, later of Fleetwood Mac fame.\u00a0 Returning from his first sojourn away from The Bluesbreakers, Eric found a new bassist in the band;\u00a0 Jack Bruce.\u00a0 Bruce had been fired from The Graham Bond Organization after Bond\u2019s drug use incapacitated him to the point that drummer Ginger Baker took control of the band.\u00a0 The bad blood between the GBO\u2019s rhythm section was legendary including fisticuffs and knife throwing.\u00a0 Bruce made his escape and joined the Bluesbreakers just before Clapton returned from Greece and displaced his replacement Green.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Armed with a Gibson Les Paul and a stack of the powerful new Marshall amplifiers, Clapton began playing in an aggressive style much like Freddie King.\u00a0 After Ginger Baker sat in for one number at a gig in Oxford, the red-haired drummer (whose wild driving was on par with his drumming style) gave Eric a lift home.\u00a0 On the drive, he confided he was tired of running the GBO after three years and wanted to start his own band.\u00a0 The discussion drifted to a Buddy Guy show Clapton had recently attended.\u00a0 Guy had put on a powerful show backed by just a drummer and a bass player.\u00a0 Baker nearly crashed the car when Eric told him he was all in for a go at being a power trio, but only if Jack Bruce was on bass.\u00a0 Bruce had already left Mayall\u2019s band to play with Manfred Mann and it left Ginger with a predicament.\u00a0 How would Baker talk Bruce into working him after their acrimonious parting from the Graham Bond Organization?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When they met up, things went better than planned.\u00a0 Bruce and Clapton agreed to give the band a go, but only if Baker stopped using heroin.\u00a0 In his typical blunt take no prisoners manner, Baker was clean in a week and in June of 1966, they held their first acoustic-only rehearsal at Baker\u2019s house.\u00a0 Tension immediately surfaced when Bruce and Clapton learned Baker had already leaked word of the new \u2018supergroup\u2019 to <\/span>Melody Maker.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Indeed, both Mann and Mayall learned about their band members moving on in print, not from them personally.\u00a0 Once they began to play, however, the angry glares exchanged between Baker and Bruce turned to smiles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The band considered the name \u2018Sweet \u2018n\u2019 Sour Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll\u2019 but wisely settled for \u2018Cream\u2019 because they viewed themselves as the \u2018cream of the crop\u2019 as musicians.\u00a0 Hooking up with manager Robert Stigwood (known later for branching out into film work like <\/span>Saturday Night Fever<\/span><\/i>), they began and intense period of creativity.\u00a0 Conflict between Bruce and Baker would eventually wear down\u00a0 Clapton who longed to make music closer to what Bob Dylan was recording with The Band.\u00a0 Cream played their <\/span>Farewell <\/span><\/i>shows at the Royal Albert Hall in November of 1968.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After Cream dissolved, Clapton found himself free to join Bonnie and Delaney Bramlett in a more low-key role.\u00a0 Eric would eventually \u2018borrow\u2019 the Bramlett\u2019s band to record the Derek and the Dominos album <\/span>Layla and Assorted Love Songs<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 In typical rock band fashion, rampant drug abuse would crash the group before a second album could be completed and Clapton was off following his ever changing muse (again).\u00a0 Cream would reunite for their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the first time they played together in twenty-five years.\u00a0 They would come together again for a series of celebrated shows (again at the Royal Albert Hall) in 2005.\u00a0 These would be their last concerts together.\u00a0 Future reunions will have to be in the after life as Bruce passed away in 2014 and Baker joined him in 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0\u00a0NSU<\/em> was one of the Cream tracks we covered in The\u00a0 Twig – this version was recorded at their reunion shows at Albert Hall in 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is no doubt that guitarist Eric Clapton is a complex soul.\u00a0 As a long time admirer of the band Cream, my mental image of that band was colored by what they did on record and on stage.\u00a0 I was a 14 year-old drummer in training when Sunshine of Your Love (from their second album […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions\/2599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}