Cream Reunion

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Jahfin
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Pete Brown Feels Cream

Post by Jahfin »

From RollingStone.com:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... ayer=false

"White Room," "I Feel Free" lyricist relishes band's reunion

Poet/lyricist Pete Brown, Cream's unofficial fourth member, watched from the audience as guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker played the first of their four reunion concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall on May 2nd. "I was fairly surprised -- I didn't really see it coming together," Brown confesses a week after that show, describing his initial reaction to the trio's first gig since 1968. "Yet, there it was. There must have been thoughts of retirement and mortality, of going out on a high. Which is a nice thought, if you're able to bring it about."

With bassist Jack Bruce, Brown co-wrote many of the trio's best and biggest songs, including "White Room," "I Feel Free," "Politician" and "Deserted Cities of the Heart." In the four decades since, he has been an active songwriter, producer and performer. Some of his best work with Bruce appeared on the bassist's solo albums, including Songs for a Tailor (1969) and Harmony Row (1971). In the Seventies, Brown led the eccentric, progressive-rock band Piblokto! and recorded with the late Graham Bond. More recently, Brown has been co-writing and producing an album with Bruce's son Malcolm.

In a conversation with Rolling Stone, Brown looks back at his association with Cream in fondness and detail. He is also looking forward, contributing material from his archives for a future Cream exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and planning U.S. concert appearances to coincide with the opening.

What were your impressions of Cream's first concert in thirty-six years?

I wish they'd played a few more of the things I wrote, because I need the money [laughs]. But apart from that, I absolutely loved it. I was wondering where the perennial conflict was going to take them, whether it would get in the way of the music. But it sounded and felt mature. They had obviously worked hard to get in shape for the shows. They are excellent musicians with strong imaginations, and the inventiveness was not diminished in any way.

How much did the well-documented tensions between Jack and Ginger drive them as a rhythm section in the Sixties?

The competitive spirit drove them -- I'm fairly sure of that. Sometimes it got in the way, when it turned into outright warfare. But you find that in a lot of great bands: Just because you're in a band and can play well together doesn't mean you have to love each other all the time. You're working for a common cause.

Can you describe what a Cream gig was like in the beginning, in England in 1966 and early '67?

It was very brash and loud. They were master musicians before they formed Cream -- Jack and Ginger had been jazz musicians, and Eric had a considerable grasp of where he was going -- but together, the music was much more aggressive.

At these recent gigs, they did a lot of things from Fresh Cream -- that was a lot of the set in the beginning, too. They rarely did songs [live] that required many backing vocals and harmonies. To my knowledge, they never did "Wrapping Paper" [Cream's debut single] live. And they rarely did "I Feel Free," because that would have needed a number of other musicians to do it justice. I remember them doing "We're Going Wrong" [from Disraeli Gears], but I don't remember it being as good as it was this time.

How much of yourself -- your younger self -- did you hear when they played "White Room" and "Deserted Cities of the Heart" at the Albert Hall recently?

I like to think that people can still relate to those songs. I've come a long way since then, and I write in different ways. But "White Room" is a state of mind, as well as a description of a particular place and time.

How did you come up with the words to "White Room"? Did you write them knowing what the music was beforehand?

The music was written first. I had one stab at a lyric that had nothing to do with the final song. It was called "Cinderella's Last Goodnight" -- it was about some doomed hippie girl. Jack didn't like it, which was fair enough. Then I found this eight-page poem I'd written that had things about white rooms and other stuff in it. I worked that into a lyric that went with the atmosphere and meter of the song. Jack and I always had that chemistry, the telepathy of knowing what was needed.

For rock fans under the age of forty, Cream are more of a myth than a band. How would you characterize their power and legacy for someone who didn't hear it the first time around?

None of them were particularly beautiful -- they weren't a pop group, as such. But it was quite clear they were good musicians. Even now, in Britain, you have this horrible thing where you have to look right to get anywhere in popular music. Cream were completely against that grain. And there was their experimentation with form, the evolution of what they took from the blues. Before Cream, there were very few improvising rock bands. Psychedelia was rock bands trying to improvise.

The astonishing thing about the reunion shows is that people waited nearly four decades to see a band that was together a little more than two years. How much unfinished business did they leave behind in 1968?

Had I been promoting these gigs, I would have suggested they take a look at employing additional musicians to do the more ambitious pieces. In the studio, that enabled them to work on a broader canvas, especially Jack. I think that's one of the reasons they broke up. Jack was growing as a composer -- he needed that bigger canvas. But they couldn't play that kind of music live as a trio and with the limits placed on them by their management, which wanted them to churn out the same thing all the time and keep touring.

But I was pleased to see the guys getting the accolades again. Obviously, Eric gets it regularly now, but Jack and Ginger don't. And they deserve it. They're great musicians. I don't like fakers, and Cream never faked it, not for a second. They loved what they did. Even when they didn't love one another that much, they loved what they were doing.

DAVID FRICKE
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Post by ph4ever »

a friend of mine from another board posted these pics and I thought I'd share

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Cream At Royal Albert Hall (Billboard Review)

Post by Jahfin »

From Billboard.com:
http://www.billboard.com/bb/reviews/alb ... 1001219446

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CREAM
Album Title: Live at Royal Albert Hall
Producer(s): Simon Climie
Genre: ROCK
Label/Catalog Number: Reprise
Release Date: Oct. 4
Source: Billboard Magazine
Originally Reviewed: October 08, 2005

Guess you had to be there. This double-CD documents a highly anticipated live Cream reunion whose magical reconnect gets lost in translation to disc. Thirty-seven years after its farewell Royal Albert Hall show, the pioneering but short-lived blues-rock power trio returned to the London venue earlier this year. It is a prime-time performance: Eric Clapton's gripping, stinging guitar; Jack Bruce's warm-pulse bass lines; Ginger Baker breaking sticks. They launch into obvious revisits of "Sunshine of Your Love," "White Room," "N.S.U." and "Badge" and their then-groundbreaking rock renditions of blues tunes by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. It is testament to the trio's chemistry that they still jell, but this is more about looking back than forging ahead. —Dan Ouellette
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Post by Jahfin »

From RollingStone.com:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... on=single1

Cream Hit the Garden
Sixties British rock legends bring reunion stint to New York City

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Clapton ready to feel free
Photo by Rachael Warner

Eric Clapton was nervous before his first concert with Cream in almost thirty-seven years. "There's no keyboard players, no other guitar players," he says on the DVD of the band's reunion shows in May at London's Royal Albert Hall. "It's naked. [But] when we got through that week, I thought, 'Well, that's it, I can rest and relax now.' We pulled it off."

Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker -- who'd feuded for decades and reunited only for a 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame performance -- enjoyed the London stand so much, they're bringing the show to America next Monday. "It's going to be very simple," says promoter Ron Delsener of the three nights (October 24th-26th) at New York's Madison Square Garden. "Just three guys making good music and the place going crazy."

The New York shows almost didn't happen. Baker, who lives in South Africa, had to resolve long-standing immigration issues to obtain a U.S. visa. His troubles stemmed from an attempt to gain permanent U.S. residency in the late 1990s, when he lived in Colorado. His application was denied because of two early-Seventies drug convictions and tax problems. "[The resolution] took about a month, and Ginger had to answer some questions," Delsener says. "I said, 'I'm not going to get excited until I see a copy of a stamped passport with Ginger's face on it.' One day, lo and behold, coming over my fax machine is this grinning face of Ginger Baker."

The Garden sets are likely to resemble the concerts captured on the Cream: Royal Albert Hall: London DVD, out now, which shows the trio opening with a subdued version of Skip James' "I'm So Glad" and tearing through "Sunshine of Your Love," "Badge" and "Crossroads." It includes sixteen minutes of separate interviews, in which Clapton, Bruce and Baker recall working up the rarely performed "I Feel Free," "Badge" and the Baker obscurity "Pressed Rat and Warthog."

"It was almost telepathic, the way they play together," says Martyn Atkins, director of the DVD. "You see 'em laughing at each other and giving each other eagle-eye looks. Everybody was walking on eggshells a little bit, but after the first night, it was cool."

STEVE KNOPPER
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Post by Jahfin »

From RollingStone.com:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... on=single1

Cream Take New York
Reunited supergroup light up Madison Square Garden, for better and worse

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Rollin' and tumblin'
Photo by David Atlas

In May, the pioneering British power trio Cream played their first shows in thirty-seven years at London's Royal Albert Hall. On October 24th, guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker extended their improbable reunion, opening a sold-out three-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Not much had changed since the spring: Clapton was still dressed down, in a blue shirt and jeans, and running his Fender Stratocaster through a modest battery of two small Fender amps and one shoulder-high speaker cabinet: a far cry from the great wall of Marshalls that were his trademark in Cream's late-Sixties lifetime. Baker wore a Cream T-shirt and said a few words on behalf of the merchandise stands after his Cockney-fishmonger rap in "Pressed Rat and Warthog" ("Pressed Rat and Warthog have reopened their shop in the lobby . . ."). And the set list was virtually unchanged from the Albert Hall, with the single addition of "Tales of Brave Ulysses" from Disraeli Gears, sandwiched between the heavy crawl of "Sleepy Time Time" and the bright blues-pop of "N.S.U."

But there were notable differences in atmosphere, flattering and otherwise. Where the sound at the Albert Hall was clean and only moderately loud -- lacking the earthquake force of the live half of 1968's Wheels on Fire but revealing more of the jazz conversation inside the tumult -- the booming Garden P.A. fattened Clapton's tart curls and prolonged Strat screams in "Spoonful" and "Politician" and put heart-attack heft on Baker's tom-tom bombs and double-kick-drum outbursts. Unfortunately, the haunted vertigo of "We're Going Wrong" -- a nightly highlight in London, as Baker's 6/8 rumble on the toms and Clapton's climbing strum pressed Bruce's clear vocal pleading to peaks of agony -- was turned into grey soup by the airplane-hangar echo in New York.

Ironically, in a season when the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and U2 have all come through the Garden with thunder-and-lightning stage shows, the greatest shock of Cream's performance was the understated charge of three superior musicians simply playing. When they truly connected -- in the three-way-solo passage of "Sweet Wine" and the runaway simplicity of "Rollin' and Tumblin'" -- Cream lived up to the expectations they left behind nearly forty years ago. And there was an obvious combined thrill of discovery as Cream stepped outside the old songbook for the T-Bone Walker blues "Stormy Monday." Soloing with fire and confidence, Clapton stood toe to toe with Bruce at the foot of Baker's drum riser: the three intently facing each other, genuinely reunited in technique and delight.

One sore point: The light show behind them was a horror, a cornball digital recreation of the throbbing blobs of a vintage Fillmore light show. The crude pixilation and garish Peter Max-style hues -- a minor distraction in the Victorian splendor of the Albert Hall -- looked cheap and cheesy in the big black hole of the Garden, insulting to the music and its original era. Either do it with oils and lamps, or don't do it at all.

DAVID FRICKE
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Post by Lightning Bolt »

Mr. Fricke is getting a bit snippy. I'd kill to be there at MSG :-?
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Post by LIPH »

I saw them at the Garden last night and what they used to say is true. Clapton IS god.
what I really mean . . . I wish you were here
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Post by Jahfin »

From Billboard.com:
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/artic ... 1001390535

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Cream's recent live album "Royal Albert Hall London: May 2-3, 5-6" will be released as a triple-vinyl set Dec. 13 via Reprise. The set debuted earlier this month at No. 59 on The Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 19,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

As previously reported, the rock trio will tonight (Oct. 26) conclude its three-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden, and, presumably, its reunion after a 37-year-hiatus. Highlights from the Royal Albert Hall shows will air as part of PBS' "Great Performances" beginning Nov. 30.

-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
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Post by Jahfin »

From Billboard.com:
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1001393330

Cream Finishes With A Bang In New York

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Ray Waddell, Nashville

The Cream reunion last week at New York's Madison Square Garden was a monster box office hit. The Oct. 24-26 shows, the band's only North American appearances and first here in 37 years, grossed more than $10.6 million and drew 56,151 people, according to Garden officials.

The Garden shows followed an equally successful, though smaller-scale, spring reunion at London's Royal Albert Hall, which grossed $3.6 million and drew more than 18,000 people to four sell-outs. Prior to those, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce had last appeared onstage together at Cream's 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And now it appears that the Cream reunion is over, as sources say the trio has passed on lucrative tour offers. With such exclusivity, more than 60% of those attending the MSG shows came from outside the New York area.

"Hosting Cream's only North American performances at MSG was a milestone event for what has already been a banner year," Jay Marciano, president of Radio City Entertainment, which oversees the Garden, tells Billboard.com. "To be host, or witness to, one of music's most influential rock groups as they reunited on our stage was a once in a lifetime opportunity."

Producers declined to release merchandise revenues from the Garden shows, but Billboard estimates put the gross at more than $11 million, likely a Garden record.

As previously reported, a triple-vinyl edition of Cream's recent Reprise live album culled from the Albert Hall shows will be released Dec. 13.
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Post by Jahfin »

http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article ... 1001993349

Cream Regrouping For More Shows

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Legendary rock trio Cream, which reunited last year for a handful of concerts in London and New York after a bitter breakup in 1968, has scheduled more shows, according to vocalist/bassist Jack Bruce.

But don't expect a world tour. Rather, Bruce says he, guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker will set up camp in select cities for multiple dates, just as they did last year.

"What we feel is that it's so special, and also so emotionally draining that it's not something we could do every day," he says. "We will play more, but where and when I'm not at liberty to say." He declined to say when an official announcement might be made, joking that he would "get chopped" if he said anything.

Bruce is in Los Angeles to accept a lifetime achievement award for Cream at tonight's (Feb. 8) Grammy Awards. He will be the group's sole representative, saying Clapton had other commitments, while it was impractical for Baker to leave his farm in South Africa.

Prior to last year, Cream hadn't played live since its 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the spring, the group grossed $3.6 million from four sell-outs at London's Royal Albert Hall. An Oct. 24-26 run at New York's Madison Square Garden grossed more than $10.6 million and drew 56,151 people, according to venue officials.

Bruce says he is less explosive in his old age, and the band know better how to handle problems, but there remains an underlying, brotherly tension with Baker. On the other hand, he describes Clapton as "the most beautiful, kindest, most understanding guy that I've come across."
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Post by J.LeP »

My local PBS station broadcast the film of the Albert Hall show, it was amazing. For me the least impressive performance was turned in by Clapton. Keep you eyes on your TV listings, it may be on a station nesr you.
John
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Post by z-man »

Thanx Jah!
You are far more tuned in to the music industry than alot of us. I would love to hear Cream live, let us know when dates are announced!
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