Cream - 9781852272869

Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Blake exploded onto the scene in 1966 as Cream, modern music's first true supergroup. They set standards that rock n roll still aspires to, not only creating some of rock's most enduring anthems, such as "Sunshine of Your Love," "I Feel Free," "Badge," "Strange Brew," and "White Room," but also rewriting the terms under which every subsequent band would operate. This book transports the reader back to an age when the blues was still a mysterious music that came to Britain in the rucksacks of merchant seamen. Competition was fierce and, within a close network of legendary bands, musicians were poached, dropped, and spurred by competitive rivalry. None were as ruthless in their devotion to music as Cream?three momentous talents, three momentous egos, and three musicians who rarely saw eye to eye. But such was their power that today, almost 40 years after the band broke up, Cream remains a byword for musical quality. Jam-packed with incisive new interviews with a glittering cast of band members, friends, rivals, and onlookers, this chronicle reads as if it were the best rock fiction ever written. Across 27 months, four LPs, and approximately 300 gigs, Cream's songs have sold cars and computers, bolstered movie soundtracks, and launched entire careers. From life on the road in the mid-1960s Britain to the psychedelic fog of Swinging London in 1967 and the reactionary brutality of America 1968?these are the tumultuous years that first created, then enveloped, and finally devoured the greatest rock band in the world.