Disraeli Gears

Cream

album cover

When Clapton Really Was God

Cream crammed a lot into three years. Though it started as a blues-rock band—guitarist Eric Clapton formed the group in 1966 after leaving John Mayall's Bluesbreakers—it evolved quickly, first as a purveyor of imaginative singles ("I Feel Free"), then a leading exponent of psychedelic rock (British division). Cream's configuration—Clapton's guitar alongside Jack Bruce's bass and Ginger Baker's drums—established the idea of the "power trio," a lean machine in which every musician had a specific role. Its penchant for extended instrumental explorations made it the first jam band; Cream's epic journeys inspired similar trips by acts including the Grateful Dead and Santana, and obliterated the rules governing the structure and length of rock songs. Before Cream, rock was mostly about verse, chorus, and eight bars of guitar. After Cream, which sold fifteen million records during its run, it could be almost anything.

Disraeli Gears (1967), the band's second album, is the best snapshot of this multifaceted beast. Recorded just after the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper (see p. 60) shifted the emphasis to full albums rather than singles, it contains one of the all-time great rock riffs ("Sunshine of Your Love"), several enduring blues distillations ("Strange Brew" and "SWLABR," an acronym for "She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow"). Crucially, it catches Clapton at his least affected. When he steps up to play, he is not the guitar god—as he'd been anointed during his time with the Bluesbreakers—but an open-minded melodist, intent on finding unexpected truths within the three-chord crunch.

Disraeli Gears was recorded in six days. It began under the direction of Atco president Ahmet Ertegun, who initially deemed "Sunshine of Your Love" to be "psychedelic hogwash," but after two days Ertegun ceded the production job to Felix Pappalardi. Instantly the tenor of the sessions changed: Pappalardi got the band to loosen up, added piles of guitar distortion, and helped Cream transform the blues standard "Lawdy Mama" into the heady "Strange Brew."

The expanded edition is worth hearing for the powerful original mono mixes and nine tracks recorded live at the BBC. These show that the trio, later known for long detours down the road marked Indulgence, could take wild swings and, at the same time, maintain enough discipline to honor the song.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1967, Atco (Expanded Edition 2004, Polydor)
Key Tracks: "Sunshine of Your Love," "Strange Brew," "Tales of Brave Ulysses"
Catalog Choice: Wheels of Fire; Cream Live
Next Stop: Blind Faith: Blind Faith
After That: Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced
Book Pages: 191–192

Buy this Recording

Share this page:

Comments:

Post a Comment:

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Note that your comment will be reviewed by an editor before it appears on the site.


About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

This is an online version of the list (published alphabetically in the book). The entries in the book break down genre bias and broaden every listener’s horizons—think Miles Davis to Claude Debussy to the melodic story-songs of The Decemberists. And the writing is passionate, informed, opinionated.

More about the book

site design: Juxtaprose