Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [37]
I wore a special outfit for that gig, a dance-band jacket I had bought from Cecil Gee on Charing Cross Road. It was black, with grosgrain lapels and gold woven thread all over it, like flocked wallpaper. It’s funny to think of now, but we were all so nervous. We were an unknown band topping the bill, closing the last night’s session. After playing mostly in clubs, we were now performing outside to fifteen thousand people. We had a tiny amount of equipment, and being only a trio, we didn’t seem to have any power. It all sounded so small, especially playing after the group then known as the world’s loudest rock band, the Who. The weather was abysmal. It poured with rain, and we only played three songs before we ran out and Ginger had to make the announcement, “Sorry, there are no more numbers.” I think we played a couple of them again, but nobody seemed to care. Then we just jammed, and the audience went crazy. The music press went crazy, describing us as the first “supergroup.”
Cream took a while to really take off. From the huge audience of the Windsor Jazz Festival, we were straightaway back on the ballroom and club circuit, starting on August 2 at Klooks Kleek, an R&B club in West Hampstead, London. We were still finding our direction, as we worked hard to persuade audiences that a trio could be every bit as good as a loud four-piece pop group. We felt we needed to play material that was recognizable, but that would also push the boundaries of what the audience would approve. In the end, the solution was often just to jam.
I never discussed our musical direction with the others because I didn’t then know how to verbalize these concerns. So most of these conversations/arguments took place between Jack and Ginger, who were both writing their own material, in particular Jack, who was working a lot with lyricist and poet Peter Brown. Peter’s band was called the Battered Ornaments, and he had a knack of writing quirky song lyrics that Jack would put music to, songs with titles like “She Was Like a Bearded Rainbow” and “Deserted Cities of the Heart.” The only way I had to influence the direction of the group was in the way I played, and by suggesting new cover versions of old blues songs like Howlin’ Wolf’s “Sitting on Top of the World,” and “Outside Woman Blues” by Blind Joe Reynolds.
The dynamic of playing in a trio greatly influenced my style, in that I had to think of ways to make more sound. When I was playing in a quartet, with a keyboard, bass, and drums, I could just ride on top of the band, making musical comments, coming in and out at will. In a trio I had to provide a lot more of the sound, and I found that difficult because I didn’t really enjoy having to play so much. My technique altered quite a lot in that I started playing a lot more bar chords and hitting open strings to provide a kind of drone for my lead work.
Naturally, Stigwood was keen to get us the hit single that all bands strived for, so we had a few days in August recording at a studio in Chalk Farm, which produced one song, “Wrapping Paper,” written by Jack and Peter. It eventually found its way onto the A side of our first 45 rpm. But it was in September, in Ryemuse Studios, a tiny studio above a chemist’s shop on South Molton Street, when we finally recorded a song that gave an indication of our true potential as a band.
Another of Jack and Peter’s compositions, “I Feel Free,” was a faster, rockier song with a driving beat. Recorded on a single Ampex reel-to-reel recorder, Stigwood, assisted by the studio engineer, John Timperley, took credit as producer himself, though the truth is that it was an ensemble job. Because Stigwood saw this song as a potential single, he chose to leave it off our first album, Fresh Cream, and both were released simultaneously at the end of December.
When I left the Bluesbreakers,