(Credits: Far Out / F. van Geelen / Omroepvereniging VARA)
Fri 14 November 2025 18:52, UK
While he might be one of the most influential musicians of all time and undoubtedly one of the finest guitarists of his era, Eric Clapton has had an oscillating career. Throughout a life in the limelight, Clapton has rarely pulled his punches.
The guitarist has continually sought out new adventures and an evolution of his career. His outbursts and uncomfortable worldview at times have left him at odds with society, but he has usually been most thrown around by his musical career. However, that propensity also meant that after he heard the fresh sounds of one iconic band, he almost immediately called a day on his most significant outfit, Cream.
Formed in 1966, Cream were pioneers of the burgeoning psychedelic rock genre. The band united three of the era’s finest musical minds: Clapton, bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker. Together, they produced many notable moments, including ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and ‘White Room’. In their short time in the sun, Cream released three albums, with the fourth, Goodbye, released in 1969, when they were just a distant memory to the former members.
As is well known, when Eric Clapton loves music, he does so intensely. While he has made no bones about being deeply ensconced in the world of blues since being a teenager and its impact on his life’s trajectory, his unwavering dedication to the music he loved became readily apparent once again when he called a rain check on Cream. By his own admission, Clapton was compelled to do so after hearing a bootleg tape of Music from Big Pink, the 1968 debut by The Band, the renamed iteration of Bob Dylan’s former backing group The Hawks.
Despite being in one of the most popular and lucrative acts in the world, after hearing Music from Big Pink, Clapton knew he had to do something as Cream was falling apart at the seams. Being in a band with Baker and Bruce, two men who violently detested each other, was immensely trying.
“It stopped me in my tracks,” Clapton said of the album in 2007’s The Autobiography, “And it also highlighted all of the problems I thought [Cream] had. Here was a band that was really doing it right, incorporating influences from country music, blues, jazz, and rock, and writing great songs. I couldn’t help but compare them to us, which was stupid and futile, but I was frantically looking for a yardstick, and here it was. Listening to that album, as great as it was, just made me feel that we were stuck and I wanted out.”
Only a matter of weeks after Music from Big Pink arrived on July 1st, Eric Clapton announced that Cream would end. He later revealed when inducting The Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 that he had made a pilgrimage to Woodstock, the group’s home, to ask them to join, but ultimately, “didn’t have the guts to say it”. Parallels have since been drawn between Clapton’s post-Cream group Blind Faith and the work of The Band.
In his own memoir, Testimony, The Band leader Robbie Robertson discussed having such an effect on Eric Clapton and expressed a touch of regret. “Big Pink had turned him around with its subtleties and laid-back feeling,” he says in Testimony. “Cream played with a much more bombastic approach, and he wanted a change. That was a huge compliment coming from Eric, but I liked some of Cream’s songs and wasn’t sure how I felt about our record being partially responsible for their demise.”
The truth is, no matter how large a character or how big the band is, there is always somebody better or bigger. Even when you’re Eric Clapton, you can look across the room and see another band so component and so well-executed that you could happily pull apart one of the greatest supergroups of all time.
Listen to Music from Big Pink below.
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