(Credits: Far Out / Heinrich Klaffs)
Fri 5 December 2025 3:00, UK
Imagine my surprise, living in my quiet little suburban town in the north of Glasgow, to find out that Jack Bruce of Cream fame was actually born here.
It was an embarrassingly recent discovery by all accounts, but one that made me view my local surroundings in a whole new light. Suddenly, the streets had a rock and roll edge, and the place seemed a lot cooler than it ever did before. OK, that might be a bit of a stretch too far, but it certainly made me realise how much mundane music history I seemed to take for granted.
That was definitely something that Bruce himself could have related to, as he once mused over a rock and roll titan that the world always loved, but never seemed to quite appreciate the talents of in the way they should have. It was the mark of the prolific bassist that he recognised the gifts of a similar guitar-slinging god – but even he admitted to sometimes not realising just how important this was.
As much as this may have been the case, it was also hardly true that George Harrison was in any way hard done by. Sure, he may have been the ‘Quiet Beatle’, but he still gained more than enough money and acclaim in his time that he was happy with his relative shyness. Indeed, even that word does a lot of heavy lifting, but it remains that people may have taken him for granted more than they should have.
Bruce was prime among them, by his own honest admission. It was only when he came face to face with the guitar virtuoso that he realised everything he had been missing. “I met George during the session Cream did for Badge, and I was very impressed with his playing [under the pseudonym L’Angelo Mysterioso],” he recalled in a 2008 interview with Classic Rock.
Suddenly, Bruce realised the balance of The Beatles had been all wrong. “I took it for granted that people like McCartney and Lennon were brilliant, but didn’t really analyse it. But when you actually play with George, you could see what an amazing guitar player he was, doing things that I hadn’t even thought of.”
In some ways, while his tenure with the Fabs was still ongoing, Harrison was quite satisfied with biding his time. Particularly when he knew the end was coming, he knew that he would be able to truly unleash his talents on the world sooner rather than later, proving that he was no kind of quiet wallflower.
While that may have been to the somewhat shock and amazement of the likes of Bruce as well as the masses, it was a power that Harrison kept close to his chest all along. He may have been taken for granted, but he certainly wasn’t going down without a fight.
It was this tenacity that stood him in the best stead in his post-Beatles days, as he knew, along with his musical contemporaries, what he was actually worth. It may have taken breaking free from the shackles of the world’s most famous band to prove it, but the underdog had his comeuppance in the end.
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