(Credits: Far Out / F. van Geelen / Omroepvereniging VARA)
Fri 9 January 2026 19:46, UK
In the world of blues and psychedelic rock, there are precious few bands that could hope to achieve what Cream did.
Cream may have only been together for just over two years, but what Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce conquered in that short time will live on forever. The initial hype from the moment of their incarnation was unprecedented, as the trio was immediately dubbed as the first ‘supergroup’.
After a car journey shared between the legendary drummer Baker and the Guitar God Clapton, they ended with them deciding to form a band with Jack Bruce. The scene was se,t and one of the most devastating live acts of all time was formed. Though the band wouldn’t stick around for long, the music they made and the influence they wielded during that time mean they’re undoubtedly the greatest trio in all of music.
Every member of the band had already done their time in their share of other bands, and anyone trying to emulate their sound was going to have to take years honing their own skills before they found something that worked for them. Although the power trio could turn nearly any jam they played into magic, they never could recreate the power of their original pop single, ‘I Feel Free’.
Then again, if you listen to where the band would go later, ‘I Feel Free’ almost sounds naive compared to everything else. Since every member of the band had played in terrific blues outfits, hearing them play something so streamlined almost felt like a huge step backwards for all of them.
The ultimate trio, Cream. (Credits: Far Out / General Artists Corporation)
If anything, this was the kind of song that Eric Clapton wanted to get away from. He had already quit The Yardbirds because of them wanting to go pop on songs like ‘For Your Love’, and yet here he was making the kind of bluesy take on pop music that could have competed with The Beatles’ more psychedelic flourishes.
There’s a difference between making a good single and playing a decent performance. Usually, a band might make the best of the studio environment whenever they lay down a track, so when the band got back together to play after decades apart, they found themselves completely out of step with each other playing this song.
When talking about their performance at the Royal Albert Hall, Jack Bruce remembered just how difficult it was trying to get everything together, later recalling, “It was just a matter of choosing which songs. Like, I wanted to do ‘I Feel Free’, which is a pop song, but I thought it would be fun to do it. But it was a bit hard. It’s a bit hard to get the intensity of the record onstage with our voices. We never really did it much in the old days”.
Even though there’s not much to the guitar breaks in the song, it’s easy to tell where the band would have some trouble translating the song to the stage. For every great guitar part, the amount of overdubs and the booming presence of Bruce’s voice when everything drops out tends to feel hollow when you’re in that big a venue.
That’s before you even get to the harmonies of the song. Compared to the trade-offs that the band would do, getting everything in tune in such close harmony while trying to play to the best of your ability tends to feel like running a marathon while standing on your head half the time.
Then again, Cream was never meant to be a traditional pop band in that sense. In essence, they were just a blues-tinged jazz band that happened to play rock and roll, and half of the appeal of their shows was not knowing where they were going to go from one bar to the next, never mind one song to the next.
Just look at how they performed live on the non-studio tracks on their album Wheels of Fire. None of those songs are meant to accommodate a three-minute single, instead relying on the instrumental breaks to get everyone’s attention. Cream did have their time in the spotlight, but their best moments were when the music did the talking rather than their flashy singles.
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