Peter Hoflich

Well, I recently found the DVD of the Cream farewell concert of November 26th, 1968 at the public library; I had already bought the DVD of the Cream reunion concert of May 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th 2005 a few years earlier, so I took this opportunity to watch them back to back and see what I could learn from the experience.

Cream farewell concert – According to announcer Patrick Allen, “They may not be the greatest musicians or the greatest poets of their age, but together with the Beatles, they are getting through to the greatest number. Their motto is simple: forget the message, forget the lyrics, and just play.” While the concert has been described as a band far from its peak, playing just to get through the set and get it over with, this show is pretty okay. However, the concert is broken up by interview bits and strangely rotund announcing and silly descriptionizing from the BBC. But it’s not just the concert that you get here, there are also fantastic interviews with Ginger Baker and Eric Claption where they describe their art (Jack Bruce’s piece is more conceptual and idealistic).

The “Sunshine of your Love” solo seems a bit un-coordinated, audience rushes stage briefly, feathers fly. Clapton plays his Gibson ES-335 and a Firebird, but not the famous Fool Gibson SG. The narrator gets carried away, explaining that rock music is always under attack, its reputation sullied by moneymakers, pretentious lyrics, shoddy musicianship, incompetent pop artists, and critics who sneer at long-haired youth; some of the players have severe classical framing, but escape to pop, like Jack Bruce, who was trained as a cellist, but who needed two years to un-learn what had been drilled into his head. Bruce explains that Bach’s basslines can teach you everything you need to know about conventional harmony. Songs are unimportant, jumping off points for improvisation. “Recent scientific experiments at Berkeley have demonstrated that the loudness of rock music can actually damage the ears. The Cream have 12 enormous loud speakers, each one of them loud enough to fill the Albert Hall with sound.” Dynamics of soudn in its infrancy, affects audience in a physical way. “The electronic guitar is also dismissed as little more than a jangling noise machine, incapable of subtlty or delicacy. Eric Clapton has build his reputation as a blues player on just these qualities.” Clapton demonstrates controls using his Fool SG in an earlier interview than the final concert, he’s shown with long hair, mustache, beads, a cigarette burning at the guitar head. Explains the “woman tone”, with the bass tone off, on the bass pickup, volume all the way up (of course). Finger vibrato. Stock runs. Can release emotions and play things out, realise aggression on the guitar. Amazing Clapton tutorial is worth the price of admission. Normally he’s only seen from the back. Ginger Baker hard to understand. Drum clinic with Ginger Baker before “Toad”. Interesting to see how many pieces he has in his kit. He drove bolts through some of his cymbals, perhaps for extra zing.

In the concert bits, there’s trancy shimmer in “White Room” solo, so we don’t get to see what Clapton’s doing, there are very poor shots of him throughout. Cool jam in “Politician”. The band doesn’t play “Strange Brew” or “Badge” in this show. The band plays nine songs: Sunshine Of Your Love”, “White Room”, “Politician”, “Crossroads”, “Steppin’ Out”, “Sitting On Top Of The World”, “Spoonful”, “Toad” and “I’m So Glad” (that last song was the first song played at the reunion show 37 years later. Trippy effects in the video, but minimal actual stage lighting. “Lighting may be the art of tomorrow.” The whole show is 80 minutes long, not 127 as stated on the case.

Cream reunion concert – Here’s a video of the May 2005 London reunion show at the Royal Albert Hall (nothing from the October 2005 New York show, here or anywhere else). The band is looking… old. The sound is… not loud. The guys play and play and play, its just the music, pure, stripped-down music, but there’s nothing here that is mind-blowing – it’s mainly for fans. The packaging is a bit deceptive – I bought it thinking that it was something from the band’s original run in the 1960s, not noticing the 2005 hidden in the psychedelics on the cover art. There is no description on the back, just a song list. So, the first time I watched it, I didn’t get half way through before I gave up, wrote an angry review that I posted on Amazon (that got quite a bit of negative feedback) and left it at that. When I was in the library the other day and came across a DVD of the original farewell concert, I thought it was time to revisit this and watch the two shows back to back.

The concert starts off with a walk backstage. The band is not wearing hippy clothes or costumes, just simple shirts and jeans. Seated audience, trippy background colours. Quiet mix. Weird shot of Ginger’s stockinged feet at the drum kit (see pics below). Hot middle-aged women in the front row (ditto). Two red roses at Jack’s feet. Eric buffoonishly announces “we’ll play everything – we might talk to you from time to time.” They do neither. Topless girl on somebody’s shoulders in audience replicating Woodstock (probably just briefly before she was thrown out). Long, dramatic pause in the middle of “Badge” – which they’d never performed live before, since it was on their Goodbye album that came out after the final show. They’d also never done “Pressed Rat And Warthog”. Jack Bruce takes a load off and leans against a stool. “Sweet Wine’s” Ba-ba… Ba-ba-ba-ba-… ba-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-baaaaaa” is a bit silly for sixty-something musicians to be playing. Somehow, the band dynamic is one thing, but the audience dynamic is another, and we get lots of shots of the crowd (or at least the people in the front row – see photos below). In “Sunshine Of Your Love” we see two Asian couples in the audience, one a short haired (Hong Kong) yuppie couple, and another a long-haired hippy (Japanese?) couple, the man with a mustachio. Another fan holds up his copy of the Disraeli Gears LP. At the end of the show, the audience is standing, big long very wanky drum solo. Mainly guys in the audience. Some pre-encore backstage shots. Close-ups on six hands of the three musicians playing in harmony.

The interviews are revealing, silly and funny. “We don’t do the leaping about crap. It’s the music, not anybody gyrating onstage.” Ginger explained that Cream was not a rock band, two of them are jazz men and Eric is a blues man, and blues is the same as jazz. “We have the gift of time, which not many have.” Eric noted that they often forgot their cues, they were young and took risks and were experimental, they didn’t know what they were doing, but they somehow found their way spontaneously at The Albert Hall. Gingers also adds that “The others get nerves, always have been. I never do. The more people the better, I like it. People help you play. They really do.”

Here are some weird, random pics taken from the DVD:

Here’s the band playing “Sunshine of your Love”, with both Bruce and Clapton playing Gibson SGs.

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