Ask any bass-playing great of the last 50 years who their heroes are, and you can bet that Jack Bruce will feature high up the list.

The driving force behind ’60s supergroup Cream – not to mention his stints with Alexis Korner, Graham Bond and the Bluesbreakers – Bruce was one of a very short list of pioneers who were challenging the traditional concept of what a bass guitarist could, and should, play, creating lines that linked the jazz-inspired drumming of Ginger Baker with the blues-inflected guitar of Eric Clapton.

“Clapton isn’t God. Jack Bruce is,” wrote Jeff Berlin in the October 2003 issue of Bass Player. “When I was 14, I sprayed his name on my bedroom wall with luminous paint to remind me who was the greatest bass player in the world.”

Bruce’s innovations – first with his Fender VI and then with his Gibson EB-3 – provided a cornerstone in the instrument's development. His playing in the trio’s legendary live jams liberated the bass for generations of players who followed.

“Jack's playing on these songs might be the first recorded example of an electric bass player with chops,” said Berlin. “I'm So Glad (Goodbye) is perhaps the most intense of the live jams, but for me the definitive Jack is on Sweet Wine from Live Cream. Jack's playing on that cut changed me forever.”

“For pure composition, listen to As You Said on Wheels of Fire, which features Jack on cello, acoustic guitar, and vocals accompanied only by Ginger Baker's hi-hat. Who else in all of rock could have come up with that priceless tune?”

As well known for his outspoken views on music, bass playing and… er… metronomes as he is for his unquestionable command of the bass guitar, Berlin remembered meeting his hero at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.

“We were introduced by the fine English drummer Jon Hiseman. I quickly discovered that Jack is one of the funniest guys l've ever met. He gave me a lift back to my hotel, and he had me laughing so hard I was crying.

“The next time we met, I was performing at the Music Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, and I was playing really well. It was one of those special nights that happens only once in a while for musicians. Then Jack walked in.

“My hands developed rheumatism in three seconds. I couldn't play a thing. I got nervous because I know that if Jack can do anything, he can hear everything that's going on – and that's why I played bass like Rocky Balboa when Jack sat down in the front row.

“Another time, Jack did a clinic at the Musicians Institute in L.A. Bruce Gary was on drums and I played guitar. I can't remember how we got into it, but Jack and I suddenly found ourselves singing White Room like Jerry Lewis would sing it.

“Through the laughter, I found myself thinking, ‘Here I am playing Cream tunes with the same guy whose name was spray-painted on the wall of my mother's home, the same guy who influenced me to buy a bass and spend the better part of 25 years trying to learn how to play it.’”

After Bruce's passing in 2014, Berlin released the tribute album Jack Songs, featuring contributions from a stellar line-up of guest musicians, including Alex Lifeson, Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal and Eric Johnson.

“When he died, I immediately set out to choose some of my favourite songs of his and record them via my own musical vision. I wanted this record to be brilliant to honour his spirit. He really means this much to me.”

Over a career that spans more than 50 years, English guitarist Chris Spedding etched a reputation as a go-to session guitarist in the 1970s, and forged a career as a touring guitarist while also pursuing a solo career.

His guitar work has appeared on albums by Jack Bruce, Harry Nilsson, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, David Essex and John Cale, to name but a few. He sat down with Guitar World to share some of his most memorable sessions.

Jack Bruce

He was one of those guys who was very charming; very witty, very funny – but he could turn on a dime. We all have our moments. I suppose that’s what gave rise to the reputation he had of being difficult to work with. When I was working with him, and when he was in a good mood and everything, he was fine and a lot of fun.

In England in 1969, when I did Jack’s Songs for a Tailor solo album, everybody who played guitar wanted to be Eric Clapton – except me. I had come out of the jazz thing and I was listening to Americana stuff like The Band and Bob Dylan and all that.

So I imagine Jack went for me because he knew I wouldn’t try to sound like Eric Clapton. He already had Eric; he didn’t want another guy to sound like him because he probably had enough of that style of playing.

Harry Nilsson

I knew Harry Nilsson was a big-time American artist. Along with American producer, Richard Perry, it was kind of a big-time session for me – especially when I showed up and there was Klaus Voormann on bass, Ringo Starr on drums and Peter Frampton on the other guitar!

Harry was very focused and concentrated in the studio. You hear about the lost weekend with John Lennon and lots of partying, but there was none of that going on. It was all very serious. Maybe when we had left they started having the parties!

When we were doing Jump into the Fire we did take after take after take. That was common in those days, but you don’t do it these days due to everything being digital. You’d come back the next day and there would be all these reels of 24-track tape lined up, and a huge ashtray full of dead cigarettes next to them.

You knew then they’d been there all night listening to all these takes, because you had to listen to them all. After we’d done the track, Richard said, “So it’s take number one that we’re keeping!’”

Phil Spector

I worked with Phil in the middle of the recording sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. It was at Trident Studios in London, the same studio that I worked with Harry and Richard.

I remember a whole bunch of acoustic guitar players being there with 12- string guitars, all booked for the session along with me. Phil wanted that saturated acoustic sound that you get on My Sweet Lord, but that song wasn’t out then.

I remember Phil got us in there on Easter Sunday. And since that was a holiday, it was double-scale. It was just one piece that we had to play on. I don’t even know whether it ended up on the album! I don’t think there were any drums on it – he counted us in at the tempo and we played the part.

Brian Eno

I knew Brian. I’d been Sharks when the band opened for Roxy Music on their second UK tour. Some of the Sharks got a call to do some stuff on Brian’s album. At the time he was an unknown quantity. We didn’t know he could make his own albums; this was his first one, Here Come the Warm Jets.

I really liked the studio because it was one of those – I wouldn’t say cheap, but one of those budget demo studios with 16 tracks instead of 24, which everybody was using at that time.

John Cale

I liked John because he was one of the few people who’d take a chance. He’d change tempos, keys and the order of songs because he was interested in improvising. Some of the other members of the band were kind of freaked out by that because it’s not the rock ’n’ roll thing.

The rock ’n’ roll thing would be to keep rigidly to the song and not to experiment with it too much. But coming from a little bit of a jazz background myself, and John coming from an improvisational classical background, we both liked to mess around with things and hit people with a real curveball.

Since he stopped doing the illicit substances as we all did back then, he’s gotten to be a lot more controlled – although he’s still a bit of a rebel in some ways. It was a very valuable experience. I wish he was still like that, a bit more of a rebel, because we’d get on a lot better.

The Pretenders

That only happened once. I’d been invited on stage because The Necessaries, a New York outfit I was playing with, had opened the show. We were friends with guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bass player Pete Farndon, and drummer Martin Chambers, and I knew Chrissie from way back in 1974 so we would hang out a lot together.

So they invited me on stage to do their encore, and I played my own part to Stop Your Sobbing, which wasn’t anything that James had played on the recording. Something different – but I only did it that once.

Paul McCartney

That was like working with no other musician ever! His status is even greater now because he has this great band and he’s still going out live and doing old Beatles songs.

When I worked with him he was still going through the phase of not wanting to do a Beatles song. It’s like Jack Bruce – when I worked with him he’d never do a Cream song. I just wanted to play Sunshine of Your Love with him, but he just didn’t want to.

So back back then we just did original stuff with Paul. He likes to control things, being who he is – but under the guise of saying, “Play as free as you like; it’ll be fine.” Then he’ll start to pick it all apart. If you’re doing well, he’ll leave it. But if you're not doing well, he’ll sort of say, “Yeah, that’s great, Chris – but what about this bit here? What about doing this?”

A new book called Cream Chronicled, authored by Ginger Baker’s daughter Nettie, sets out to document every gig and recording session, and various major events that happened to the band between 1966 and 1968.

It also covers the times Ginger, Jack and Eric got back together at the Rock ’N’ Roll Hall Of Fame inauguration in 1993 and the reunion gigs in 2005.

Needless to say, painstaking research, combined with an obvious love of the subject matter, has resulted in an amazingly authoritative book. We speak with Nettie about what it was like to spend so much time in Cream’s glorious past.

One thing that struck us when we read the book was how hard Cream were worked throughout their lifetime as a band.

When I started researching, that’s when I realised how intense their workload was and it seemed that it was a normal thing to do, and probably a lot of other bands at the same time were doing it, too.

I think their rise was so quick, it exacerbated the pressures. Very often they would go to all-nighters, which, at the time, was a big thing. A band would play a gig and then they would go off to another club to do an all-nighter and play from 11 till 12, and then play again at 2.30 to 4.30 [in the morning] or something like that. It was completely insane.

Can you remember the effect that had on your dad?

“Well, I think it was stress – the ambition and the hard work and the attention to detail. There were a lot of other things going on because at the beginning he was sort of running it, collecting the money and all of those sorts of things. I think at first he was very happy, but they did have the [burden] of going around the country in a van. No-one flew anywhere. And, as it went on, the stress began to affect him.”

In the book, you say that Ginger eventually put his foot down to playing two gigs a day.

“I don’t think anyone took any notice. I think it’s very important to understand that all three of them were not in control because they were young men; they were in their 20s, and it was a new phenomenon. It was a new genre and it suddenly caught on.”

How difficult was it to research the book? Did your dad keep diaries or any other records?

No. I mean, I’ve got a BA and a MA in English Lit from Queen Mary [University of London], and they’re one of the top research universities. So I was actually able to bring some of my academic qualifications into this thing, which is different from the other books I’ve written. And I’m a diarist, so I had diaries from the ’60s and I had diaries from the 2005 [reunion], so I was able to bring a bit of that in. But you just have to find as many sources as you can.

“I mean, the internet is great now, but I did go through books, too. Some of these retrospective anecdotes are not reliable at all, but you might get two or three sources that agree. So you think, “Yeah, that’s quite likely.” You just have to keep going. I just went everywhere and to everything I could find, you know?”

You said that Cream Chronicled sets out to bust some of the myths about the band. Which ones were you specifically keen to clear up?

That they all hated each other; they never socialised; they never travelled together. That Jack and Ginger were always fighting, according to all the retrospective accounts. And on the Goodbye album cover, that the photos of them were shot separately and then they superimposed their heads on the picture or something. I mean, for goodness’ sake!

Later in the book I say that when they came to do the Hall of Fame, people just got stuck on an image of axe-wielding maniacs on drugs or if they would even speak to each other. So I tried to say that the band split mainly because of the pressures of touring and the stresses they were under.

They didn’t say that they didn’t argue – because they were like brothers. Even in 2012 Jack was saying, ‘I really love Ginger, he’s my brother and brothers sometimes fight.’

I also explained that they didn’t tell everyone at the time, but they were socialising, but because people would have just said, “Oh, are they going to get back together again?” they probably thought, “Just leave us alone.” So yes, they socialised the whole time.

How do you think Ginger looked back on the Cream years?

I think he was so proud because it was his band. I think when he did look back he only ever wanted to play Cream songs with Cream, which was why he didn’t really like BBM [the group that featured Jack, Ginger and Gary Moore] that much. He felt quite strongly about that.

I think the legacy of the band is immense. I’m proud to have managed to document it because no-one’s done that. They’ve just fallen down the rabbit hole of ‘Oh, they all took drugs and hated each other,’ which is just completely and utterly not true; even the drugs they get wrong.

There was one heroin addict, which was Ginger, and most of the time in Cream he was not taking it. And when he did, in his own autobiography, he held his hands up. I think they did have some sort of [trauma] afterwards. 1968 wasn’t a happy time for them. They really didn’t want to break up.

• Cream Chronicled is out 20 March via Wymer UK
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

By the mid-’60s, as jazz bands slowly faded from the front pages of the music press, they were gradually replaced with rhythm and blues bands.

One such band featured Graham Bond, a complicated figure and musical innovator who would go on to inadvertently pave the way for many bands over the next few decades.

We go back to the beginning – including the bust-ups and band-member swaps – to detail the rise of one of Britain’s most revered supergroups.

The name’s Bond

Bond started his career in jazz, playing with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. He left the outfit in 1962 and formed the Graham Bond Quartet with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, both from Alexis’s band, along with guitarist John McLaughlin.

By the mid-’60s Bond decided to move toward the more-successful blues scene, keeping members of the quartet together and adding Dick Heckstall-Smith to the line-up. Dick replaced Bond on sax as Bond switched over to Hammond organ and vocals. As the Graham Bond Organisation, they very quickly established themselves, and released their first album in February 1965.

By this time, drugs had become an issue for the band, and Bond, in particular, found it difficult to deal with the associated problems. On top of that there were a lot of arguments between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, sometimes getting violent.

A stressed Bond decided to hand over leadership to Ginger Baker, who saw this as a perfect opportunity to fire Jack Bruce. The band limped on as a three-piece, but the magic had gone. Although Ginger stayed in the band for a time, he decided to quit when Bond’s increased drug habits made him too unreliable.

Ginger was now at a loose end and was keen to form a band, and set about finding like-minded musicians. He was already familiar with Eric Clapton and his guitar playing when they frequently met on the London club scene, and so he wanted to approach him first. It’s worth knowing that at that time graffiti would often be spotted in London proclaiming that ‘Clapton is God’, such was the strength of his loyal following.

Part of the reason for Eric’s popularity was the tone he achieved with his beloved 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul played through a JTM45 Marshall amp.

He had bought the guitar from the Lew Davis shop in London’s Charing Cross Road in 1965 with money he earned playing with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers from 1965 to 1966. It was the album cover of Freddie King’s Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away that influenced him to buy the guitar, even though Freddie was, in fact, holding a Goldtop.

A New Trio

Ginger went to see The Bluesbreakers at a gig at the Town Hall in Oxford on 13 May 1966 and asked if it would be okay to have a jam. Ginger and Eric had an immediate musical chemistry and got on well, too. After the show, Ginger gave Eric a lift home and asked him if he would be interested in joining the new band he was forming.

By this point, Eric was tiring of copying his blues heroes and he, too, was looking for new opportunities. It didn’t take long to make a decision, but his only condition was that Jack Bruce would have to be in the band. Eric had no knowledge of the past tensions between Jack and Ginger.

Ginger was taken aback but highly respected Jack’s musicianship – he could see the potential for the three members coming together as a band. After some persuading from his wife, Ginger went to visit Jack to find out if he would be interested in putting the past behind them and joining the band.

At the time, Jack was under contract with the group Manfred Mann but was not happy at the pop direction they were pursuing. Jack was also familiar with Eric and his guitar playing as he was also in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers for a short period in during late 1965.

Both he and Eric enjoyed the experience of playing together, and later even recorded a few tracks for a blues compilation album, What’s Shakin’, for the Elektra label in March 1966. Jack was in and Ginger immediately suggested Robert Stigwood as their manager, having known him from his time with Graham Bond.

The three musicians wanted to be collaborative, rather than act as three soloists competing with each other. Originally, Eric Clapton had visions of being the lead singer but conceded that Jack had a far more powerful voice with a wealth of experience behind him. Eric considered the band to be ‘the top of the milk’ in terms of musicianship, and suggested it made sense to call themselves ‘The Cream’.

Initial rehearsals took place at Ginger’s ground floor maisonette in Neasden, North London, before moving to St Anne’s Brondesbury Church Hall in West Kilburn. As soon as they started to jam, all three felt the magic. They instinctively knew they were on to something.

Melody Maker’s Chris Welch was at the hall and during a break joined the band at a cafe opposite. Robert Stigwood attended the rehearsals and asked Chris if he thought they were any good.

Luckily, he said yes. Had he said he wasn’t that moved, it could have been the end of the band before they even started. However, Stigwood did have a contribution and that was the band should simply call themselves ‘Cream’.

A few days in, Eric’s beloved ‘Beano’ Les Paul was stolen from the rehearsal hall. His distinctive leather guitar strap with the names of his blues heroes carved on was attached to the guitar; that was also gone.

With a view of getting the public’s help, Eric gave interviews in the music press, sharing details of the guitar as well as mentioning the carved names: Buddy Guy, Big Maceo and Otis Rush. With that information, it would be easy to detect the stolen items should anyone try to sell them.

As for the guitar, Eric described it, precisely to Record Mirror as “a Les Paul Standard, five or six years old, small and solid. It has one cutaway and is a red-gold colour with Grover machineheads. The back is very scratched and there are several cigarette burns on the front”.

It’s worth noting that toward the end of 1965, Eric had removed the metal pickup covers to reveal the bobbins: double-white at the neck, double-black at the bridge. In early 1966, he told Beat Instrumental: “You’ve probably heard about me taking the covers off my pickups: this is something I would definitely recommend for any guitarist. The improvement, sound-wise, is unbelievable.”

To this day, despite rumoured sightings on the East Coast of America, nothing ever materialised. Later, Eric confirmed this Les Paul was the best he’d ever had.

Although he also had a Gibson ES-335 from his time with The Yardbirds, he loved the sound achieved with the Les Paul. So for the first few months of Cream he borrowed a Les Paul, possibly from Keith Richards, before buying another ’Burst from Andy Summers.

To twist the knife further, his original Les Paul case was later stolen from a Cream show at Klooks Kleek. Eric surmised that the person responsible for taking his guitar had now come back for the original case.

Perhaps the most surprising piece of information was that Eric seriously considered getting a Rickenbacker shortly after the theft, as Les Paul guitars were hard to find at the time. It would seem a strange decision as the sound would have been very different from a Les Paul.

Waxing History

Stigwood set about organising press releases, tour dates and recording studio time for a single and album. The biggest issue was that Ginger and Eric were not songwriters. But Jack was a good composer and joined forces with lyricist and beat-poet Pete Brown for a selection of collaborative songs to feature on Cream’s first album. It was a mix of pop numbers with a selection of well-chosen blues covers.

They spent three days in August 1966 recording at Rayrik Sound Studios in Chalk Farm with a view to getting an all-important single in the record shops and hopefully the charts. The studio was relatively primitive and better suited to demo recordings, but during their time there they recorded four songs: Coffee Song, Beauty Queen, You Make Me Feel and Wrapping Paper.

After much deliberation they decided to release Wrapping Paper, a somewhat bland and presumably unrepresentative song with no commercial appeal. It was more a whimsical music-hall folly than a blues or pop number, at least as far as the public were concerned. Coffee Song had also been considered for release but lost out.

It was disappointing and Stigwood’s label, Reaction, pulled 10,000 copies from shops as they could not give the single away. Eric tried to explain to Record Mirror at the time: “I’m tired of being called a specialist musician. People thought Cream was going to be a blues band, but it’s not – it’s a pop group, really.”

Eric also told Melody Maker’s Chris Welch: “Most people have formed the impression of us as three solo musicians clashing with each other. We want to cancel that idea and be a group that plays together.”

Whipped Cream

Cream’s tour started with a warm-up show on 29 July 1966 at the famous Twisted Wheel in Manchester, with another set in the early hours of 30 July. The next day, they played the 6th National Jazz and Blues Festival at the Royal Windsor Racecourse in Berkshire – their official debut.

They played a 40-minute set in the pouring rain, but despite the weather, some 10,000 fans cheered the band on through the electrifying and powerful set. There were several highlights, including Ginger’s epic drum solo in Toad, which drove the crowd crazy and demanding more.

The tour carried on throughout the year around the UK, and the band often played two shows a night. Cream were not known to invite guests on stage with them, but there was one exception during a show on 1 October 1966 at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London.

Jimi Hendrix, the new kid on the block, asked if he could jam on a couple of numbers. Eric and Jimi admired each other, so although Ginger was not so keen, the band allowed the guitarist to come on.

They played a powerful version of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor to the delight of the crowd. As word spread about the jam that evening, the glowing reputation of both Cream and Hendrix were now a done deal.

The recording sessions for Fresh Cream, the band’s debut album, were fitted in during rare days off on the tour, at Ryemuse Studios in Mayfair. I Feel Free, backed with N.S.U., was released as their second single as a taster to the album in December 1966. Completely different in feel to the first single, it screamed ‘pop’ song and went as high as No 11 in the UK charts, creating plenty of anticipation for the album.

The album cover varied with different typefaces for the UK, Europe and the US. Another change was the addition of the UK single I Feel Free to the later US release in 1967, replacing Spoonful, meanwhile Europe had the benefit of having Wrapping Paper and The Coffee Song added as a bonus.

Perhaps the most exciting release was reserved for the French market, though, where Polydor released a four-track EP containing a unique take of Cat’s Squirrel with a totally different guitar solo by Eric. Needless to say this grew to be a major collectors’ item over the years. Luckily, it is now readily available on the deluxe editions of the album at a reasonable price compared with the original EP.

In the days before social media, bands would promote their records by doing radio sessions for the BBC as well as appearing on popular youth-orientated television shows such as Ready Steady Go!. Cream’s many BBC Radio sessions sealed the deal on their popularity, and over the years their debut album has grown in stature and remains an essential album to this day.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

The late Jack Bruce was a force of nature. His bass playing in Cream’s legendary live jams liberated the instrument for generations of players who followed.

Improvising freely within (and beyond) the chord progressions, Bruce created lines that linked the blues-inflected guitar of Eric Clapton with the jazz-inspired drumming of Ginger Baker.

“My concept during live Cream jams was to start off supporting Eric, all the while playing with Ginger,” Bruce told Bass Player back in 2001. “Then I would build and almost goad Eric to reach the heights of his playing – and when that happened, I would take off, as well.

“If you think of the first live version of Crossroads – which was maybe the best example of what the band was like live then – we start up high and stay up high.

“On others, like Spoonful, we were trying to get this primeval big vibration that just lasts. I would use 5ths, chords and countermelodies to fatten things up, because when Eric would play high, above my bassline, it left a lot of space in the middle. But it was with more of a lead-bass attitude.

“My goal was always to create a bassline where, if you took away or changed one note, the whole song would collapse. I tried to carve the bass part out of the music, like a statue, so that I knew it would last.”

Once they had the freedom of eight-track recording, Cream began to embrace the studio as a space for experimentation – layering parts, adding keyboards, and expanding their sound. While their live performances pursued a rawer, more volatile energy.

“When we got to eight tracks on Disraeli Gears, we saw the possibilities of the studio, with overdubs and my ability to play keyboards – while live, we saw the opportunity to achieve something completely different.

“The great aspect of recording is you have time to work out the basslines. You perfect the part on run-throughs. Badge is a good example; we had the whole day to get it down – it was the most number of takes we ever did.”

Despite Clapton being Cream’s most recognizable star, Bruce was often the voice behind the group’s most enduring songs, even as record company executives openly questioned his place beyond the rhythm section.

“I don't want to give the impression that people were falling all over themselves to record White Room or Sunshine of Your Love. Nobody believed in them. People at Atlantic Records told me, ‘Eric should be the lead singer and the writer, and you are just the bass player.’

“So I cried in the corner while they came up with Strange Brew, which was actually Hey Laudy Mama with a new song grafted on. In the end, the only reason my songs were done was because Eric couldn't come up with anything.”

Bruce also launched the concept of “covering the top and the bottom,” something he loved doing. Of course, it meant having to deal with singing and playing independent parts.

“I very much enjoy being the top and bottom at the same time. It gives you a tremendous opportunity to be a catalyst; being the bass player and singer gives me two chances to make that happen, but it takes a bit of work.

“The first time I had a problem with it was when Cream did Politician. The very first time we did it, we were recording at the BBC. I just had the riff and Pete Brown had written some lyrics. At the time, the BBC had 3-track recording, so the song was improvised and recorded separately – I overdubbed the vocals, in other words. And when I came to play it with the band, I realized I couldn’t.

“It was simply a matter of working it until I got it, and that was a breakthrough because after that I was able to do a lot more where the vocal and the bass part were in opposition. It's just like being a drummer and having independence. You don't want to think about what you're playing; you just want to feel it.”

Ever the risk-taker, Bruce left it all onstage and in the studio, with every performance and recording. That spirit, along with his considerable musical contributions as a vocalist and composer, is what Bruce left for the rest of us.

Whatever your preferred style of bass playing, you owe a debt to the late Jack Bruce, who is most famous for his bass explorations with Cream but whose importance in our world can’t be summed up in a single genre tag.

Few bassists have managed to successfully develop a style and then skilfully weave it through decades of radically changing music, but Bruce made it look easy, and was lauded as the 11th best bass player of all time in our rundown of the all-time greatest.

Having come to popular music from jazz, Bruce brought with him the sensibility of a fearless improviser. In Cream, he didn't just bend notes and stretch harmonies – he pushed the limits of what was possible on his instrument.

Even if Bruce claimed that Cream was actually a cleverly disguised form of his first musical love, jazz, his own solo releases spanned a wide range of sounds that make him almost impossible to categorise.

“Jack was one of the greatest ever,” Jeff Berlin told Bass Player. “He was an influence on everybody. He was the first virtuoso the electric bass ever had.”

No history of Jack Bruce however would be complete without a mention of his meeting with another bass guitar superhero, Jaco Pastorius – widely hailed as one of the greatest of all time.

“I met Jaco while I was rehearsing in Manhattan around 1984,” Bruce told Bass Player back in 2001. “I had seen him at the Rainbow in London with Weather Report a few years prior, and he was magnificent.”

“He sent a message to the studio saying he'd like to meet me at a little club in the Village called 55 Grand. I went down and it was him and Jerry Jemmott, so the three of us started playing.

“Jaco thought he'd put one over on me and started calling Ellington tunes and jazz standards, not knowing about my jazz upright background. Each time I knew the song, he'd go, ‘hummph!’ because he couldn't stump me.

“We talked a bit afterward, and he told me I had influenced him – but I don't know if he was just schmoozing me.”

Bruce continued the story in Bill Milkowski’s book, Jaco: The Extraordinary And Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius, “He was kind of crazed at the time. He was going up to people in the bar and yelling, ‘Hey, here's the guy who wrote Sunshine of Your Love.’ He seemed to be going in all directions at once.”

“At one point he told me there was going to be an after-hours jam at a recording studio and asked if I would come. I said, ‘Sorry, I can't. I've got something to do, but it's been really nice meeting you.’ He got really upset and ran off down the street. He turned the corner, and I never saw him again.”

In a 1998 Bass Player interview, Jeff Berlin mentioned that according to Jaco's brother Rory, Jaco was influenced by Bruce's midrange sound and aggressive lead style, and that he had bought Bruce's early solo discs and studied them.

Recalling attempts at getting his famous tone, Bruce told Bass Player, “The way I play is very personal, it’s some techniques I’ve developed because I was a cellist and then an acoustic bass player, and all of those things are not really much good to anybody else.

“Frank Zappa wanted the most outrageous Jack Bruce sound when I did his album Apostrophe – not the Cream Bruce sound, which was sort of a fart, but an extremely cranked buzz. People comment on what a great sound it is, but I was ashamed of it!”

Bruce may have been all about change musically, but his gear remained a constant. One of his early basses was the Fender IV, which he used into the early Cream days until he switched to a short-scale Gibson EB3. His main instrument became his signature fretless Warwick Thumb Bass, which he helped design.

Bruce backed off a bit on the neck pickup “for some bite,” kept the active tone knobs “basically flat,” and had the volume knob up only halfway, “because I play pretty hard.”

The Gibson EB-1 bass guitar that Jack Bruce played during Cream’s reunion shows in 2005 is set to be displayed at the Gibson Garage in London to celebrate the location’s first anniversary.

To mark the occasion, a series of in-store events will take place February 18-24, with exclusive product launches mooted.

Bruce’s iconic four-string, a 1950s Cherry Red violin model, will be on display for four weeks from February 20. The EB-1 was Gibson’s first electric bass build, and this particular example was also used in BBM – Bruce’s power trio with Cream bandmate Ginger Baker and blues guitar legend Gary Moore.

But it’s the Cream reunion shows that took place across four sold-out nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London for which the bass will be best remembered and revered for. Gibson has called that quartet of shows “arguably one of the biggest rock reunion performances of all time”.

It was a historic run worthy of such gushing hyperbole. At the time of the concerts, Bruce spoke to Bass Player magazine and discussed just how special the reunion felt.

“The Royal Albert Hall was incredible,” he said. “I'm always nervous before a show, but this one took my breath away, sent shivers up my spine, the whole bit. Eric said, ‘Okay, you go first, Jack,’ because I was on the far side of the stage however, my legs didn't seem to want to do that!

“But the warmth of the audience was phenomenal, and when we began playing, that was it – no problems.”

The EB-1 will be unveiled during an intimate event entitled 'Jam For Jack' on February 20. The event promises live performances from Mark King, Phil Manzanera, Gary Husband, and plenty more.

The display is in aid of the soon-to-be-established Jack Bruce Foundation, which will support young people facing barriers to accessing music education.

Tickets are available from Gibson, with proceeds going to the Jack Bruce Foundation. A special, currently unspecified bass guitar will also be auctioned during the event.

A statement from the Bruce family reads: “We are very excited to be collaborating with the Gibson Garage Fest to celebrate Jack’s incredible legacy and to aid the new Foundation, with the display and ‘Jam For Jack’.

“It will be wonderful for Jack’s fans to be able to view his iconic EB-1 violin bass in exhibition. This bass guitar has always been on display at the family home, it meant a great deal to him and remains one of our most beloved of Jack’s treasures.”

The Gibson Garage London, the firm’s first flagship store outside of the US, opened in early 2024 with a little help from Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, and Brian May.

Head to Gibson Garage London for more.

Ask any bass-playing great of the last 50 years who their heroes are, and you can bet that James Jamerson will feature high up the list. A bass-playing pioneer, some might say a visionary.

“The first time I met James Jamerson was in 1974 at the Record Plant in L.A.,” recalled Jack Bruce in a Sept/Oct '01 Bass Player interview. “He was there to do a Stevie Wonder session, and I was next door, coincidentally doing a tribute-to-Stevie track called Keep On Wondering for my album Out of the Storm.

“I was overdubbing my bass part in the control room, and suddenly the door burst open. It was James, who was late and had come into the wrong room. He started listening and said to me, ’No, no, that's not the way you do it,’ and he grabbed my EB-3 and started playing to show me how it should be done!”

“I was there for months doing my record, so I saw him a lot. We had some good talks, and he eventually asked if I wanted to do some of his session load. He was a really nice guy, but he was a little bitter because he felt exiled from Motown.”

“Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder… he’s on all those great tracks, but they tried to muddy the waters a bit sometimes and say it was another bass player. He played on 30 number ones, which is not a bad record.”

Bruce hit a milestone of his own back in April 2010 with the release of his authorised biography, Composing Himself. The highlights are numerous, with stories from his days with Alexis Korner's Blues Inc., the Graham Bond Organisation – an incarnation of which featured the young John McLaughlin – John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and, of course, Cream, in which he created a mesmerising rock spectacle alongside Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton.

As a bassist, Bruce reached creative maturity with Cream. If you listen to his early work on records like the Graham Bond Organization's The Sound of '65 (with Bruce on Fender Bass VI, an instrument he continued to play through the making of Fresh Cream) you can hear his innovative style beginning to emerge.

Bruce explained it this way in a 1993 Bass Player interview: “I was trying to find different sounds and different approaches. I was trying to play it like a guitar.”

This wasn't just a matter of cranking his amp, flinging out lots of notes, and bending strings – although he certainly did those things. Bruce fervently believed that basslines should be melodic as well as supportive, and in asserting this concept in Cream he elevated the role of the rock bass player to new heights.

That tone's evolution is easy to follow thanks to a 1997 Cream boxset, Those Were the Days, on which the bass moves from the polite studio sound of Fresh Cream to the power of such 1968 live tracks as Spoonful and Sweet Wine.

The latter has one of the most striking examples of Bruce's “like a guitar” concept. About eight minutes into the jam, Bruce and Clapton reverse roles, with Bruce playing high on the bass neck as Clapton lays down bass figures on guitar.

We had to ask about the offer he received in 1965 from none other than Marvin Gaye to join his band. Does Bruce ever wish he'd said yes? “Around that time, I was suffering a lot of criticism for playing too many notes, or playing in a certain way. He loved my playing, though, so I must have been doing something right.”

“Yes, it would have been amazing to see a white guy go there and be a part of that scene: it could have changed a lot of things and would have been wonderful. But I was too young and you wouldn't have had Cream. What happens happens, and I'm not too sorry in the long run.”

While never setting any ‘loudest concert’ world records, Cream were undoubtedly one of the most deafening rock bands of their day, awing onlookers with Marshall amp stacks at a time when the term ‘heavy metal’ meant, well, literal heavy metal.

During their incredibly brief run – barely two-and-a-half years, from 1966 to late 1968 – Cream essentially invented the concept of the rock power trio, while injecting an improvisational, free-form approach to blues standards that helped invent the ‘blues-rock’ genre as we know and understand it today.

Featuring the titanic rhythm section of jazz/blues veterans Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums, and, of course, Eric Clapton on guitar, Cream featured three virtuosos who, let's face it, weren't shy about demonstrating just how deep their talents ran. Inevitably, with this mindset, ego was a factor from the beginning.

Baker and Bruce, in particular, never had a particularly easy relationship – Clapton once said that the two got into a heated argument at the band's very first meeting, never mind their first session or live performance.

As the band grew increasingly successful, they were better placed to afford the sort of amplification they needed to fill the ever-larger venues they were playing in. Without Marshall stacks of his own, though, Baker began to grow impatient with what he saw as Clapton's, and especially Bruce's, excessive onstage volume.

“When we started in 1966, Eric and Jack had one Marshall each. Then it became a stack, then a double stack, and finally a triple stack,” the late drummer told Guitar World in 1997. “By 1968, I was just the poor bastard stuck in the middle of these incredible noise-making things. It was ridiculous.

“I used to get back to the hotel and my ears were roaring. That final year damaged my hearing. The incredible volume was one of the things that destroyed the band. Playing loud had nothing to do with music. There was, in fact, one gig where Eric and I stopped playing for two choruses. Jack didn’t even know. Standing in front of his triple stack of Marshalls, he was making so much noise he couldn’t tell.”

It would be almost 40 years before Cream reunited, for a series of concerts in London, and later New York. Despite the light-years of advancement in amp and sound system tech in the intervening decades, the issue of volume reared its head once again during the band's reunion.

Asked in a 2006 interview why Cream passed on scheduling any more reunion gigs after their New York concerts in late 2005, Baker echoed his complaints about the band's final shows four decades prior.

“He [Bruce] shouted at me on stage, [and] turned his bass up so loud that he deafened me on the first gig,” Baker said.

Of course, though, there are two sides to every story. Speaking to Bass Player in 2005, Bruce justified the band's eardrum-flattening late '60s-era volume, saying, “On 90 percent of the gigs there was no proper PA or any monitoring, so the sound we got was the sound onstage. In order to generate the kind of excitement we wanted, we had to play really loud and create that sound with our gear.”

Though the interview was conducted prior to the New York shows during which Baker took issue with the late bassist's volume, Bruce said at the time, “Nowadays, sound technology is spectacular, and we aren't loud at all onstage.”

Just as he did on most topics during the band's heyday, Clapton, when reflecting on the band's live muscle, shied away from taking sides.

“I think we were one of the early heavy metal bands without knowing it,” the guitarist once said. “After we disbanded, Led Zeppelin filled the void.”

Those skeptical of Cream being classified as a proto heavy metal band need only turn to one of the pioneers of metal bass playing, Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler, who considered Bruce to be his greatest influence (appropriate, given Sunshine of Your Love ranks as one of the heaviest songs before Black Sabbath).

“I knew about Eric Clapton’s guitar playing because I’d followed him since he was in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. I was a guitarist at the time, so I’d never thought about bass – and Jack completely floored me,” Butler told Bass Player in a 2006 interview.

“I’d never seen anyone use bass as a sort of semi-lead instrument, while at the same time being perfectly linked to the drums and the guitar. The way he bent the notes and came down the fretboard was amazing, too.

“At the time,” Butler continued, “he was playing a Fender [Bass] VI, which I’d never seen before – they were terrible! I couldn’t even play one note on them, let alone the way he used to play them. He must have incredibly thin fingers, or something…”

Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker gave birth to the power trio, redefined rock improvisation and sold millions of albums. For all their success, nothing could stop the Cream from curdling.

The year was 1968, and guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker were sitting on top of the world.

Or so it seemed. In three short years, their band, Cream, had recorded a slew of brilliant hit singles, sold an astonishing 15 million records, and redefined the role of the instrumentalist in rock.

Their concerts, which usually sold out immediately, had become legendary for the trio’s ferocious virtuosity and wild, blues-based improvisations that exploded with a jazzy sense of adventure.

But all was not well in Cream. The problem, it was whispered, was ego. And as the individual musicians’ reputations grew and heads swelled, their amp rigs ballooned accordingly.

“Cream’s last year was extremely painful for me,” recalls Baker. “When we started in 1966, Eric and Jack had one Marshall each. Then it became a stack, then a double stack, and finally a triple stack. By 1968, I was just the poor bastard stuck in the middle of these incredible noise-making things. It was ridiculous.

“I used to get back to the hotel and my ears were roaring. That final year damaged my hearing. The incredible volume was one of the things that destroyed the band. Playing loud had nothing to do with music. There was, in fact, one gig where Eric and I stopped playing for two choruses. Jack didn’t even know. Standing in front of his triple stack of Marshalls, he was making so much noise he couldn’t tell.”

But while the band came to a crashing halt after three volatile years, it’s nearly impossible to exaggerate the importance of Cream.

They were rock’s first power trio: they gave birth to the notion of the “rock virtuoso,” laid the foundation for heavy metal, and inspired several generations of bands, from Black Sabbath to Van Halen to Smashing Pumpkins. And while they are best remembered for their sophisticated instrumental work, Cream also recorded some remarkable pop singles, including Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, and Badge.

Cream came together in mid-1966, when Baker left the respected British rhythm-and-blues ensemble Graham Bond Organization, Bruce (formerly of Graham Bond) left Manfred Mann, and Eric Clapton, already a legend in Britain, left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

The group’s formation was set in motion by Baker, who reached out to Clapton and won him over with his grand vision of “becoming the biggest pop group in the world.”

“I had always liked Ginger,” explained Clapton. “Ginger had come to see me play with John Mayall. After the gig, he drove me back to London in his Rover. I was very impressed with his car and his driving. He was telling me that he wanted to start a band, and I had been thinking about it too. It was a sort of coincidence – synchronicity, really. We were thinking the same thing at the same time.”

Clapton agreed to join Baker’s new group, but he unwittingly threw a wrench into the drummer’s plans. Clapton made a special request that Jack Bruce be recruited as the group’s bassist.

Clapton had briefly played with Bruce at the tail end of his tenure with John Mayall and came away impressed by the bassist’s skill. Unbeknownst to Clapton, Baker and Bruce were like oil and water. The relationship had proven to be so turbulent that Bruce, uncomfortable with Baker, had left the Graham Bond Organization even as their fortunes were rising.

So eager was Baker to form a partnership with Clapton that, despite his misgivings, he agreed to have Bruce come aboard. Clapton, still unaware of the tension between his new bandmates, witnessed its volatile nature at the new group’s first get–together.

“We had our first talk-through rehearsal at Ginger’s house in Neesden,” remembered Clapton. “Those two had an argument right away. Jack had done an interview and let the cat out of the bag about the band. Ginger was upset about that, and the [argument] went along the lines of, ‘There you go, you’ve done it again!’

“I thought, ‘Wait, there’s something going back here that I’m not aware of.’ The ‘you’ve done it again’ implied that this was sort of a pattern that existed before I knew either of them.”

Dubbed the Cream by Eric Clapton, with a nod to their much-heralded reputations as soloists, the group accepted an invitation to perform at the July 1966 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. Barely a month old and with precious few original songs to their credit, Cream performed spirited blues re-workings that thrilled the large crowd and earned them a warm reception.

The group expanded their budding European following on the strength of the singles Wrapping Paper and I Feel Free, and Fresh Cream, their impressive 1966 debut album.

In America, Cream took longer to take hold. Despite the enduring popularity of songs such as White Room and Crossroads, they were hardly an overnight sensation. They arrived with little fanfare, and Fresh Cream struggled to find an audience. There was no Ed Sullivan Show, no Monterey Pop Festival – just hard work and a grinding tour itinerary filled with small club and college dates.

With the release of 1967’s Disraeli Gears, however, the group’s popularity exploded. Aided initially by “underground” FM radio airplay, Cream received an enormous boost when AM Top 40 radio, which had shunned the group as too hard and psychedelic, jumped on the bandwagon. That acceptance and exposure helped make Sunshine of Your Love, the group’s signature song, the largest selling single in the history of Atlantic Records up to that time.

Cream’s adventurous music directly reflected the incredible confidence each member had in his own abilities. The group successfully blended a variety of influences – spanning Delta blues, avant-garde poetry, and psychedelic pop – while forging a unique sound and style.

Heartened by their success, Cream followed Disraeli Gears in grand fashion with the lavish, 1968 double album, Wheels of Fire. While Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention had previously established the viability of double records for rock artists, Cream’s ambitious marriage of freewheeling studio recordings and raw live performances shot to the top of the charts.

On the surface, Cream were one hot and happy band. Unfortunately, despite their staggering success, they routinely teetered on the edge of destruction. The clashes between Baker and Bruce worsened and soon ensnared Clapton.

By the time Goodbye, their fourth album, was issued in 1969, the group had, in November 1968, already celebrated their farewell via a filmed finale at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Cream were finished, and neither Baker, Bruce, nor Clapton could summon the energy to resolve their differences.

As Clapton told Guitar World in 1994, “It was very intense; it actually seems like we were together for four or five years, but in fact it was very short. My overall feeling about it now is that it was a glorious mistake. I had a completely different idea of what it would be before I started it, and it ended up being a wonderful thing, but nothing like it was meant to be.

“It was meant to be a blues trio. I just didn’t have the assertiveness to take control. Jack and Ginger were the powerful, dominant personalities in the band; they sort of ran the show and I just played. In the end, I just went with the flow and I enjoyed it greatly, but it wasn’t anything like I expected at all.”

In 1997, around the time of the Complete Cream four-CD box set release, Guitar World caught up with Bruce and Baker, who had apparently resolved their longstanding differences to the point where they could discuss Cream and their friend Eric Clapton. Joining them were Cream lyricist Pete Brown and producer/engineer Tom Dowd.

Whose idea was it to form Cream?

Jack Bruce: “Forming Cream was absolutely Ginger’s idea. He asked Eric to join, and then Eric suggested that they get me to sing and play bass. I had only sung one or two numbers with Graham Bond, but Eric could see that there was some potential there. Ginger then had to come and ask me – which I thoroughly enjoyed!”

Ginger, when did you become convinced of Cream’s potential?

Ginger Baker: “I knew we had something special from the very first time we played together. We got together at my little maisonette on Braymore Avenue, in back of which was a park where all the local kids used to play. It was summer and, as we played anyway, the kids congregated on this little hill behind my place were boogying. They really enjoyed the music. It was total magic immediately. We were three people made to play with each other.”

What happened next?

Bruce: “There was a kind of plan in place when we started. We did some rehearsals in a church hall, learning how to play with each other. We were trying out songs and preparing for a couple of shows, including an unannounced gig at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester.”

Baker: “Cream went straight onto the same club circuit that Graham Bond had been doing. I went to Graham’s booking agent, Robert Masters, and said, ‘Look, you’ve got to charge more money.’ Masters said that no one would pay it, but I insisted that we be paid 45 pounds a gig instead of the 40 pounds that Graham was getting, and everybody paid it!

“I had to keep prompting them to ask for more money, and every time they did, people would pay it. The band’s reputation was huge before it was formed, really.”

When did the group begin to stand on its own?

Baker: “When Cream started to get going, our manager, Robert Stigwood, was paying a lot of attention to the Bee Gees. He would be taking out huge ads in Melody Maker for them, while the Cream would get a two-line mention. Stigwood was convinced that the Bee Gees were going to be the biggest hit of the Sixties. I don’t think he really started to get behind Cream until Fresh Cream was released in the U.S. by Atco.

“When the first album went into the charts in America – albeit at something like No. 198 or whatever – Stigwood was flabbergasted. Eric, Jack, and I were convinced. We knew what we had. But I don’t think Stigwood came around until he saw that we might actually make some money.

“It was pretty obvious that Cream was something special. I had been playing the circuit for three years with the Graham Bond Organization, and we would draw an average of 800 people for a big pub gig. When we went out with Cream to the same places, there was suddenly 1,500 people. The places were packed solid and there was often as many people outside gigs as there were inside. The venues just weren’t big enough to let all the people in.”

What was the first original Cream song developed by the group?

Bruce: “When Cream got started, I began to think about writing singles. I was very enamored of the Beatles, like everybody else at the time. I was impressed by what they were doing with their two-and- a-half-minute singles. However, what I came up with instead was N.S.U., which was pretty freewheeling. It was unusual because of the length between the verses, but I was quite pleased with it.”

Besides writing original material, you were also busy reinterpreting a series of blues masterworks, which became a major component of Cream’s repertoire.

Bruce: “Because of the interaction between the three of us, our version of the blues just naturally took on a different structure. I’m So Glad, written by Skip James, was one of the first examples, and certainly Willie Dixon’s Spoonful was something that we made our own.

“At that time, bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Fleetwood Mac were trying to recreate the sounds of Chicago blues. Doing that was completely valid, but it was just something I didn’t want to do. Those original blues records had been done so well, which meant you could only ever be second best. But, if you treated those songs with a great deal of love and respect, you could remake them into your own.

“When we later got to meet people like Muddy Waters in Chicago, they were knocked out by our approach and how highly we regarded their music.”

How did lyricist Pete Brown, who was responsible for the words of songs like Sunshine of Your Love and Tales of Brave Ulysses, become part of the creative team?

Baker: “We needed someone to help us with songwriting, and Pete Brown immediately came to mind because I had played some gigs that fused jazz and poetry. As the jazz players sat onstage, the poets would come up and read their work in front of the audience. Pete Brown was one of the poets I really liked.”

Bruce: “Yeah, I was sort of given Pete Brown by Ginger. Ginger and Pete were at my flat, trying to work on a song, but it wasn’t happening. My wife Janet then got with Ginger, and they wrote Sweet Wine while I started working with Pete.”

Pete Brown: “I received a call from Ginger, who said that his group had completed a song but needed to have words. I didn’t really like rock and roll at that time. I didn’t even like the Beatles – I just couldn’t understand it. I was an avid jazz and blues fan. I had loved the Graham Bond Organization because it was made up of all these elements that I enjoyed.

“Based on my admiration for the Organization, I went to see Cream, not knowing what I was about to get into. I knew something about song form, not very much, but I had listened to a great deal of music and developed good ears. Jack played me his song, and I understood the shape and rhythmic organization.

“I proceeded to unload every cinematic image that I had ever stored into this song. For some reason, he actually accepted it and the song became Wrapping Paper, the band’s first single.”

So Wrapping Paper was the first successful Bruce/Brown composition?

Bruce: “Yeah. But I’m not sure that we actually ‘succeeded’ with Wrapping Paper. What I was trying to do musically was play with people’s expectations of us as a blues band. It is a blues song, but it doesn’t have very obvious blues changes.”

Baker: “In retrospect, Wrapping Paper was pretty pathetic [laughs]. Especially when the credit came out as Bruce/Brown. We had all been involved in that. It was an attempt to do something really pop-styled. The whole object of Cream was to become a huge pop band.”

How did you feel about your next single, I Feel Free?

Bruce: “I was quite pleased with the way that I Feel Free turned out. Even though I hadn’t had much experience in recording studios prior to Cream, I had very definite musical ideas about the songs I had written.

“I wrote all of I Feel Free out on paper, because that was the way I was still working in those days. Because of my classical background, it was easier for me to write things down and then try to realize them in the studio. I know that Ginger thought the song could have been recorded better, and we recut it, but after a little – shall we say – ‘discussion,’ it was agreed that we might end up losing what we liked by trying it again.”

What was it like recording Fresh Cream?

Baker: “We recorded the first album very quickly. It took something like 10 days. We were in complete control of our destiny. Robert Stigwood [credited as the album’s producer] was rarely there at the start of the sessions. He turned up when the album was nearly finished.

“The first album was something I was completely pleased with, to be quite frank. A lot of that album was made up of blues things that Eric brought to the table, like Cat’s Squirrel and Rollin’ and Tumblin’. We played those numbers live from the outset, and they always got the public going.”

What do you remember about Cream’s first American tour?

Baker: “We were playing mostly at colleges for what seemed like extremely small money – only about three thousand bucks a gig. The first place we ever played was Murray the K’s Music in the Fifth Dimension show in New York, and it was a fiasco. Murray was an influential New York DJ who put together these huge package shows that would feature dozens of bands. They wanted us to play three numbers and thought it would only take three minutes!

“There were supposed to be four shows a night, and on the first night there was only time for three. The Who were also on the bill, and the show ran over by something like 80 minutes. Murray the K was freaking out. After the second show, he came to our dressing room to try to get us to cut down our set. I was lying under the table, having consumed a bottle of Baccardi. Murray saw me and said, ‘How’s he gonna play?’ I told him not to worry about me.”

Bruce: “It was very bizarre. The complete show by all the artists was only supposed to last two hours. We had been given three songs and were buried at the bottom of the bill. After the first show, we were cut back to I’m So Glad. Then they wanted us to cut the length of that! Meanwhile, the spot for the Jackie the K Dancers, led by Murray’s wife, seemed to get longer and longer. It was so wild that Murray the K had security guards to keep us in the building. That was our introduction to New York and the United States.”

What do you recall about engineering Cream’s second album, Disraeli Gears?

Tom Dowd: “I got a call from [Atlantic Records label chief] Ahmet Ertegun late one afternoon, asking me to record a group that Robert Stigwood had sent over from England. Ahmet told me to get whatever I could out of them before their visas expired.

“When I arrived at the studio the next morning, the roadies were loading in these double stacks of Marshall cabinets and double-bass drums, and I thought, ‘What the hell is this?’ I hadn’t known anything about them except the fact that they were a three-piece and that two of the three could sing lead.”

In addition to Tom, Felix Pappalardi, the late bassist and songwriter, made significant contributions to the group’s sound. How did Felix get involved?

Baker: “That came about during Disraeli Gears. We had no real game plan for making the album.

“The first thing we cut was the traditional blues Hey Lawdy Mama, and Felix was at the session as a guest of Ahmet Ertegun. At the end of the session, he asked if he could take a copy of the tape away to write some words for it. He came back the next day with Strange Brew. Felix got Eric to sing the lead because he had done so for Hey Lawdy Mama. All of this didn’t go down so well with Jack, because he considered himself to be the lead vocalist.

“Anyway, Eric and I were both very impressed with Felix. We had some discussions with Ahmet and Tom Dowd and afterward got Felix to come in and produce the album. He got very involved musically. Ahmet was also at the studio almost every day. I was also extremely impressed with Tom Dowd, who was an absolutely amazing engineer. Actually, he wasn’t just an engineer – it was like having another musician around.”

Dowd: “Felix usually sat out in the studio while I was recording in the control room – especially during playbacks. He would point out certain things to each band member where he felt improvements could be made. There was a lot of dialog between Felix and the three of them. Some of it was specific to the session, but it also included exposing them to the styles of different artists and sounds.”

How did Sunshine of Your Love develop?

Bruce: “Pete Brown and I had been working all night, trying to write stuff, and we hadn’t got anywhere. I picked up my double bass and played the riff. Pete looked out the window, saw that the sun was coming up, and wrote, ‘It’s getting near dawn/And lights closed their tired eyes…’”

Brown: “Eric added the hook. Funny enough, I never liked it, although it makes a lot of sense, musically. I didn’t like the title, Sunshine of Your Love. I suppose, though, that it hit the mark with so many people because it was such a broad idea. In the long run, thank you, Eric! But in the short term, I must admit I was pretty miserable about it.”

Bruce: “I knew Sunshine of Your Love was going to go over well because both Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding heard it and told me it was going to be a smash. Their opinions really meant a lot to me.”

Where did Cream’s tradition of long, extended individual solos first take root?

Bruce: “When we started out, a typical rock band set lasted only 45 minutes. When we got to the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, the audience wanted us to stretch out. I remember them shouting, ‘Just play!’ That’s exactly when we started to play longer. It became a kind of trademark for us, which, in a way, was a mixed blessing.

“It was very difficult to do every time we played, and it took its toll. I used to think of it like the Who smashing their instruments: it’s expensive to have to do that night after night. For us to have to do very long improvisations every night was expensive on our brains!”

The Wheels of Fire sessions in June 1968 were really productive and yielded a number of classic Cream songs. How did White Room evolve?

Bruce: “I had written words to the song – almost scat words – which started off about cycling through France. I had a definite idea about the feeling I wanted the song to have, and Pete came up with a set of lyrics. Together, we rewrote and rewrote until we had something we were both very happy with.”

Brown: “My draft of White Room started its life as an eight-page poem. Because I had had some spurious journalistic training at college, I was able to pare my eight-page poem to a single page of lyrics.”

Bruce: “Musically, White Room was inspired by Jimi Hendrix. Jimi had a way of using chord changes and taking traditional ideas and modernizing them. He was a big fan of the band, and we certainly loved his music.”

The acoustic As You Said, from Wheels of Fire, was an interesting departure for the band.

Bruce: “I wanted Eric to play guitar on that track, but he encouraged me to do it. I was always embarrassed about my acoustic guitar playing – especially having Eric Clapton in the band. But Richie Havens showed me this great open tuning, and I wanted that guitar sound on the track. When I had the music completed, I went to Pete. He had these words already written which fit right on top of what we had done. It was perfect.”

Politician is another memorable track from those sessions.

Bruce: “We were scheduled to perform on the BBC and needed a song. Pete had given me the words, which had a great blues feel to them. Eric and I were jamming and trying to come up with a lick. There was no big writing session or anything like that. It came together quickly, and we performed it for the first time on that radio program.”

By the time Wheels of Fire was being recorded, the Bruce/Brown team had begun to outpace both Eric and Ginger as songwriters. Did that affect the band negatively?

Bruce: “The sessions for Wheels were very productive, but I think problems were beginning to emerge, because Eric and Ginger weren’t coming up with as much original material. I wasn’t even particularly happy that a lot of the songs were coming from Pete and me.

“Eric and Ginger were beginning to write some great stuff, but just not as fast. I would have preferred that management let us have a few months to work on new material, because that would have kept us moving forward.”

Brown: “My poetry background had me prepared for writing on demand. I had also stopped drinking and taking drugs, which helped a great deal. Jack was bubbling over, full of new ideas. Once he and I had established a way of working, there was a wellspring of material that came quite quickly.

“I tried to write with Eric and Ginger, but it didn’t seem to work out. Possibly it was due to chemistry, as Ginger was able to collaborate with Mike Taylor on a number of things, but we were never able to really connect.”

As engineer for most Cream sessions, Tom, did you notice tension in the band during the Wheels sessions?

Dowd: “With Disraeli Gears, once Ahmet felt that the group was comfortable, he left the details to Felix and me. Apart from my tape operator and a roadie or two, there was nobody else around.

“When the group came back to record Wheels of Fire, there was a whole different set of circumstances. I knew that there had been some animosity among the three players, but when we would listen to playbacks in the control room, there were times when I thought they were going to kill each other.”

Brown: “I know there was some resentment from Eric and Ginger, but songs were needed and Jack and I were there with the songs – good songs, which have stood the test of time.”

Baker: “The problem wasn’t that Jack and Pete were writing songs; the bone of contention was whether they should get all the credit for them. It still rankles me that I got no credit whatsoever for contributing heavily to the arrangement of two of Cream’s most popular tunes.

“The whole way Sunshine turned out was totally my input, and I’ve never even received a thank you for it. Also, the whole introduction to White Room – the 5/4 ‘Bolero’ thing – was my input to the tune. When both songs came out, I wasn’t even mentioned. This happens to many drummers.”

With the group’s tremendous success, couldn’t anything be done to mend the personal disputes?

Baker: “Not really. The problems started very early on. Actually, the only thing that held the band together was its success.”

Bruce: “In addition to the band’s creative tensions, there really was a lack of foresight or belief on behalf of the management. We worked much too hard. Three guys on the road, away from their friends and families for three long tours – that can be pretty destructive to a band. We certainly weren’t the first band that wasn’t helped by those circumstances.”

Was Clapton’s discovery of the Band’s Music from Big Pink a factor in the group’s breakup?

Bruce: “Like a lot of people, Eric was deeply influenced by that album. We fell in love with the economy of that record and began to think that what we were doing was okay, but maybe kind of florid. I think the idea of us getting back to the roots indicated to me that we had lost a bit of our confidence in what we’d been doing.”

Clapton has often spoken of Rolling Stone magazine’s condemnation of the band as another factor behind his decision to leave. [In the May 11, 1968, issue, writer Jon Landau delivered a lengthy critique of Cream in concert, citing “one-dimensional” improvisations that “made no use of dynamics, structure, or any of the other elements of rock besides drum licks and guitar riffs.” In July that year, the magazine printed editor Jann Wenner’s assertion that “Cream is good at a number of things, unfortunately songwriting and recording are not among them.”] Was this really an issue?

Baker: “The article had a very detrimental effect on Eric because he thought Rolling Stone had a lot of credibility. He was a very sensitive fellow, and I’m convinced the article did him a great deal of harm. It was his favorite magazine, and to read something like that in it hurt him.”

Bruce: “I remember that article very well. That certainly contributed to the end of Cream, but it was really quite silly. It tried to say that Eric Clapton couldn’t play the guitar. That was the kind of thing one would expect from the English music press, not Rolling Stone. It certainly hurt me, because they questioned our integrity. We were always sincere about music, right up until the end.”

Baker: “On the last US tour, after a gig in Texas in 1968, Eric came to me and said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ And I said, ‘So have I.’ And that was it. We decided, for different reasons, that it was all over. When Cream died, it died. Short of murder, we couldn’t solve a problem between us.”

While Cream decided to disband, you agreed to record Goodbye, a farewell album, and perform a November 1968 farewell concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Why?

Baker: “We wanted to go out on an up note. That’s why we did the album and the show at the Albert Hall. In fact, when we performed that last show, we were just blown away by the emotion from the audience. It went so well that we all wondered – just for a moment – if we had made the right decision, to split up.”

This article was originally published in Guitar World in 1997.

Along with Roger Glover and John-Paul Jones, Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler represents the unholy trinity of 1970s British rock bass: unlike those esteemed players (of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin respectively, like you didn't know that already), his band – the one and only Black Sabbath – can truly claim to have invented heavy metal, albeit inadvertently.

The HM tag – itself the obvious tag for a sound comprising Ozzy Osbourne's demented vocals, Tony lommi’s crushing, downtuned riffs and the rhythm section of Butler and drummer Bill Ward – later became ubiquitous, but Sabbath are acknowledged by pretty much everyone as the group who started it all off.

A bassist with much to answer for, then… but Butler is still a fan with his own bass guitar idols. “I didn’t really know anything about bass until I went to see Cream,” he told Bass Player. “Jack Bruce’s bass playing was a complete surprise.”

“I knew about Eric Clapton’s guitar playing because I’d followed him since he was in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. I was a guitarist at the time, so I’d never thought about bass – and Jack completely floored me.”

“I’d never seen anyone use bass as a sort of semi-lead instrument, while at the same time being perfectly linked to the drums and the guitar. The way he bent the notes and came down the fretboard was amazing, too.

“At the time he was playing a Fender [Bass] VI, which I’d never seen before – they were terrible! I couldn’t even play one note on them, let alone the way he used to play them. He must have incredibly thin fingers, or something…”

The following Bass Player interview took place in February 2006.

Who’s your biggest influence on bass?

“Definitely, 100%, Jack Bruce. He's so underrated.”

He was in Bass Player not long ago. We've got his number if you want it?

“No! I don't want his number – everyone I've ever met that I worshipped has been a disappointment, so I want to keep him as my hero. I wouldn't know what to say to him. He worked on Bill Ward's solo album – Bill said he was great.”

So what’s so good about Bruce's bass playing?

“He was the first bass player I ever saw who was bending the strings and totally being on his own. At the time, when I saw him with Cream, he was playing a Fender VI, and they're horrendous to play. I tried one once but I couldn't do it, my fingers are too wide to get between the strings.”

What was your first bass?

“It was a thing called a Top 20. I think it was about 50p at a junk shop. I've never heard of them before or since. Originally I was playing rhythm guitar, then I switched to bass and got this Top 20 thing – I think I bought it off one of Ozzy's friends. And then on the way to the first gig, I borrowed my mate's Höfner violin bass, which only had three strings on it, and then eventually I swapped my Fender Telecaster for a Precision. I did the first two albums with that one.”

What basses are you currently using?

“I'm using Ampeg SVTs and Lakland basses… you can't beat them for my sound. They're modelled on Fender Precision and Jazz basses. The sound is like an old Fender, because I don't really like the new Fender stuff. I collect Fender basses, so I sort of know which sound I'm looking for – that old '60s sound.”

“I always used to play the wide Precision necks, but now I've started to like the Jazz necks as well. I vary it on stage because a lot of the songs are tuned to different keys. We tune down three semitones for some songs, some are two and some are one. It depends on what I'm tuned down to, what neck I use.”

Five-strings?

“I've tried them before, but I could never really get used to them. In fact, Lakland are just making me a five-string now. I've never had one that's great tuned down, even though you don't really need to tune a five-string down. They're just really flappy when you get into the studio. You can't really hear the bottom string.”

Do you use any effects?

“Not a lot, although I did use some Line 6 stuff on my Ohmwork album. I've got it sorted the way I want it, and use more or less the same sound on every track. When I'm recording, I do both – I use line-in and I mic up the amp, so I can balance the two. I also played piano on Alone and a couple of tiny little synthesizer effects on other songs.”

Do you play fretless?

“I've done a bit of it – I did a song on one of Ozzy's albums on fretless and another on a Sabbath album, but there's not really much room for fretless in heavy stuff like Sabbath.

“I like some Weather Report, and obviously you can't argue with Jaco Pastorius' bass playing. He did stuff that I'd never even thought about playing on bass. He was way out of my league!”

Some people believe rock ’n’ roll should never leave the cozy three-chord confines of the garage – and then there's Jack Bruce. The late Cream bassist, who died in September 2014, wouldn't have had it any other way.

“There are specialists who remain in one idiom for their entire careers, and no-one respects them more than I do,” Bruce told Bass Player in 2001. “But there also have to be artists willing to go out on a limb in order for the music to grow and go somewhere new.”

Ignited by the influence of James Jamerson, Bruce developed an aggressive, lead-bass style in the bands of blues rockers Alexis Korner, Graham Bond, and John Mayall. This culminated in the 1966 formation of Cream, the legendary power trio with Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton that permanently altered the face of rock.

Bruce's bass innovations – first with his Fender VI and then with his Gibson EB-3 – provided a cornerstone in the instrument's development.

In his post-Cream career, Bruce collaborated with artists as varied as Leslie West, Robin Trower, Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, Carla Bley, John McLaughlin, Bernie Worrell, and Billy Cobham. His solo albums comprise an audio diary of his unmistakable bass playing, singing and writing.

The following interview took place in New York City and was first published in the September 2001 issue of Bass Player, with Bruce promoting his 12th solo album, Shadows in the Air.

How did you get the concept for Shadows in the Air?

“After a long solo-album hiatus – which was really just the result of me not having anything inspiring enough to record – I got the idea to do a trilogy of Latin-influenced albums. I must admit the crossover popularity of Latin artists plays a little part in it, but mainly I've just grown to love the music.

“I was a big fan of Chano Pozo's work with Dizzy Gillespie in the late '40s. Dizzy brought Afro-Cuban music to jazz, and in my own small way I'm trying to do that now by bringing it to rock – the same way Cream brought the blues to rock.”

The percussion on Sunshine of Your Love sounds like it's always been there.

“Right, like the song was written for this instrumentation – with percussion and Andy Gonzalez on upright – and this playing style. I wanted Eric to sing on this with me, so I figured he should bring his guitar along! We sang it just like the original, but now you can really hear the difference in our voices.”

White Room is more of a departure from the original.

“It was more of a challenge, too. The percussionists all worked their magic, and El Negro added some little ‘out’ beats that are absolutely ridiculous. Eric was a bit taken aback because there's no real backbeat except for me playing quarter-notes, but once he got into it he had no problem.”

How did your relationship with producer Kip Hanrahan figure in?

“We first hooked up in 1982 when he called me to sing on his album Desire Develops an Edge, and we've been working and writing together ever since.

“Kip and I had four other songs demoed for a total of six, which we brought to the core band: Milton Cardona, Changuito, and Richie Flores on percussion, Robby and El Negro on drums, and Vernon Reid on guitar. We culled the rest of the material from their input, suggestions, and improvisations. I was surprised that many of them knew my music, right down to the solo albums.

“We recorded the album during three weeks in New York – one week to cut the tracks, one week for overdubs and vocals, and one week for mixing. Eric Clapton and Gary Moore did their parts at Olympic Studios in London.”

Were you concerned about playing within the clave, considering your supporting cast?

“No. I'm not totally knowledgeable, but I've learned how to play and sing in the clave and to play a tumbao. On this album, though, it's about those guys coming over to my music and my bass playing. It's kind of like I paid my dues playing their music with them over the years, and now they’re reciprocating.

“I had some odd meters and other things they don't normally do, but they were bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. And incredibly, once we started playing, I never had to say a word or direct them – it just happened.”

The opener is a cover of your 1973 West, Bruce & Laing tune Out in the Fields.

“That was at Robby Ameen's request. We wanted to do a drum-n-bass-style take on it, though there's only a hint of that on the finished version. There are two tracks of bass; in the breakdown I add a second note in harmony with the original bass part. Actually, I recorded the basic track on piano. That's how I usually do it on my solo albums – all the way back to my first, Songs for a Tailor.”

“I usually cut with piano, drums, and maybe guitar, and I put the bass guitar on later, which is fun. Stevie Wonder let me look in on a session for an album he was making in the early '70s. He laid down an electric piano part and guide vocal, and then he overdubbed drums and then bass. That gave me ideas.”

What's the story behind Boston Ball Game 1967?

“I wrote that in Boston when I was with Cream, during the World Series between the Red Sox and the Cardinals. We were playing a club called the Psychedelic Supermarket and were holed up in a hotel.

“It was a difficult time for us to be on the street in a town like Boston because of the way we looked, so there was a lot of anger, which is reflected in the screaming vocals. I had always imagined the tune with horns, so instead of using it with Cream, I held it for Songs for a Tailor.

“It's a written arrangement done like the original, with the addition of percussion and Andy Gonzalez doubling my bassline while I gradually get loose with it.”

You've described its 6-against-4 feel as a Scottish version of African rhythms.

“I believe it's all tied together. The Scots have something called puirt à beul (pronounced porsht-a-bayle), which means ‘mouth music’ – people were so poor they didn't have instruments, so they invented dance music that was just clapping, stamping, and singing. And much like traditional African music, it goes between very heavy 12/8 or 6 to straight 8 or 4. I grew up with that.”

Dr. John plays keyboards on This Angel's a Liar and Windowless Rooms.

“I wrote those tunes with him in mind. I've admired Dr. John for many years, but we had never played together. He was great – the first thing he said was, ‘These songs are right up my alley.’ I also wanted to have material on the album that showed the relationship between Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean music, and how it all came together in New Orleans.”

Both songs establish your ever-present connection to the blues.

“The blues is a great American expression of something that exists everywhere. I hear it in Indian music and African music. There's something called the Free Church Of Scotland which is so strict they're not allowed any musical instruments, so they only can sing – and you can hear it in there, too.”

How was Directions Home put together, with its multiple bass tracks?

“It was mainly improvised in the studio, as was Mr. Flesh and 52nd Street. All I had was the hand-clapped rhythm, which is the same clapped rhythm as Boston Ball Game played twice – but the second time it's pushed forward by an eighth-note. The percussionists were stunned when I first played it for them, but in seconds they were all over it.

“On bass, I played the chord roots with the band, and then I went back and overdubbed two more harmony lines and a lead-bass part that sort of decorates in between the vocals.

“Recording multiple bass parts is something I've done a lot over the years, inspired by Steve Swallow. I love the sound; I think of it as a sort of giant, warm acoustic guitar strumming away. I featured that approach on Childsong from my 1993 album, Something Els.”

You dedicate the track to Tony Williams and Larry Young of Lifetime. What are your thoughts on that band?

“Lifetime was, in many ways, a high spot for me. Cream was, too, of course – but you could say Lifetime was a later version of what Cream was doing. I was very proud to play with the late, great Tony Williams, and Larry was an absolute genius; one of the very few I've worked with. He's like the Coltrane of the organ. I'd have to say Lifetime was the most amazing band I was ever a part of.”

The album's three ballads are intriguing.

“I wrote Heart Quake with Pete Brown last year. It's in three with a minor tonality and long descending phrases. I cut the basic tracks with percussion while playing piano and singing a guide vocal, which we kept.

“I wrote Dark Heart with Kip; it goes back and forth between major and minor, and the percussion gives it more of a backbeat than a ballad feel. I'm quite pleased with the moving harmony in the bridge, too; that took a bit of work.

“Milonga, written with Kip, is the name of a popular Argentinean rhythm that's not as well known in the U.S. as the tango. The track is rubato, with me singing and playing piano and then overdubbing bass.”

Dancing on Air shows your R&-B/funk roots.

“The funk is just in my bones; I've always been naturally open to it. I attribute it to growing up in Glasgow, which is a lot like Detroit or Chicago, with its poverty and urban industrial setting – along with my early love of black music.

“I did a couple of TV shows with Marvin Gaye when he came to London in 1965. We hung out all night talking music, and he asked me to join his band, which I couldn't do, because I was getting married.

“I was getting a lot of criticism at the time for playing freely and melodically in pop and rock settings because of James Jamerson’s influence, so Marvin's approval meant a lot to me. Actually, Dancing on Air was on my 1980 album I've Always Wanted to Do This, but that was a more open version.”

Your remake of He the Richmond has a Jaco-with-Joni Mitchell vibe.

“People have told me that, and they've also mentioned Marvin's album What's Going On. I think the main reason – other than the melodic, filling approach I took with the bassline – is that I wrote it on acoustic guitar, which I play on the track using an open D tuning: DADF#AD.

“Before I was aware of Joni, I was very influenced by Richie Havens, whom we used to work opposite in Cream's early days. He showed me some of his open tunings, and it inspired me to write a few songs, including Rope Ladder to the Moon. For that I used an Em7 tuning he taught me, which is EBEGBD.”

John Mayall was the linchpin figure behind much of the boom in British blues rock players in the 1960s. The likes of Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce and John McVie all passed through the Bluesbreaker ranks and benefited from Mayall’s passionate guidance and shrewd stewardship.

Clapton put it best, in his response to the blues icon’s passing: “I want to say thank you, chiefly for rescuing me from oblivion and God knows what when I was a young man around the age of 18/19 when I decided that I was going to quit music,” said the guitar hero in his tribute to Mayall.

“He taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear or without limit.”

A master band-leader, songwriter, vocalist, and no slouch on the guitar himself, Mayall’s early interest in the six-string came as a result of his father’s endeavors as a jazz guitarist – not to mention a record collection containing giants like Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian.

Mayall’s own music would later represent an equally seismic reshaping of the guitar landscape, as with the help of the young Clapton – and ‘the Woman Tone’ created by a pairing of the so-called ‘Beano ’Burst’ Les Paul and a Marshall JTM45 – Mayall was able to summon a hot-rodded take on his beloved Chicago blues.

It laid the foundation for everything from Clapton and Cream to establishing the Fleetwood Mac juggernaut, the Rolling Stones recordings with Mick Taylor (everything from Let It Bleed, to Exile on Mainstreet), and on into the ’70s as Led Zeppelin took heavy blues rock to its world-conquering zenith.

Mayall released no less than 96 albums across a near-70-year career. As such, whittling this legacy down to a single playlist of his most influential and essential recordings is something of a Herculean task, albeit a pleasant one, but in honor of the late and truly great Mayall, we’ve done just that…

1. I'm Your Witchdoctor backed with Telephone Blues (1965)

This Jimmy Page-produced 45 was a powerful harbinger of things to come. The intensity of this track is highlighted by Eric Clapton's incredible tone and haunting controlled feedback.

2. Blues Breakers: John Mayall and Eric Clapton (1966)

From the initial sonic blast – an aggressive slide up the neck at the top of Otis Rush’s All Your Love – the gauntlet is thrown down in terms of a new direction in British blues. Clapton’s virtuosic display on every track is nothing short of phenomenal, as he is backed brilliantly by Mayall’s keyboards and the rock-solid bass/drums combo of John McVie and Hughie Flint.

Standout tracks: Hideaway, Steppin’ Out, Double Crossing Time, Have You Heard

3. A Hard Road (1967)

Peter Green is tasked with filling the shoes of Clapton, the man referred to as God. Green proves to be more than up to the task, providing mind-blowing guitar throughout.

Standout tracks: The Stumble, The Supernatural, Someday After a While (You’ll Be Sorry)

4. Crusade (1967)

Half way through 1967, Green left the Bluesbreakers, along with McVie and Fleetwood, to form Fleetwood Mac. Mayall recruited 18-year-old Mick Taylor, who, like Green, proved himself an able replacement. Within two years, Taylor would leave Mayall’s band to join the Rolling Stones.

Standout tracks: Oh, Pretty Woman, Driving Sideways, Snowy Wood

5. Bare Wires (1968)

Aside from Taylor, this album was recorded with an entirely new lineup and was the last to be credited to the Bluesbreakers.

Standout tracks: Killing Time, Bare Wires Suite, Hartley Quits

6. Blues from Laurel Canyon (1968)

Mayall’s final Decca release features a small four-piece band, including Taylor as well as Green, who guests on one track.

Standout tracks: Laurel Canyon Home, 2401, First Time Alone (with Green)

7. Diary of a Band, Vol. 1 & 2 (1968)

This live collection features Mick Taylor and drummer Keef Hartley along with Chris Mercer and Dick Heckstall-Smith on sax. Culled from 60 hours of club recordings, it is the first of many live collections from Mayall’s personal collection.

Standout tracks: I Can’t Quit You Baby, My Own Fault, Crying Shame

8. Looking Back (1969)

This retrospective is a fantastic document of Mayall’s career, starting with his earliest Bluesbreakers recordings from 1963 up until the spring of 1969.

Standout tracks: Stormy Monday, So Many Roads, Looking Back

9. The Turning Point (1969)

For this July 12, 1969, Fillmore East performance, Mayall assembled yet another lineup, this time designed to play low volume music. The final track, Room to Move, became a minor hit for Mayall and garnered much FM radio airplay.

Standout tracks: Room to Move, The Laws Must Change, I’m Gonna Fight for You J.B.

10. Back to the Roots (1971)

This exceptional double album features a stellar band including Clapton, Taylor and Harvey Mandel on guitars, Larry Taylor on bass, Keef Hartley on drums, Don "Sugarcane" Harris on violin and Johnny Almond on sax and flute.

Standout tracks: Television Eye, Prisons on the Road, Force of Nature

11. Chicago Line (1988)

Roaring back with a new lineup of Bluesbreakers, this disc features great guitar work from Coco Montoya and Walter Trout.

Standout tracks: Chicago Line, The Last Time, Tears Came Rollin’ Down

12. 70th Birthday Concert (2003)

This live set features Clapton, his first time performing with Mayall in nearly 40 years. The double CD also features Taylor and Buddy Whittington.

Standout tracks: Grits Ain’t Groceries, I’m Tore Down, Oh, Pretty Woman

“You could argue there are two kinds of musicians,” the late Jack Bruce once told Bass Player. “The first type plays one thing to perfection and is satisfied. The other type is always searching.”

A dyed-in-the-wool member of the latter camp, Bruce grew up studying jazz on scholarship at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, later establishing himself as a blues-rock pioneer along with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in Cream.

The experience prepared him to challenge rock audiences with flights of extended improvisation in the late '60s, leading to work with Tony Williams, the jazz drummer whose Lifetime bands laid the blueprint for jazz-rock fusion.

In 2008 Bruce began playing with the Tony Williams Lifetime Tribute Band, a group comprising drummer Cindy Blackman-Santana, keyboardist John Medeski, and guitarist Vernon Reid.

In a historic Bass Player interview, Bruce and Reid officially announced that the band was to be called Spectrum Road, and would continue to use the music of Lifetime as inspiration, both onstage and in the studio.

The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place in 2011.

How did you first come to play in the Tony Williams Lifetime?

“I was doing the first tour under my own name – Jack Bruce & Friends with Mitch Mitchell and Larry Coryell – and the first show was at the Fillmore East. Jimi Hendrix came down, as did John McLaughlin, who introduced me to Tony. Tony asked me to join Lifetime, and I immediately lost interest in my own band.”

That was a big move, adding your thump to a trio that was then riding high on the success of its album Emergency!

“There are a lot of purists who believe the best version of Lifetime was that trio: Williams, McLaughlin, and organist Larry Young. I loved that trio, as well, but the band moved up another step when I joined – especially live.”

You brought a bold bass guitar sound to a band that was used to having organ handle bass duties. How did you work that out with Larry and Tony?

“We didn't really talk about anything – we just played. The first tune was Vuelta Abajo. It was a kind of audition. Tony had written that out, and I sightread it. Tony seemed surprised; he didn't think a rocker would be able to do that.”

Did you tour first, and then make Turn It Over?

“Getting gigs for that band was a problem – it was so ahead of its time. We did a few gigs in the States, we did the recording, and then we did a pretty extensive European tour. That was about it, really. We more or less drifted apart.”

Can you provide some insights about the sessions?

“I just remember it was like when Cream started – we were trying to take live music into the studio, and for a producer like Tom Dowd, those Marshall stacks were a big shock. Lifetime was similar. It was all-out, full-bore music, and people weren't ready to record that yet.”

Through the years, you've developed an impressive array of plucking techniques. Where do they come from?

“I played a bit of flamenco guitar when I was a kid, but the inspiration in that regard actually comes from the percussion player in my own band. Something about the way he plays rhythms influences me to use a flamenco-style strum.”

At your San Francisco show, you occasionally whipped out a pick, which you used mostly for rubbing the strings.

“Yes, the pick is my new thing. As for rubbing, that was just in the moment, but I incorporate a lot of tremolo picking as well. It's kind of like a tribute to my father, who's a great mandolin player.”

You played some passages using your left thumb wrapped over the top of the neck to hit notes on the lowest string – much like Hendrix did.

“I do that in order to create certain chords that would be inaccessible otherwise.”

Do you sit down and practice these things?

“No, I don't practice much on bass guitar. I love to practice Bach's music on piano and cello, but playing bass is so natural to me – it's like breathing. I don't practice bass when I have a break, because then it's completely new again when I come back. I love that approach ... but it's also very lazy!”

What's the onstage dynamic with the other members of Spectrum Road?

"The great thing about playing with this group is that it feels like it's a conversation that flows freely among us. Vernon is our leader in the grand sense, but onstage it could be anybody at any time. Humility is very underrated.”

When Carlos Santana joined you onstage in San Francisco, he mentioned that listening to complex music such as Lifetime requires patience and takes acceptance. He challenged the audience.

“Our philosophy is that you have to please yourself first, and then the other members of the ensemble, and if that works then it's going to work with an audience. You can't be working the room first, regardless of what kind of music you're playing.”

Has the classic-rock generation finally matured to the point where loud jazz fusion can make a comeback in jazz clubs, rather than the older days of jazzing up rock venues?

“Labels aren't relevant to musicians – it's just about people playing together. Some of the greatest gigs I ever heard were Miles Davis's bands at European festivals. You don't need to call it anything – just phenomenal music.

“Regarding fusion, it ended up being played by a lot of people who were just going through the motions. All the music I'm involved in is based in blues. As far as I'm concerned, all great music has to have that blues element.”

Why do you feel that way?

“It comes down to struggle. I equate it with what's going on with the revolution in Egypt. The establishment is hanging on to the oppression of its people because it can. The music business is not that different; it's a form of censorship. There are people who have struggled against it, and that's how things move on.”

You're certainly one of those people. There weren't many players doing extended blues jams on rock stages before Cream came along.

"You could actually argue that Cream was the first fusion band, because Ginger and I were both jazz players. Eric was our Ornette Coleman – but we didn't tell him that! We had some great improvisations with that band. When it was hot, it was hot. Like Lifetime, it brought that intense, psychedelic feeling.”

Spectrum Road is fairly trippy as well.

"It's phenomenal. Every night is an adventure – an epic adventure.”

“I can remember sitting in a London coffee bar with Eric Clapton, when we first formed Cream, and telling him how I wanted us to take the language of the blues and develop it further,” Jack Bruce told Bass Player. “How presumptuous – this kid from Glasgow, talking about an African-American art form that transcends music!” 

Of course, in retrospect, Cream rose to its own lofty level as the world's first supergroup. In its brief (1966-68) initial incarnation, the pioneering power trio not only expanded the blues and exposed the idiom to the masses, it obliterated rock & roll's boundaries, extending improvisation and shattering the supposed sonic limitations of three rock musicians.

Cream scored huge hits with Sunshine of Your Love and White Room. Clapton became a guitar god, and Ginger Baker a confrontational force on and off the drums. But it was Bruce – at times overshadowed by the two, even though he was the lead vocalist and main songwriter – who stirred this strange brew with a heaping spoonful of vision and an equally progressive bass style.

And while it took only 28 months and four albums to forge the a new musical foundation for countless like-minded bands, it took 36 years (not counting a three-song performance at Cream's 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony) to get the trio back together for a series of shows in 2005. 

The 21st-century edition of Cream reflected each member's post-Cream career experiences. Although the energy of their youth will never be duplicated, Clapton – through his numerous collaborations and solo CDs – had never been a brighter star or more profound guitarist, and Baker, though living in semi-retirement in South Africa, sounded better than ever.

Bruce had traveled the most interesting route, from his brilliant piano-oriented early solo albums, and other power trio formats, to his cutting-edge work with Tony Williams Lifetime, Frank Zappa, Kip Hanrahan, and his Afro-Cuban-infused band, the Cuicoland Express. He also endured a liver transplant in 2003 due to cancer, which eventually took his life in 2014. All told, the onstage result was a new bass approach: wider and deeper in support, range, and tone.

We spoke with Bruce in 2005 just before the trio's three New York shows at Madison Square Garden, to get the inside story on life and bass playing in Cream, now and then.

Can you compare and contrast your thoughts at the first reunion rehearsal versus the first night at Royal Albert Hall?

“Both were indescribable, and completely different. For me, the stress and tentativeness started before I went into rehearsal. It was raining, and I knew Eric wasn't there yet, but someone said Ginger was inside. So I went in to see what the vibe was, and it was great – very pleasant, and it continued like that.”

“The Royal Albert Hall was incredible. I'm always nervous before a show, but this one took my breath away, sent shivers up my spine, the whole bit. Eric said, ‘Okay, you go first, Jack,’ because I was on the far side of the stage however, my legs didn't seem to want to do that! But the warmth of the audience was phenomenal, and when we began playing, that was it – no problems.”

How did the rehearsals go?

“When I knew they were coming up, I went through all the albums, demos, gig and rehearsal tapes – anything we'd ever tried. I wrote down everything we played and I was surprised; I always thought Cream knew only a handful of tunes, but there were quite a lot of songs. 

“In rehearsal we discussed each song and whether we wanted to try it; we tried a lot of songs that didn't end up among the 19 we performed. There were songs I felt we should do, like I Feel Free, that other members of the band vetoed – obviously it's a democracy now! 

“We rehearsed five days a week for three weeks, but opening night was the first time we played the set from beginning to end, so there was some adventure there.”

How has your bass playing changed since Cream, and how did that affect the way you approached the bass parts?

“At the Royal Albert Hall shows I realized it has changed more than I ever thought. I found myself playing this sort of flamenco bass style with strums and chords and drones, not just lines. It just kind of happened, as a way of fulfilling the role I feel I have in the band now. A good example is the solo sections on N.S.U, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Badge.

“Because it's a trio, it's almost like I'm playing a big rhythm guitar – as opposed to the first time around with Cream, when I played a more lead bass style. I'm hoping to develop the concept further.”

You used your middle finger a lot.

“I had a terrible blister on my index finger, and I was using whatever was working! Normally, I'd be alternating my first two fingers more.”

You sounded strong vocally, and all of the songs were in their original keys.

“We didn't change any keys, not even Badge, because I'm a great believer in a song's key having a real meaning in its own right. I was quite surprised at how strong I was vocally, considering that after my illness about a year earlier I couldn't even talk. I'd had tubes in my throat, and when they were taken out I wasn't able speak; I had to re-learn how. 

“When they asked about a Cream reunion I said yes right away, but I probably had to write it! As rehearsals drew closer, I found this amazing voice teacher in London, Mary Hammond, and we worked on vocal exercises every week.”

How did you choose your basses for the shows? Did you consider using your Gibson EB-3?

“I had tried the EB-3 some years ago, and I found the short scale length to be like playing a toy. I literally couldn't do it anymore – was hitting wrong notes because it was just too small. I've been using my fretless Warwick forever; it's my favorite bass, and I've been playing Cream songs on it with my own band, so I knew I would stick with it in some capacity. 

“As for the Gibson EB-O, I've just fallen in love with it over the years. It's got a real deep, woofy sound. I think I got it from luthier Dan Armstrong, and I had some work done on it to keep it in shape. Then when I was playing with Ringo Starr in the late '90s, I discovered you just can't play a fretless on those old Beatles songs. On tunes like A Little Help From My Friends, Paul had a certain sound and feel on his Hofner, so I started playing the EB-O to recreate that. 

“With Cream, I was going to switch between the two, tune by tune – but that seemed silly, so I looked at the setlist and decided to start on the EB-O and switch to the Warwick halfway through, after Rollin' and Tumblin', where I just play harmonica. 

“Also, I had suggested to Warwick that they make a special bass – a nod toward my old EB-3 – to celebrate this event. We haven't gotten it quite right yet, but the prototype was onstage and can be seen in the DVD.”

How did you select your amplification?

"I hired a big rehearsal room in London and I got Beet, my bass tech, to bring in every bass amp in existence. It was great fun; I had a wireless setup, so I could switch quickly from one amp to the other. And what I ended up liking the best was my Hartke gear. I've known those guys forever, and in addition to Jaco's input, their gear was developed with me in mind. They used to do my sound quite a bit, when I was using all sorts of components and blowing speakers right and left. 

“The main change is that I'm using their paper-cone 8x10 cabinets, along with the aluminum 1x15s and the heads. It all sounds great – like a good Marshall stack back in the '60s. Most of the other amps I tried were very good, but they just didn't sound like me.

“In the original Cream we had Marshall stacks with only one or two speakers working; that's what gave me my trademark distorted tone. On 90 percent of the gigs there was no proper PA or any monitoring, so the sound we got was the sound onstage. In order to generate the kind of excitement we wanted, we had to play really loud and create that sound with our gear. Nowadays sound technology is spectacular, and we aren't loud at all onstage. Technology has caught up with and surpassed the music.” 

What did you think of how the band sounded at the Royal Albert Hall?

“I was astonished. It felt really fresh and natural – that was what amazed us all, from the start of rehearsals. It sounded different; it sounded like now. It reflected how much we've grown, and how much we brought back to the band from all the projects we've done.”  

“I would say, with certain reservations, that it's a better band now than it was then. Our time and feel is better and we've matured; we're not trying to prove anything to anyone or to each other. There's a lot more respect and honesty, in a way – and, not to get maudlin, but there's a lot of love as well. After one of the shows, Ginger said to me, ‘You are a great bass player after all.’ I couldn't believe it – he’d never once said that in all the years.”

You've played with Ginger on and off since Cream. How was he the same and how was he different?

“He's still Ginger – but he has a precision about his playing now that's difficult to put into words. He was always great, but he's even better. When we did BBM in the early '90s, he was well ahead of his Cream days, but there's something more he's brought to his playing. I think he's the key to the band sounding good now.”

Do you and Ginger naturally play in the same place in the pocket?

“I don't think we ever analyzed that; if we did, we might not be able to play together! I've always found it very easy to play with him, so I would say yes. I know that in Cream we both used to speed up; we'd get to the end of a long improv and I'd be wracking my brain to remember what the song was! Now it feels more relaxed and settled, like the way we're doing Crossroads: It's not an uptempo killer number anymore. It's more reflective.” 

“I've always subscribed to Charles Mingus's concept of time, which he called rotary perception. It says there's a constant, metronomic time in your head. When you have a medium tempo, you play right in the middle of the meter in your mind; when you have a fast tempo, you play slightly in front of the meter; and when you have slow blues or a ballad, you play slightly behind the meter. The key is the ability to move within that meter. You can slow down or speed up phrases and accents, all while your internal time is constant.”

What's the same and what has changed about Eric Clapton's playing?

“Eric is quite incredible; sometimes I would find myself just standing there watching him, because he hasn't played like this since back then. I don't mean he hasn't played great, but he hasn't had to play the demanding role in Cream, where he just can't stop or take a break ever! 

“He's playing rhythm and lead all at the same time, more or less. Recently, he's had proper bands with keyboards and other guitarists, so he can sing and play lead, but here he's back to covering it all. He's definitely better, too, but again it's hard to explain how. We added Stormy Monday, which Cream never covered, as a vehicle to showcase Eric as he's become.”

The band didn't make many changes to the forms of the songs, and you avoided long improvisational sections that were a trademark of Cream shows.

“Most of the songs were sort of carved in stone, and to change them made little sense. As for the solo sections, we wanted to improvise, but we didn't want to go too long. That was a thing of the time, and I don't think it would be valid now. We wanted to avoid a nostalgia trip, where we break out the Marshall stacks and the psychedelic clothes. We didn't want to be a tribute band to ourselves!”

Some critics maintain that Cream's long jams in the '60s were self-indulgent and overshadowed the band's best side – the concise studio recordings of forward-thinking original songs.

“I tend to agree. There were two sides to the band. Once we got to eight tracks on the second album, we saw the possibilities of the studio, with overdubs and my ability to play keyboards – while live, we saw the opportunity to achieve something different. Both sides were equally valid, when they worked.

“In a sense, the band lost its way with the long jams, and that became a sort of albatross. It was our version of the Who smashing gear. They got tired of that quickly, we didn't get tired of it, but it got tedious. I'm sure there were times when Ginger thought, ‘Oh, now I've got to play this long drum solo.’”

What was your bass approach on Cream records?

“Well, the great aspect of recording is you have some time to work out the basslines. You're not improvising; it's sort of re-composition, if you like. You perfect the part on run-throughs. 

“Badge is a good example; we had the whole day to get it down-it was the most number of takes we ever did. My goal was always to create a bassline where, if you took away or changed one note, the whole song would collapse. I tried to carve the part out of the music, like a statue, so that I knew it would last.”

How about your approach during the live extended jams?

“I would start off supporting Eric, all the while playing with Ginger, and then I would build and almost goad Eric to reach the heights of his playing – and when that happened, I would take off as well. 

“If you think of the first live version of Crossroads – which was maybe the best example of what the band was like live then – we start up high and stay up high. On others, like Spoonful, we were trying to get this primeval, big vibration that just lasts. I would use 5ths, chords, and countermelodies to fatten things up, because when Eric would play high, above my bassline, it left a lot of space in the middle. But, as I said, it was with more of a lead-bass attitude.”

That brings to mind the way you bent your strings by a step-and-half. 

“That was from seeing the way Eric played. When I got the EB-3, my thinking was: Well, it's a bass guitar. I wanted to emphasize the guitar aspect, which is why I put light-gauge La Bellas on it, for string bends. I was familiar with traditional forward-and-backward vibrato from playing cello and string bass, and I played the Fender VI with Graham Bond, to cover the guitar range when John McLaughlin left the band – but with Cream it was a whole new direction.”

Any chance of an album of new Cream material?

“It's something I'd love to do; it would be a challenge to try to create music that would stand up to the classic songs. I've got a few ideas already – in fact, I wrote a song yesterday that I think would work. I just don't know if it will happen.” 

“We've had offers you wouldn't believe – didn't believe – for long world tours, and it's tempting. But none of us wants to accept because it would take away from the rarity and special nature of getting together. I'd like to do it every now and again and just play somewhere, but we could do an album amidst that, and I'm going to suggest it.”

What light can you shed on your illness?

“It was quite an ordeal. The liver transplant was successful, but then I developed infections and it was touch and go for a while. The experience didn't make me any more religious, but I now believe in the power of prayer. So many people were rooting and praying for me, and I could literally feel that, even when I was in a coma. My wife would constantly whisper all of those good thoughts to me. I want to encourage other people that you can actually go through a terrible illness and recover and get back to your life.”

What other projects and plans lie ahead?

"I've got to do the third in my series of Latin-themed albums with my own band, which I'm hoping to do early next year. I have some material in the can, and I'd like to do some recording in Cuba. Otherwise, I'm just very happy to be here, and to be a member of a band. Right now, that's the best feeling of all.”

For many years a double bass player influenced more by jazz and classical music than rock, Jack Bruce brought an acute melodic awareness to the bass guitar from the moment he picked one up. 

Classically trained at Scotland’s Royal Academy of Music, Bruce had been playing upright in London jazz clubs – but also listening to James Jamerson and “striving to play melodies … while maintaining the bass’ function as an anchor.” 

He found the perfect vehicle for his vision of the instrument’s expanded role in Cream, where he could create basslines that linked the jazz-inspired drumming of Ginger Baker with the blues-inflected guitar of Eric Clapton. 

Speaking to journalist Jim Clash in 2015, Bruce recalled his first encounters with Clapton. “Eric was so obviously ahead of everybody else at that time, with his approach and his knowledge of the blues. He was also very fashion conscious.” 

“Because of that, we started the hairstyles and flared trousers. I remember Eric saying after we met Jimi Hendrix that one of us had to have that kind of afro. I said, ‘It ain’t going to be me, mate.’ So Eric got the perm. Things happened in that band by default.”

Although the internal dynamic of Cream made for some of the greatest musical moments of the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix was ready to put the scene on red alert. Speaking to Bass Player in 2003, Bruce recalled the moment he first brought Hendrix on stage.

“We’d heard of him through a friend who had claimed to have seen him play in New York. Cream was playing at – I think – St. Martin’s School Of Art, and I was having a pre-gig pint. This guy came up and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jimi Hendrix, can I sit in with your band?’ And I said, ‘Well, I dunno, let’s go and find out.’

“So we went across the road and Eric was very keen for him to play and Ginger, of course, was completely against it. But he did play, and he blew us all away, playing with his teeth and all that. Eric was stunned. There’s a demo that we did the next day, and you can hear Eric trying to emulate some of that stuff.”

Bruce also talked with Hendrix about forming a band together. “That was actually going to happen. Jimi was all for having a play. At that point he was trying to find a new direction, musically, and that could easily have been it. I was all for it because I think one of the problems Jimi had was that he didn’t play with people who kicked him up the arse, basically.

“I’m not knocking Mitch Mitchell, but to me he was like a British jazz player, he was kind of laid-back. He played a lot of rhythms but I don’t think it pushed Jimi in the way that we would have.”

After Cream split in late 1968, Bruce went on to release a string of solo albums which demonstrated his trademark blend of jazz, rock and blues influences.

While C.C. DeVille – and, briefly, Matt Smith – set their fretboards alight for Poison in the ‘80s, and Richie Kotzen held things down in the early ‘90s, it was supremely talented shredder Blues Saraceno who ruled the roost from 1993 through 1996.

Saraceno was made for the gig in many ways, with his big hair, wide smile and cache of hod-rodded six-strings quivering under his nimble fingers. He’d broken into the biz as a teen in the late ‘80s before hopping on tour with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, taking the place of Eric Clapton in a quasi-Cream off-shoot, and recording with Cher and Taylor Dayne.

By the time he joined Poison at 22, Saraceno was already a verifiable industry vet, even if he was nearly a decade younger than his new bandmates. His time with Poison lasted three years and included just one album, Crack a Smile… and More!, which was shelved until after C.C. DeVille returned in 2000.

These days, despite the miles logged, Saraceno is a young 52 and has made a name for himself as a composer of TV, film and videogame scores. He’s come a long way since being heralded as the next big thing in Guitar For The Practicing Musician at 16; it hasn’t always been easy, and maybe not as he’d imagined, but he’s thankful for all of it.

“The best part is for all those years, it was guitar and vocals,” Saraceno says. “That’s a different challenge, but I’m not just a guitar player now. I work on melodic content, lyrical content, vocal performance; the game keeps changing.”

He adds: “I’m no longer just a guitar player – I’m having to flex and express my full artistry in new and exciting ways. Now it’s this multi-dimensional thing where I utilize all my skills. I’m thankful for where I’ve been and all I got to do, but I love what I’m doing now.”

You were featured in Guitar For The Practicing Musician during the golden age of shred at 16. What got you to that point?

“I refer to the way I grew up as a combination of The Sopranos and The Deer Hunter! My parents kept me grounded; but still, I got to a point where, I was going to be a guitarist or a professional BMX racer. When I was 12 I broke my left elbow, which kept me off the bike. So I said, ‘I guess I’m gonna stick with this guitar thing.’

“I decided to be a full-throttle, bare-knuckle type of player. At 15, I flew myself out to the NAMM Show and met Rich Lasner with Ibanez, who was launching stuff with Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert.

“They decided to take a chance on me, even though I didn’t have a guitar pick – I had to show them what I could do with just my fingers. From there I got an endorsement, made a demo, and ended up in guitar mags.”

Not long after, you featured on hits by Cher and Taylor Dayne.

“That was funny, because I never even met Cher. I was recording with Michael Bolton and I was driving to Manhattan for this session – which was crazy as I’d only been driving for four days! Through that connection, I ended up working with Cher and Taylor Dayne.”

Being an admitted rock guy, how did you approach those pop tunes?

“At that point I knew that this was what I should be doing, and I needed to make it happen. Working with them, I knew it would require a very different approach, where I’d have to come in and serve a purpose on the track rather than stand out.

“I’m glad I learned to do that early because it’s precisely what I’ve had to do while working on scores. I was still in school, and the kids found out about it and things went crazy. And after the Taylor Dayne thing [Can’t Fight Fate], things took off. I decided this would be a viable, longterm option for me.”

How did you end up touring with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, becoming the ‘kid who replaced Eric Clapton?’

“I was doing a photoshoot for my record, Never Look Back, in Staten Island, and I got a phone call from my manager about this audition in Manhattan with Jack and Ginger. So we hop in the car the next day – it was only a one-day thing – and it’s all New York, heavy-hitter session guys. Then there’s me, in prime Guns N’ Roses and Van Halen mode!

“I rolled in two hours late because my car broke down, so I’m the last guy to play. I plugged into a Marshall JCM800 and figured, ‘It doesn’t matter; there’s no way I’m getting this gig anyway.’

“I just did my best and respected the situation, even though I was so stressed. I turned everything on the amp to 10, tilted it away to not blow them away, and smoked the guitar so hard that it would rattle teeth.”

And how did that go over?

“They were all looking at me, and I’m like, ‘Fuck. Not only am I late, but I just completely blew this gig.’ They said nothing, and then Jack Bruce looked over to signal me out, and I did like this walk of shame on the way out.

“I was like, ‘Fuck. Maybe I shoulda had the amp on 8 rather than 10,’ and all that stuff. So, I thanked them, figured, ‘That could not have gone worse.’ But when I got home, a message said, ‘Jack would like you to come back.’ I returned on Monday, learned three songs, locked it in, and slayed it. That’s how I got the gig.”

Once on the road, did you feel like you were living in the shadow of Clapton?

“It was weird in some ways, but I kinda loved some elements of the gig, too. I wasn’t trying to be Clapton, nor could I be. No-one can touch what Eric Clapton has done. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and Jack knew that.

“He loved the fact that a kid like me, with a blue mohawk and a plaid guitar, was up there making the songs my own. I was just standing there, playing Cream songs and doing divebombs in the corner; it was the coolest thing.”

You mentioned your plaid guitar, a Yamaha RGZ820R. How did that come to be, considering Ibanez endorsed you?

“I had gone to Japan for some shows, and I’d been playing Ibanez custom-made guitars you could not buy off the rack in the States, but in Japan you could. I showed up to a gig and this guy had the same guitar down to the knobs and pickups, which I didn’t like because it looked like we were copying each other.

“I decided if people were going to copy me, I’d get a plaid guitar and make them work for it! I thought it would be like Eddie Van Halen’s striped guitar, where people would recognize me. Yamaha was into it, and I had a good run with them.

“We only did it for a minute, but having a guitar that was synonymous with me was super-enjoyable. Ultimately I stopped it because I always wanted to be genuine – I never wanted to feel like I was wearing a costume in the form of a guitar.”

Before joining Poison in ’93, you auditioned in ’91 but lost out to Richie Kotzen, right?

“Yes. At that time, Richie and I had paralleled each other’s careers, and we even had the same endorsements. We ran in the same circles and were friendly. I gotta say I’ve always gotten along with Richie.

“But in short, the Poison auditions after C.C. left came down to Richie and me, and we had different approaches, and they just decided Richie was the better fit.”

Did they say what they preferred about Richie?

“They needed a songwriter. In Poison, C.C. DeVille was a huge part of the sound. When he left they didn’t just lose a guitarist – they lost a songwriter. Richie was a songwriter and all about that stuff.

“With me, each record was never about guitars as much as it was about moving forward and making what I do quantifiable as a product; as an artist, it’s about your skillset. It’s not just playing the guitar; it’s the whole thing.

“I knew hair metal was over and grunge was happening, and I walked up to the guys in Poison, saying, ‘Here’s the deal: you guys are a lifestyle band, but you want to be taken seriously,’ and I gave them my take. But Bret Michaels, the singer, wanted the Rolling Stone accolades.

“I was like, ‘Fuck that. I’ve been there and done that. I don’t care about that shit.’ So they went with Richie, who could be a songwriter in a band about good times and all that. I was too much of a high-energy tornado for them then. Ironically, that part of my personality was a lot like C.C.’s.”

And yet they called you two years later after it didn’t work out with Richie.

“I was sad it didn’t work out with Richie after they did the one record [Native Tongue] with him. But after it didn’t work out, I was told that the guys in Poison ran into Rudy Sarzo, and he’s the one who said, ‘Hey, you should call Blues back up.’

“Everybody respects Rudy, so they called me. They called me like 12 times, and my phone was ringing off the hook! So, I went back, I was already comfortable, I knew the songs, and I was in.”

What led to the Crack a Smile record being shelved and C.C. being asked back into the band?

“Honestly, the big reason I took the gig was because they offered me a lot of money to tour. They offered me one sum, and I said, ‘Double it, and I’ll do it.’ They did, and I was in the band. But there was a lot of internal stuff going on – a lot of drama.

“It was your typical rock ‘n’ roll bullshit that had nothing to do with me. In essence, I was the trophy wife of that situation. Don’t get me wrong – I had a great experience. I got along with them and they were nice guys. It was drama-free for me; but it was a marriage of convenience, to be totally honest with you.

“And after we got signed to do the record, and we recorded it, one day, I go into a meeting – after buying a big, expensive new truck – and I’m told, ‘The record is being shelved and C.C. is back.’ That was it.”

From there, you moved into session and soundtrack work. 

“I do television and film now, and honestly, I love it. I’ve done solo albums, been in big bands, and done all the tours. It all felt stagnant. I needed a new challenge to keep the feeling of excitement around. If I’m not doing that, I don’t feel like I’m being sincere to myself.”

Has that been as fulfilling as your former life as a rockstar?

“What’s the hardest thing to do? Make a living. I have a skillset – I’ve been able to take my guitar and use it to survive. I bought a house. I bought a car. I have medical insurance, and my family is taken care of.

“I’ve kept up despite the game changing because I chose not just to be another guitar player. I get to leave sonic footprints and do things that grab attention, and let people feel emotion. It’s different and a challenge – but I still get to be an artist, so it’s fulfilling.”

At the tail end of the 1980s, a reunited Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were back in the market for a new electric guitar player, one who could join them to tour Cream’s repertoire almost two decades after the supergroup disbanded. 

It would be a tall order for any player, who’d not only be tasked with filling the shoes of a non-returning Eric Clapton in this new-look post-Cream trio, but also with bringing their own flair to the table.

The role ultimately went to Blues Saraceno – at the time a young phenom who, after capturing the music world’s attention with a feature in Guitar for the Practicing Musician mag at the age of 16, began to grow his credits list as a prolific session player.

It proved to be a successful appointment for Baker, Bruce and Saraceno, who would embark on a handful of tours playing Cream’s repertoire together over the years. 

Such was the success of Saraceno and his famed plaid guitar, he was eventually anointed as “the kid who replaced Eric Clapton”. However, despite the heights the trio reached, the origin of the story isn’t quite as straightforward.

Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Saraceno reflected on how he ended up ‘replacing’ Clapton and became Bruce and Baker’s guitarist – and recalled how his audition got off to a rather rocky start.

Rocking up two hours late due to his car breaking down in Manhattan, Saraceno found himself surrounded by “heavy-hitter session guys”. It was quite a contrast to himself, who – in his own words – “was in prime Guns N’ Roses and Van Halen mode”.

But he thought he’d give it his best (and most memorable) shot: “I plugged into a Marshall JCM800 and figured, ‘It doesn’t matter; there’s no way I’m getting this gig anyway,’” he said. “I just did my best and respected the situation – even though I was so stressed. 

“I turned everything on the amp to 10, tilted it away to not blow them away, and smoked the guitar so hard that it would rattle someone’s teeth.”

Apparently, it made quite the impression.

“They were all looking at me, and I’m like, ‘Fuck. Not only am I late, but I just completely blew this gig,’” he continued. “They said nothing, and then Jack Bruce looked over to signal me out, and I did like this walk of shame on the way out. 

“I was like, ‘Fuck. Maybe I shoulda had the amp on eight rather than 10,’ and all that stuff. So, I thanked them, figured, ‘That could not have gone worse.’

“But when I got home, a message said, ‘Jack would like you to come back.’ I returned on Monday, learned three songs, locked it in, and slayed it. That’s how I got the gig.”

Despite believing he’d made an unfavorable first impression, Saraceno would become a linchpin in Bruce and Baker's post-Clapton years, and was wholly unfazed in the face having to follow in Clapton's footsteps.

As for how he managed to juggle those expectations, and whether he felt like he was living in the shadow of his predecessor, Saraceno went on: “It was weird in some ways, but I kinda loved some elements of the gig, too.

“I wasn’t trying to be Clapton, nor could I be. No one can touch what Eric Clapton has done. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and Jack knew that, so he loved the fact that a kid like me, with a blue mohawk and a plaid guitar, was up there making the songs his own. 

“I was just standing there, playing Cream songs and doing dive bombs in the corner; it was the coolest thing.”

Read our full interview with Blues Saraceno for more on his stints with Clapton and Poison, and why he gave it all up to become a composer for film, TV, and videogames.

As the son of Cream bassist Jack Bruce, Malcolm Bruce has done his part to preserve his father’s legacy with his Heavenly Cream project.

It’s important to him, even though it’s not always easy to explain why – but that doesn’t stop him trying. “To me, Cream’s music, aside from all these wonderful songs, is about just playing," he tells Bass Player.

“It’s about taking risks and stretching out into the unknown, with the songs just as a starting point. To me, that is where the potential lies. It’s a band of three musicians, all contributing equally. That’s a very important aspect of what made Cream work so well – lots of space to allow each musician to express himself.”

His father’s monstrous bass chops aside (which powered the contributions of Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker), the music Bruce helped make was a focus of cultural elements that would have boundless impact for decades.

“Cream was at such a unique moment in history from a creative perspective,” his son says, “and in that moment it displayed real musicianship within a pop context that paved the way for so much to come.

“My dad showed that the bass can move; it can play a melodic line or go between holding down the harmony and playing melodic invention. It can act contrapuntally too.

“But most importantly, my dad showed that the bass can play an equal role in melodic and rhythmic invention. It’s guided intuitively and responds to the other instruments’ sense of time and dynamics. All of this is shown as an expression of that unique personality on the instrument.

“I think my dad contributed to that understanding. Beyond that, he left us with a truly significant body of work built over a long and diverse career.”

What are the most challenging Cream songs to play and why?

“I’m not sure any of the songs are challenging to play; it depends on whether the goal is to reproduce the songs exactly as the original band performed them or to take the essence of the songs and make something from that. Some of the vocal parts are challenging.”

Do you have a favorite Cream album? 

“It's hard to choose between Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears. Fresh Cream does have a freshness to it, an innocence; whereas Disraeli Gears is a more confident and consistently accomplished album –possibly to some degree due to the influence of Felix Pappalardi producing at Atlantic Studios, or that the band had a lot more experience by that point in time.”

And how about your favorite song?

“There are so many great songs! N.S.U. is fun to play and has great energy and unusual harmonic progression. I love the openness of We're Going Wrong, a perfect song to improvise and stretch out to. And As You Said, which has a Scottish folk music influence, pointing to where my dad was heading in terms of the diversity of his writing. And how he was thinking like a composer, using composed elements rather than purely strophic form.”

What's Cream’s most underrated or overlooked song?

“Any of the above mentioned – many don’t get mentioned in the same context as the more well-known songs like Sunshine of Your Love. That said, Dance the Night Away and Take It Back come to mind.”

What do you admire most about your dad's technique?

“His singing voice and his ability to play the bass and sing simultaneously. He had his own personality in everything he did musically.”

Is there a nuance in your dad’s playing or Cream’s music that you feel is essential, but which the average person might not notice?

“One aspect to understand is the range of influences appearing in the music. There are blues, rock, jazz, pop, psychedelia, folk, and classical elements. And the nuance in the music, the choices of dynamics, where and how a note or phrase is placed, when to tighten up, and when to be looser. The sound that three musicians of that caliber can make together is the equality of that dynamic in the sonic spectrum.”

Did your dad leave you any of his gear?

“I don’t use any of my dad’s bass gear. I’ve been using Warwick basses, and sometimes Fender, with Hartke amps. I’m using Framus guitars into Marshall amps with a selection of pedals. I’m getting a great sound with this setup.”

“If people are looking for that old ‘60s Cream bass sound, then the Gibson EB-3 into a Marshall 50-watt head should do the trick. Or maybe 100-watt!

“My dad subsequently developed his fretless technique, eventually using Warwick basses for many years. Wonderful instruments. But the sound is ultimately in the fingers, how we approach the fretboard, and the choices we make with timing and touch.”

Have you had to make any adjustments to play Cream’s music?

“I think it’s easy for me to play Cream’s music – although stylistically, my own music is quite different. I think Cream’s songs are a part of the tradition of popular music we all share, so it feels natural to understand them almost intuitively.”

How does your style differ from your dad’s?

“When I have played these songs, I tend to want to stay in the moment and allow for spontaneity. It’s not so much about my style being different, which is inevitable. It’s more about getting inside the music and finding a level of flow that allows it to be born anew every time it is played.

“There are still all the essential parts to play – the form of the songs, the motivic elements and so on. It’s a balancing act, but the music lends itself to spontaneity, which is the music’s heart.”

How do you view your dad’s legacy overall? 

“His legacy is working through one of the most interesting periods in music; and, like many great artists, he helped evolve significantly throughout his career. He maintained his creative voice in everything he was involved in and crossed boundaries uniquely and substantially. 

“There are many significant projects and collaborations beyond his short tenure with Cream. But in the end, my dad came to terms with being known for the songs he wrote that became hugely successful, and he was proud of that achievement. But to anyone who knows my dad’s work, there’s much more to explore.”

Where would rock music be without him? 

“That may not be easily quantified. The qualities that made Cream so unique have yet to be fully explored. My dad’s approach – playing the bass as an instrument playing an equal part in the music – certainly contributed to developing new ways of seeing the bassist’s role.”

• Heavenly Cream’s An Acoustic Tribute to Cream is on sale now. Visit malcolmbrucemusic.com for full details and tour dates.

Despite a long and varied career, Jack Bruce is still best known for those years he spent alongside Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in Cream. “What we did with Cream was to take our jazz roots and apply it to a kinda rock, and came up with a new music,” Bruce told BP back in 2004. “The three of us developed a style, but the real chemistry was between Ginger and myself. So, really, it was a jazz band, we just never told Eric that he was Ornette Coleman!”

After Cream split in 1968, Bruce released a string of solo albums, and toured in Ringo Starr’s band, before joining forces with Ginger Baker and guitarist Gary Moore to form the power trio BBM (Bruce, Baker and Moore). Baker and Bruce had a famously volatile relationship. “I got a great insight into the chemistry between Jack and Ginger,” Moore told Louder in 2017. “I think Jack really looks up to Ginger, and Ginger knows it, so he’ll never tell him he’s any good. They’re like two brothers, just winding each other up.”

In 1998, Bruce released an instructional video for bass players. “I don’t think of myself as a technical player, so I don’t think I’ve got anything like that to pass on, but I was playing with two of my favourite people: Gary and Gary. Gary Husband is a wonderful drummer and I love Gary Moore's guitar playing, always have. In fact, I think one of the best bands I've been fortunate to be in was BBM. ” 

Sadly, BBM was quite short-lived for a few reasons. “We made the album, which was very successful, sold a lot, had a hit single and everything – but it's a similar story to Cream. That band kinda soured, if you like, when there was this terrible article in Rolling Stone where they were deliberately trying to be controversial. They said some terrible things about Eric and about me and Ginger and it hurt.

“And certainly the same thing happened with BBM, 'cos Gary Moore was just being compared with Eric, with phrases like 'He's no Eric Clapton’ – which is fairly obvious, really. He's himself, and for my money he's a more exciting player. I mean, Eric’s a great player, but I think Gary's got this passion about his playing. I love playing with him because he just turns you on, and Ginger was really playing great in that band, some of the few live gigs we did were really fantastic.”

While Cream’s debut album, Fresh Cream, had its roots in the blues, Bruce was never comfortable about being described as a blues bass player. "I would never consider myself a blues musician. We took the language of the blues and tried to use it in our own circumstances, but none of us were born in the Mississippi Delta. We took the language and made it our own, but there were still some good, memorable songs in there. I always wanted to write the ultimate pop song and I think if Cream is remembered in the future it'll be for those songs.”

Memorable is certainly an appropriate phrase for the 1967 hit Sunshine Of Your Love. “When I wrote the riff we didn't know what to do with it. Eric came up with the chords at the end, I remember, and it was in the studio that he came up with that first little turnaround, which made it into a song really. It certainly worked and is probably the most well-known track: it's certainly the one that's been played the most and the most covered one too.”

At that time, British bands were taking American blues and turning it into a new genre. As a result, royalty payments actually helped some of the original blues men who had never made much money out of their music. “That's true. At the beginning of Cream we didn't have much original material, so we covered a lot of blues, most of them not very well known at the time. There were people like Skip James who were very neglected and because we did a couple of his things he got some attention which was nice. We were just in love with the blues.”

Heavy metal fans of a certain age will remember the rise of Judas Priest, the perennial quintet which has ruled the metallic airwaves from 1974 onwards in a variety of lineups. 

In a half-century of the British heavy metal institution, bassist Ian Hill (who has been in Priest since 1970) has seen it all. “People ask me, ‘Did you ever think Priest was going to last this long when you started?’ I tell them that when we started the band, the concept of somebody doing this sort of thing in their 70s just didn’t exist.”

Having rolled out Trial By Fire – the second single of their upcoming album Invincible Shield, which is slated for March 8th, 2024, the mighty Judas Priest has also announced a series of European shows alongside Saxon and Uriah Heep. 

We asked Hill to name five albums that helped him along the righteous path to metal glory, and left an indelible impression on his musical brain.

1. John Mayall with Eric Clapton – Blues Breakers (1966)

“This was the pinnacle of British blues in my opinion: John Mayall was such a huge figure when it came to that music. Of course, the bass was played by John McVie, one of the all-time classic British blues bassists. He’s so underrated and yet he’s played in so many bands, including Fleetwood Mac, of course. I think John is overlooked as a bass player, for some reason, perhaps because all of the great musicians in Fleetwood Mac like Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood.”

2.The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) 

“Any musician of my age who says he wasn’t influenced by this album is a liar. It all comes together on this LP and it’s such high-quality pop music. McCartney is great on it. There are barely any solos, it’s all about the songwriting, and McCartney was fantastic both as a bassist and a writer. It epitomised the the music of its era. Everything that came after it looked back to it, somehow. Mind you, I tried one of those Hofner violin basses once and I thought it was crap.”

3. Cream – Wheels Of Fire (1968) 

“Jack Bruce is my all-time idol. He went through John Mayall’s band too, of course, as did Eric Clapton. What those two did in Cream with Ginger Baker was just amazing. If there was one album that I had to take with me to a desert island, this would probably be it. It’s an absolute peach, and they were so young when they did it. Listening to it you’d think they’d been playing together for 30 or 40 years, but no, they’d just started.”

4. Quartermass – Quartermass (1970)

“Johnny Gustafson was on bass and vocals on this album, and just as a vocalist he was great, let alone his bass playing, which was superb. He was one of the Liverpool musicians from the ‘60s, I think, and he did some work with Roxy Music as well. Neither he nor Quartermass ever got the attention they deserved, which was a shame because they were a great band. In Judas Priest’s early days, when we had Al Atkins on vocals, we used to do a few Quartermass numbers.”

5. Weather Report – Heavy Weather (1977)

“Roger Glover of Deep Purple first played me this album when we were with him in the studio. Jaco Pastorius was a breath of fresh air. You Absolutely knew when you heard it that he was an amazing player. It was such an awful waste, what happened to him. I know I play heavy metal, but I’ve always loved jazz. My dad was a jazz double bassist and he used to play it to me all the time. It’s a great form of music if you want to express yourself as a musician.”

Invincible Shield is available to pre-order. See www.judaspriestinvincibleshield.com for tour dates.

Bass players don’t come much bigger than the late Jack Bruce. Looking back at his early days with Cream – not to mention his stints with Alex Korner, Graham Bond and the Bluesbreakers – he was one of a short list of pioneers who were challenging the traditional concept of what a bass guitarist could play. Perhaps the best way to sum up his considerable achievements is to note that, alongside his contemporaries Paul McCartney and John Entwistle, Jack Bruce is jointly responsible for the way that the bass guitar is played in modern rock music.

Looking back in 2010, Bruce told BP “I’m strange in a way as I don’t consider myself as a bass player although that’s what I do. I sing, play piano and a bit of acoustic guitar, so I don’t usually buy records because of the bass playing. I suppose The Beatles’ Rain was an influential track, but the biggest influences on me were always the jazz players. 

“There was one record called The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever, and it’s Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell and Max Roach. I'd recommend that to anybody. Also any of the Tamla Motown records, anything by James Jamerson. Another one was The Band’s first record, Music From The Big Pink. It’s hard to think who the greatest players of today are. You could say Flea, who is a great player and a friend of mine, but he doesn’t need the plug!”

Back in 2010, on the release of his authorised biography, Composing Himself, Jack Bruce revealed the five albums that shaped his sound.

1. Johann Sebastian Bach – Great Organ Works.

“There are so many of these collections, but I’d choose anything that includes Toccata And Fugue, the famous one. If you want to know anything about bass playing, it’s all there. It’s perfection. The bass parts are contrapuntal, but they’re also melodic; if you took away the bass part the whole thing would fall apart. Those parts are great if you want to learn to play melodically. You don’t need a lot of theory to understand them; the ultimate rip-off is Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale. That’s just one example, though – there are hundreds of them.”

2. Dizzy Gillespie Band – Showtime At The Spotlite: 52nd Street New York City, June 1946.

“This album has Ray Brown on bass, and the particular song I’m thinking of is called One Bass Hit. This was very influential to me, because I listened to that music and loved it very much – and the very first audition I had for a big professional band, the Murray Campbell Big Band, was that piece. It was all transcribed, but they were quite impressed because I was straight out of college and I sight-read it, and I got the job. There’s a very dense Ray Brown solo right at the beginning.” 

3. Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um.

“This is self-explanatory, really. Mingus was a really great composer and bass player, which was obviously something I wanted to emulate – I wanted to do both those things. I didn’t discover him until I was 17 or 18, and it changed my life. Also, his music was a very early fusion, if you like, of country, blues and bebop – it was very exciting. His book Beneath The Underdog is the greatest autobiography ever written. It’s full of lies and exaggerations, but why not?”

4. Various Artists – Motown 50.

“James Jamerson did everything, didn’t he? Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder…he’s on all those great tracks. They tried to muddy the waters a bit sometimes and say it was another bass player, but he played on 30 number ones, which is not a bad record. It’s said that he never changed his strings, which is one of two approaches to strings. I like to change mine a lot – if I’m on tour, it’s for every gig – because I like the sound and the feel of brand-new strings. But the other way is to leave them on forever.” 

5. Living Colour – Stain.

“This has Doug Wimbish on it. He’s just amazing. He sums up all the great things about modern bass playing. The last time I saw him was when Living Colour played the Jazz Cafe in London, and he did this solo which was just so entertaining. The things he can do with effects are astounding. He’s taken them to a new height, which is great. It’s really hard to think who the greatest players of today are, because there’s quite a few – but he’s a bit underrated. You could say Flea, who is a great player, but he doesn’t need the plug!” 

As the driving force behind ‘60s supergroup Cream, the late Jack Bruce needs little introduction. Over four decades of album releases, Glasgow-born Bruce became a master of many styles of music, with his own solo releases spanning a wide range of sounds that made him impossible to categorise. 

A 12-bar psychedelic blues, Politician appears on Cream’s 1968 album Wheels of Fire, with a later version cut for the 1969 post-band release, Goodbye Cream. It’s the perfect way of experiencing the many facets of Jack Bruce’s bass playing abilities. Studio recordings Born Under a Bad Sign and more significantly Politician, also necessitated Bruce to sing in a different time frame from his bass.

“The relationship between Jack Bruce’s vocals and his bass playing was unbelievable because sometimes it was disconnected,” Quiet Riot veteran Rudy Sarzo told BP. “He would sing the vocals as a lead singer would sing them, and he would manage the bass parts at the same time in a way that very few bass players could. He had his own voice and he made his own statement.”

Speaking to BP back in March 2005, Bruce was happy to shed some light on one of his favourite Cream bass tracks.

Bruce recalled, “Politician happened – I don’t think ‘written’ is quite the word – during a BBC broadcast. The BBC studio where we were recording had just installed a 3-track machine, and this enabled us to overdub. The bassline came about during an improvisation on Willie Dixon’s Spoonful just prior, and the major 7th-to-tonic interval had stuck in my mind. Pete Brown had given me a set of lyrics in blues form, and Eric and I simply played the line almost instantaneously in unison. As far as I recall, I then overdubbed an improvised vocal using Pete’s lyrics, and Politician was born.”

Bruce used his Gibson EB-3 bass guitar, strung with La Bella light-gauge strings, and plugged into a Marshall 4x12 stack with a 50- or 100-watt head. Although all the other recorded versions of the song – including the one on Bruce’s 2003 solo disc, More Jack Than God – are in the key of D, the original version appears to be in Db. “Unlike Jimi, we never deliberately tuned down. Bear in mind this was before electronic tuners. Live we would simply tune to my diatonic blues harp – and since we had no fixed pitched instruments in Cream, often the pitch would not be strictly A440, to say the least!”

Performing Politician on the road also meant Bruce had to master singing and playing two completely independent lines, a task that remains imposing for singing bassists covering the tune. “It was certainly the most challenging example of singing and playing completely independently that I had met to that point, and in fact, I had no harder task until I played with Tony Williams’s Lifetime. I simply got as comfortable as possible with the bass part until I could play it on automatic pilot, and then I gradually added the vocal.”

The track begins with two bars of the unison riff, leading to the first verse, and Bruce’s angular displaced lead vocal. Adding to the tension is Ginger Baker’s turned-around drum feel, courtesy of his drum pattern that has the kick on one and four and the snare on two and three. “I believe this is because of Ginger’s background in New Orleans-style jazz bands. The wonderful way he plays blues in general – using rolls and such – is inspired by this.”

An excerpt of Bruce playing the bass part from Politician features in the latest clip from a 1998 DVD, also highlighted on his YouTube Channel.

Bruce’s bass falls into its own pattern, alternating a bar of the main riff with a bar of improvised fills. These bars feature James Jamerson-like syncopation and chromatic movement. “If it’s funky, it’s from James! If not, it’s from Johan Bach!” Bruce, who was heavily influenced by the Motown legend, then adds a straight-up blues fill before adding more rhythmic bounce to the first V-IV turnaround.

The second and third verses mimic the first, with some notable changes – including Bruce’s first exaggerated string bend, and his use of the 3rd in the bass. “The 3rds are probably from the classical harmony I studied at school, but you also hear that in New Orleans sousaphone parts.”

As Eric Clapton’s guitar solo takes flight, Bruce instantly kicks up the support, moving higher in range on the tonic chord, adding motion through a galloping rhythm and bluesy fills, and issuing nasty string-bending vibratos. For the final verse, Bruce returns to his previous approach, with a few added high points. Among these are a cool broken rhythm and stops instead of tied notes. Asked for performance tips, Bruce said, “Think mellow marching band!”

Jack Bruce was one of the most accomplished bass players ever to walk the Earth, and although he later played a Gibson EB-3 and his own signature Warwick Thumb, he made his bones with a Gibson EB-1. Now, an all-original EB-1, which proved to be a worthy competitor to Höfner’s Violin bass, has been listed for sale on Reverb.com.

According to the seller, Retrofret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn, this particular EB-1 has a serial number that dates it to early 1954, which marks it as one of the first of this model issued. Gibson only made these basses for around five years and in fairly small numbers, which makes it something of a rarity. 

Built at Gibson's original headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, this early model is a fine example and comes complete with a telescopic end-pin for stand-up playing and the original pink-lined hard case.

You could easily miss this at first glance, but the solid mahogany body has painted-on f-holes, a Royalite pickguard and a Royalite-covered single-coil pickup. The fingerboard is rosewood and the tuners are ‘banjo-style’ Kluson tuners with plastic buttons.

The EB-1 was Gibson’s first bass guitar (the ‘EB’ stands for Electric Bass), and was heralded as ‘a revelation in rhythm’ by Gibson's sales department when it was first launched back in 1953. Although it hardly offered the tonal range that Bruce or its other users later preferred, it did have a ‘middy’ sound that cut through the guitars if you turned it up loud enough. 

There have been many variants over the years; Gibson’s original was redesignated the EB-1 in 1958 when the semi-acoustic EB-2 was launched. Then came 1959’s curious-looking EB-0, which resembled a Les Paul with two cutaways and a pickup jammed up against the neck. To complicate matters further, following the transformation of their Les Paul guitar into the SG, Gibson created a sister bass model, the EB-3. The EB-0F with inbuilt fuzz tone also appeared in 1962, lasting until 1965.

Given its association with Jack Bruce and one of the biggest rock reunion performances of all time (remember, Bruce played an EB-1 for the Cream reunion shows back in 2005) this EB-1 has been listed for $7,250.

Visit the full listing to make an offer on this piece of Gibson history.

In the late '50s and early '60s, the bass guitar was a simpler, safer beast. You listened to your guitarist and plunked away at your root notes, taking care not to step on the drummer’s toes, of course. 

That was just the way it was, and that was the way it would always be – that is, until the bass guitar’s role was changed forever by a small group of pioneering players, including Paul McCartney and the late John Entwistle. And, of course, Jack Bruce. 

Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1943, Bruce brought an acute melodic awareness to the bass guitar from the moment he picked one up. 

By the time he was 30 he was a veteran of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, the Graham Bond Organization – an incarnation of which featured the young John McLaughlin – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, innumerable sessions and, of course, Cream, in which he created a mesmerizing, blues- and jazz-laced rock spectacle alongside drummer Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton.

After Cream split in 1968, Bruce released a string of solo albums that demonstrated his trademark blend of jazz, rock, blues, and – latterly – world and ethnic influences. He also participated in a number of high-profile tours in Ringo Starr’s band and elsewhere, and worked with Gary Moore and Ginger Baker in the BBM project. 

In April and May 2003, Bruce’s solo albums Songs For A Tailor, Things We Like, Harmony Row, Out Of The Storm, How’s Tricks?, Jet Set Jewel, Jack Bruce And Friends Live At The Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and a compilation, An Introduction To Jack Bruce were reissued on CD, along with a Cream album, The BBC Sessions. 

Bruce was on fine form when we spoke to him that year, and why not? He was in the autumn years of a life well lived. 

Are you pleased with the reissues?

“Of course. It’s nice to have them out, but it’s especially nice to have Jet Set Jewel out at last because I never thought it would come out. I thought its time had come and gone. Basically it wasn’t a commercial enough album for what the suits wanted: Rob Stigwood was selling out to Polygram at the time, and I guess they wanted the Bee Gees.”

You obviously weren’t disco enough for them?

“Well, yes, although if you listen carefully there are some elements of pea-soup hi-hat in there. After that I parted ways with Stigwood, although I was stuck in limbo for two years – the old story of the record company saying, we don’t want to work with you, but we’re not going to let you work for anybody else! It was contractual, evil things.”

Jack Bruce And Friends Live is also previously unreleased.

“I’d forgotten all about that show being recorded. I think that was a pretty good example of that band. It’s very good playing, but obviously sound-wise it’s a little different to what I would have preferred. But there’s not much you can do about that.”

There’s also the Cream At The BBC CD. 

“The BBC guys were great. With the limited equipment they had – and the people there were even more limited than most people! – they got a tremendously good sound, I think. They were only allowed to use a certain amount of recorded music, so you had to play live.”

There are interviews with Eric Clapton on there, but none by you.

“Well, I guess in those days Eric was the spokesman. It was like that, wasn’t it? They didn’t want us rowdy lot, it was all contrived and controlled. At that time Eric was the face of the band. I don’t mind.”

You attended 14 different schools as a child. One of them was the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, where you had won a scholarship for cello and composition. But you left, reportedly because you were discouraged by the professors’ lack of interest in your ideas. 

“Well, yes. That sounds a bit arrogant, but then you are at that age. I got that scholarship when I was very young, I was 16, I think. I was still at school and going to the Academy part-time. 

“Some of it was great: I mean, the first harmony teacher was really good, but he was a complete Bach freak and he spent all his time looking for mistakes in Bach, like doubled major thirds and tritones and everything. And that was his life! Apart from that he liked to tap-dance on the bass pedals of the organ, so I wasn’t really learning a lot. Plus I’d discovered money and girls – more important things. Basically I was really interested in jazz, and they were so against it. 

“Charles Mingus was a big influence, as obviously he was a bass player and a great composer. There were these practice rooms with really nice upright Steinway pianos, and I used to spend hours improvising, but they’d come in and tell me to stop. I played a Modern Jazz Quartet EP to this guy at the Academy, and he just sneered at it, you know.”

The classical training you received there must have been useful, though.

“It was in the early days. It’s nice to be able to write things. All those early songs are written down – even things like Cream’s White Room were actually scored.”

Did other bass players influence you?

“Yes, very much so, like Mingus and Charlie Haden. I saw Ray Brown very early on, although he wasn’t an influence. Percy Heath was the first bass player I saw live.”

In 1962 you joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, with Charlie Watts on drums. I assume you and he made a good rhythm section?

“Oh yes, it was. I always liked Charlie’s playing. He hadn’t quite found his thing yet. He loves jazz, he worships it in a way, and I think he’s what you might call a gentleman drummer. He’s got a lovely backbeat. 

“I think drummers like to play with me because I make them sound good. That is the function of the bass player. I remember going to a clinic that Billy Cobham was doing and someone asked him who his favorite bass player was. 

“He didn’t know I was there, but he actually said ‘Jack Bruce’. I think the reason he gave was the rhythmic approach and the harmonic approach that I had picked things up in the right way.”

When did you switch from upright to electric bass?

“In about 1963, ’64. I always played upright with Alexis Korner. I got asked to do this Ernest Ranglin session and they said, we want bass guitar. So I borrowed one. It was an Epiphone semi-acoustic with black nylon strings, but for me it was great. I suddenly realized that I could play louder than the drums, so I immediately switched.”

You left your next band, the Graham Bond Organization, after three years because Ginger Baker said your playing was too busy. How did you feel about that at the time?

“I almost gave up. I was very hurt by the whole thing. I thought I was doing some interesting things. But I was getting a lot of criticism, not just from Ginger, but from a lot of areas, for this melodic, so-called ‘busy’ approach, instead of playing four in the bar or something. I was influenced by James Jamerson, for instance – people like that.”

What was it you liked about Jamerson’s playing?

“Everything – the way he was playing melodies rather than just root notes. That kind of polyphonic idea appealed to me on the bass, as opposed to just a supporting role.”

I bet Ginger changed his tune as the years went by.

“I don’t know if he ever did, really. He probably still thinks I should be standing there going thump, thump.”

Was there generally a view back then that melodic bass was intrusive?

“Well, there weren’t many people doing what I was trying to do. It just hadn’t happened yet, so it was down to people like me to make it happen.”  

You turned down Marvin Gaye’s offer to join his band in America because you were about to get married. Do you ever wonder what it would have been like to play with Marvin? 

“Of course. I wonder what might have happened, because much later on I became good friends with Jamerson. Marvin was very encouraging to me, to continue finding this style. But then, of course, Cream wouldn’t have happened, and that was my great opportunity for me to play too many notes and get away with it!”

Was it only with Cream that you were allowed to express yourself on the bass as much as you wanted?

“Well, I was always doing that, really. Obviously with Cream we were able to do that because it was a jamming-type band. Cream was like a jazz band, but we didn’t tell Eric that... we were like a little free-jazz trio with Eric as Ornette Coleman, but without him knowing it.”

You sometimes played a Fender VI.

“Yes. I started playing that with Graham Bond, because when John McLaughlin left it meant that I could do little guitar-type solos and stuff. It wasn’t really a very playable instrument because the strings were very close together for a bass, and the scale was too big for a guitarist. It was a kind of hybrid. I enjoyed it for a while, it was fun.”

What were your first impressions of Eric Clapton’s playing?

“He was so obviously ahead of everybody else at that time, with his approach and his knowledge of the blues. I also played with him briefly in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers – he was just leaving when I joined. He was just going on his famous world tour, but he only made it as far as Greece and came back after he saw some meat hanging up with flies on it... That’s the story, anyway.” 

You also played with Jimi Hendrix very early on in his career.

“I was the first guy to bring Jimi on stage. We’d heard of him through a friend who had claimed to have seen him play in New York. Cream was playing at – I think – St. Martin’s School Of Art, and I was having a pre-gig pint. This guy came up and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jimi Hendrix, can I sit in with your band?’ And I said, ‘Well, I dunno, let’s go and find out.’

“So we went across the road and Eric was very keen for him to play and Ginger, of course, was completely against it. But he did play, and he blew us all away, playing with his teeth and all that. Eric was stunned. There’s a demo that we did the next day, and you can tell in Eric’s playing that he’s trying to emulate some of that stuff.” 

You talked with Hendrix about forming a band together. How close did this come to reality?

“That was actually going to happen. Jimi was all for having a play. At that point he was trying to find a new direction, musically, and that could easily have been it. I was all for it because I think one of the problems Jimi had was that he didn’t play with people who kicked him up the arse, basically. 

“I’m not knocking Mitch Mitchell, but to me he was like a British jazz player, he was kind of laid-back. He played a lot of rhythms but I don’t think it pushed Jimi in the way that we would have.” 

At their peak, which was the better trio – Cream or the Jimi Hendrix Experience?

“Certainly I would say that Cream were a more interesting band, although obviously we didn’t have Jimi. But I would say that Eric was a better guitar player. Obviously Jimi was Jimi, and he could have played the Indian nose flute and it wouldn’t have mattered, because he was playing himself – I think he regarded the guitar as an extension of himself. But in an instrumental sense, I would argue that Eric was at least as good as Jimi, probably better. I think Cream had something quite magical as a band when we were playing live.”  

You described being in Lifetime, with John McLaughlin, as the musical time of your life. Why is that?

“It was the most challenging music, which I really enjoy. For instance, on one tune I’d be playing in E and singing in C, plus there were quite difficult things like polytonalities and so on, and it was rhythmically very advanced. So when that band gelled, there was nothing like it. People who saw it still tell me that. It was like Cream, but down the road a bit.”

From Songs For A Tailor onwards, you’ve combined rock, jazz and classical styles in your music, plus what we would call world music. Do you compose with a particular style in mind, or does it come out more organically?

“It just happens. The second album was written in one afternoon. The early ones were written almost as song cycles, although I hate to use these pretentious words. They were written in the order they came out on the record.” 

Are you more of a rock player than, say, a jazz player?

“Yes, if you have to put labels on it, although I think I’ve managed to come up with a style of my own. My own thing, as it were. But since the '50s, when rock ’n’ roll and R&B started to influence things, I think you’ve been able to forge your own style. Especially if you play the music that you write, you’re not constrained by other people’s writing.” 

I noticed you’ll be 60 this year. 

“Aaagh! So did I. But I don’t think musicians ever really retire. You just fall off your perch.”

Far from slowing down, your career seems to have accelerated in the last few years.

“Yes. I had some time off a while back and just thought, 'Oh, I might as well do some work while I can.' I’m not touring so much this year, I’m finishing off my new record and then I’ve got some things later on.”

Is BBM finished now or is there any likelihood of a reunion?

“I think it would be a BM-something else! One of the Bs might not be there next time. That was a great band, but there were some problems with one of the Bs... I speak to Gary Moore a lot. The last thing we did was the Remembering John Lee Hooker record, which was fun. We’re always talking about doing an album together.” 

Are you still playing fretless Warwicks?

“Yes, but more and more I’m using this old Gibson EB-1. God knows how old it is, I think it’s from the Fifties. It’s got this big, old-fashioned, woofy sound. I use that a little bit more, but my first love is still the Warwick fretless, and I’ve got loads of those. 

“I do like them, it’s just that when I’m playing songs like With A Little Help From My Friends with Ringo Starr, it doesn’t sound quite right on a fretless. So the EB-1 is more of that period, plus it’s violin-shaped.”

Didn’t you suggest the extended upper horn to Warwick when they were designing the Thumb bass?

“Yes, because the balance was terrible. I bought one and I thought it was promising, so I helped them out. Normally I go for the bubinga and wenge woods and MEC pickups.” 

Are you a five- and six-string bassist?

“Well, I’ve still got a Fender VI which they gave me, and a couple of five-string fretlesses, but I just don’t really see the point of a six-string for me. I like four strings: The limitations make you come up with ideas. If you’ve got all those notes, you can just play them. Obviously I’ll use a five-string if I want to tune down and go to a low C or something.” 

Of all the basses you’ve ever owned, what was your favorite?

“I’m not a big collector, but I’ve got what is supposedly the eighth Fender bass ever made, with the Telecaster headstock. It has 0008 on it. It’s on my wall, and I occasionally play it, but I wouldn’t take it on the road or anything. It looks great, it’s got the original pickup. 

“I’ve also got a really nice plexiglas fretless that Dan Armstrong made for me. I think there’s only one other, and Paul McCartney’s got it. But I think the Warwick Thumb that I’ve had for 10 years is my favorite, as well as the EB-3 that I played with Cream, which has a very thin, wide neck, the way I like it.”

What about amps?

“I use the Hartke stuff, I’ve been using those for years. I used to work with those guys too, to help them come up with idea of valves and transistors in the same setup. At the time I was using two amps, so we worked on making that happen.” 

Do you prefer a clean sound or do you like a bit of overdrive?

“Well, the way I play the distortion comes from the fingers anyway. But I like the amps to be clean. In the old days, that wasn’t possible above a certain volume, although now I don’t play as loud as I used to.”

Any effects?

“No, I don’t use anything. When I’m recording I don’t even use an amp, I just stick it straight in. The tone controls are pretty flat too. I think pedals for bass just get in the way of the sound, although in the '70s I went through a period of using different things – choruses, phasers and so on. 

“I had this one amazing little effects thing called an Effectron Junior, like a little digital delay thing. You could play a chord and then just stand twiddling knobs for five minutes and that was the solo!”

Did you ever play slap bass?

“No, I never thought it was for me. I kind of fooled around with it but I just thought, it’s not me. I’m glad I didn’t get into it. I remember in the '80s it was the done thing and everybody was doing it. There were a few good people like Larry Graham and Mark King. I liked the way Mark was doing it, but not all those people who did it just because you had to do it. It never struck me as being that great.” 

What current music are you listening to?

“My kids introduced me to gangsta rap, so I’m pretty up on that. Missy Elliott does a lot for me, she’s a poet. I used to like Cypress Hill a lot, I thought they were fantastic. I thought they were like the Beatles, they had all that musicality and all that humor. Anything original and not too serious, I like.”

I’d like to hear your thoughts on John Entwistle.

“He was great. Loud! Very loud. He was an unusual sort of a player, he had his own thing going.”

Bootsy Collins?

“He’s a great guy, he’s a lot of fun.”

Jaco Pastorius?

“I knew him a little bit, as much as anybody could at that point. It was towards the end when I knew him, and he was in a bit of a state. The sound that he had, you watch a TV show now and there’s loads of guys doing it.”

Flea?

“I’ve got a lot of time for him, especially his backflips. He does them better than me.” 

Bass guitar virtuoso Jeff Berlin has announced that his Jack Bruce tribute album will feature lead contributions from a stellar line-up of guest talent, including Alex Lifson, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and Eric Johnson. 

The record pulls in all manner of names and focuses more on Bruce’s own compositions and solo material, as opposed to his best known tracks with Cream. 

As such, Lifeson guests on the track Creamed, while Eric Johnson takes care of the solo on Theme from an Imaginary Western (a track that was a hit for Mountain but was penned by Bruce for his debut album Songs for a Tailor). 

Thal contributes a solo on Rope Ladder to the Moon and there is yet more guitar talent on show in the form of Bill Frisell, who guests on One With A Word, while country ace Johnny Hiland stars on Cream tune Train Time.

Elsewhere, the album includes contributions from Sammy Hagar, Scott Henderson and a ‘bass relay’ featuring a stunning low-end line-up of Geddy Lee, Tony Levin, Billy Sheehan, Michael League, Nathan East, Mark King, Ron Carter and Marcus Miller.

The record was initially conceived soon after Bruce’s death in 2014, but faced severe delays – partly due to the fact that the fan-funding platform PledgeMusic went into liquidation in 2019. However, Berlin says the record is now finally available to order. 

“Recording the music of Jack Bruce has been the most emotional recording project of my career," explains Berlin. “Jack was the greatest bass influence I ever had. In the center of his music were these strange and wonderful bass lines weaving in and out of the key, reaching for resolutions and finding them, again, and again. Jack’s playing was a living evolving improvisation.

“Jack was the Alpha and Omega for me. I never would have become the bass player I became if I didn't hear his unfettered improvisations and innovations, his creating a completely original bass tone, and his playing every gig as if it was his last. 

“When he died, I immediately set out to honour him by reviewing his music to choose some of my favourite songs of his and recording them via my own musical vision. As was his legacy of musical brilliance, I wanted this record to be brilliant to honour his spirit. He really means this much to me.”

Berlin also spoke about his love of Jack Bruce – whom he had befriended – with Guitar World, back in 2020. 

“Jack Bruce was one of the greatest musicians ever,” said Berlin. “He was an influence on everybody He was the first virtuoso the electric bass ever had The studio albums were really good, but Wheels Of Fire and Sweet Wine on Live Cream were unbelievable.

“For all the angst between him and Ginger Baker, they were made for each other in that band. I can remember every note of those records as I’m talking to you. Jack had jazz roots, and the nature of jazz is to be creative – and Jack brought that into rock. He was spellbinding.

“Pick any song from that live record. It was beautiful and just as influential as Jaco to any of us. It changed me: I’m the bass player I am now because of Jack.”

Jack Songs is available to order now from Jeff Berlin’s site. The bassist has also informed former PledgeMusic backers that they will receive a free download of the album.

Back in November, it was announced that a jaw-dropping group of A-list rockers had come together for Legacy, a tribute album dedicated to Mountain singer and electric guitar player Leslie West.

Two of the big names on that list were Dee Snider and Eddie Ojeda, of Twisted Sister fame. With the help of Quiet Riot bass guitar player Rudy Sarzo and former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, Snider and Ojeda contributed a heroic version of Theme for an Imaginary Western – a Pete Brown/Jack Bruce-penned tune prominently covered by Mountain – to the album, which you can now hear below.

Snider and Ojeda's version of the hard-rock standard is a faithful one, with the latter's soaring solo in particular tipping its cap to West. It follows Legacy's first single, Zakk Wylde's rowdy cover of Mountain's Blood Of The Sun.

“Leslie was a hero, friend, amazing guy and a guitar god," Snider said of West in a statement. "I always wanted to sing this song. It’s my favorite Leslie West guitar solo. It resonates with me, and speaks to me on so many levels. I’m honored to have gotten a chance to do it on this record.”

Snider, Ojeda, Sarzo and Portnoy are joined on Legacy by Zakk Wylde, Slash, Randy and Tal Bachman, Martin Barre, Joe Lynn Turner, Charlie Starr, Elliot Easton, Robby Krieger, George Lynch, Marty Friedman, Steve Morse, Marc Labelle, Yngwie Malmsteen, Bobby Rondinelli, and Rev Jones.

Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West is set for a March 25 release via Provogue / Mascot Label Group, and can be preordered via Leslie West's website.

You can examine the album's cover art and tracklist below.

“Nobody in this world has ever made me feel loved as much as Leslie, and I feel so honored and grateful that I could give him this gift," said West's widow, Jenni, in a statement. “He would often say, ‘If it doesn’t make my balls rumble, it’s not right.’ And I think there’s some balls-rumbling tones on this record. 

"When you’re listening to it, you might even think it’s Leslie playing – and that’s a good thing. He really believed that adage of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. Even when some of the players do their own twists on the music, they’re still doing it in a way that’s authentic and respectful, and Leslie would have appreciated that.”

Legacy: A Tribute to Leslie West

1. Blood of the Sun (feat. Zakk Wylde)
2. Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) (feat. Joe Lynn Turner, Marty Friedman)
3. Theme for an Imaginary Western (feat. Dee Snider, Mike Portnoy)
4. For Yasgur's Farm (feat. Joe Lynn Turner, Martin Barre)
5. Why Dontcha (feat. Steve Morse, Ronnie Romero)
6. Sittin' On a Rainbow (feat. Elliot Easton, Ronnie Romero)
7. Never in My Life (feat. Dee Snider, George Lynch)
8. The Doctor (feat. Robby Krieger, Ronnie Romero)
9. Silver Paper (feat. Charlie Starr)
10. Money (Whatcha Gonna Do)/By the River – medley (feat. Randy Bachman & Tal Bachman)
11. Long Red (feat. Yngwie Malmsteen & Teddy Rondinelli)
12. Mississippi Queen (feat. Slash, Marc Labelle)

1. Rick Danko (The Band)

On his band’s debut album, which was titled, er, The Band, in 1969, Rick Danko produced some tastily swirly curves on his fretless bass on tunes such as Up On Cripple Creek.

2. Dan ‘Freebo’ Friedberg (Bonnie Raitt)

You’ve Been In Love Too Long is just one song on Raitt’s 1973 album Takin’ My Time in which the Zappa-esque bassist Freebo excels on the ol’ slippery-neck.

3. Rand Forbes (The United States Of America)

Art-rock made when David Bowie was still a skinny young whippersnapper, The USA’s self-titled album of 1967 contained many a slinky riff from Forbes. Try The Garden Of Earthly Delights for size.

4. Bernard Odum

Get up-ah! James Brown’s funk-laden tunes never sounded as good as when Bernard Odum was ripping it up. Visit Just Plain Funk on 1968’s I Got The Feelin’ for proof.

5. Jack Bruce

His old stuff was great, of course, but let’s do something different and point you to the great Scotsman’s worthy 2003 album, More Jack Than God. World music with a dash of jazz panache.

6. Pino Palladino

Sorry, but Wherever I Lay My Hat is just too good to pass up. The rest of Paul Young’s 1983 album No Parlez may not match up, but that just underlines how amazing that Pino bass part on that song was.

7. Sting

The original Don’t Stand So Close To Me, from 1983’s Synchronicity, may not be a patch on the futuristic 1986 remix, but at least Gordon is playing an interesting bass part. On an upright long-scale fretless Ibanez Z-Bass, no less.

8. Les Claypool

Where to start? It’s difficult to recommend a particular track by Mad Les. But head straight for 1991’s Sailing The Seas Of Cheese and you won’t be disappointed.

9. Mick Karn

Few songs are as atmospheric or as plain scary as Japan’s hit single Ghosts, from 1981’s Tin Drum. Karn’s rubbery noodling is devastating, buried deep in a mix of synth and nasty plucked guitars. Terrifying.

If you've got the time, we've got your official amazing blues video of the day.

Be sure to check out this impressive pro-shot live clip of blues great Buddy Guy performing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "My Time After Awhile" with former Cream bassist Jack Bruce (Cream disbanded in late 1968) and Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles in 1969.

If nothing else, it answers the old question, "What would Buddy Guy sound like if he were backed by members of Cream and Jimi Hendrix's band?" The answer is, of course, very, very awesome.

There's an undeniable excitement to Guy's high-pitched singing and soloing, which is packed with the outlandish fireworks and almost-rubbery bends he's become known for over the decades. And then there's his ultra-cool, ultra-slim blue, which is a look more guitarists should consider adopting these days. Hey, think about it!

The clip is from a documentary called Supershow, which also features Led Zeppelin, Dick Heckstall-Smith (who appears in the video below), Chris Mercer, Eric Clapton, Colloseum, Roland Kirk and Stephen Stills. It was dubbed “the last great jam of the Sixties," and we can see why.

Stevie Ray Vaughan covered Guy's "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on Texas Flood, his debut 1983 album.

Here's another gem from the eternally fascinating world of YouTube.

It's Cream's performance of "Sunshine of Your Love" from a July 14, 1968, TV show—a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour—that was hosted by Glen Campbell. Campbell would get his own variety show—The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour—the following January.

Anyway, the appearance is noteworthy for a few reasons. First there's Campbell's introduction of the band, which is misleading, to say the least:

"These guys were considered to be three of the finest studio musicians in England. They played on most of the English acts' records, like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Donovan ...."

Um, no they didn't. Let's start with the Beatles: drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce had nothing (as in zero) to do with the Beatles' recorded output, and Clapton wouldn't play on a Beatles song ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps") until several months later.

Of course, this was not Campbell's fault; he was merely reading cue cards that—apparently—were written by someone who didn't do his homework. Note that Campbell calls the band "the Cream," which was—as any little schoolboy knows—the band's name before they dropped the "the."

Next, there's the band's incredibly low volume—or, shall I say, their absolute power and mastery despite their low volume (These guys were normally get-a-migraine-in-12-seconds loud, but the show's "adult" technical team probably didn't care about Eric Clapton's Marshall stacks). Clapton's guitar solo, which starts at 2:46, is especially interesting because he adds a few country-style bends (right around 3:11) to his trademark pentatonic fireworks, creating a completely different feel from the original 1967 recording—and hinting at his burgeoning obsession with American roots music.

This version of "Sunshine of Your Love" is available on a four-disc box set called Those Were the Days, which was released in 1997.

Malcolm Bruce and Kofi Baker—the respective sons of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker—have teamed up with Eric Clapton's nephew, Will Johns for The Music of Cream: 50th Anniversary Tour.

The eight-week, 34-city North American trek will mark 50 years since Cream played their farewell tour of the U.S. in 1968. During the trek, the trio will perform the music of Cream, interspersed with footage of the original band on the big screen, along with never-before-seen footage and photos.

"We had such an amazing response to our first tour in Australia and New Zealand that we've spent some considerable time adding to the show," Bruce said in a press release. "Now, we not only have this amazing legacy of music to play, but an opportunity to share some wonderful insights and stories with our audience. A backstage pass like no other, if you will."

"We also have a few surprises in store that we know people are going to really respond to, so we can't wait to be on the road again playing these shows across North America this fall," Baker added.

You can check out the group's full itinerary, along with a trailer for the tour, below.

For tickets and more info, head on over to musicofcream.com.

Music of Cream 2018 Tour Dates:

Fri 9/28 Ottawa, ON Centrepoint Theatre

Sat 9/29 Montreal, QC Corona Theatre

Sun 9/30 Quebec City, QC Imperial Bell

Tue 10/2 South Burlington, VT Higher Ground

Thu 10/4 Ridgefield, CT Ridgefield Playhouse

Fri 10/5 Woonsocket, RI Stadium Theatre

Sat 10/6 New Bedford, MA Zeiterion Theatre

Sun 10/7 Portland, ME State Theatre

Tue 10/9 Northampton, MA Calvin Theatre

Thu 10/11 Lynn, MA Lynn Memorial Auditorium

Fri 10/12 New London, CT Garde Arts Center

Sat 10/13 Concord, NH Capitol Centre for the Arts-Chubb Theatre

Sun 10/14 Jim Thorpe, PA Penn's Peak

Tue 10/16 Englewood, NJ Bergen Performing Arts Center

Wed 10/17 Huntington, NY The Paramount

Thu 10/18 Glenside, PA Keswick Theatre

Fri 10/19 Waterloo, NY The Vine at del Lago Casino

Sun 10/21 Albany, NY Hart Theatre Empire State Plaza PAC "The Egg"

Tue 10/23 Red Bank, NJ Count Basie Theatre

Wed 10/24 Harrisburg, PA Stage @ Club XL

Thu 10/25 Baltimore, MD Rams Head Live

Fri 10/26 Greensburg, PA Palace Theatre

Thu 11/1 Cleveland, OH Playhouse Square - StateTheatre

Fri 11/2 Newark, OH Midland Theatre

Sat 11/3 Indianapolis, IN The Vogue

Wed 11/7 Des Moines, IA Des Moines Performing Arts Center

Thu 11/8 St. Charles, IL Arcada Theatre

Fri 11/9 Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theater

Sat 11/10 Cedar Rapids, IA Paramount Theatre

Sun 11/11 St. Paul, MN Fitzgerald Theatre

Tue 11/13 Wausau, WI Grand Theater

Wed 11/14 Madison, WI Orpheum Theater

Thu 11/15 Louisville, KY Brown Theatre

Fri 11/16 Cincinnati, OH Bogarts

There was a time when the name Eric Clapton meant one thing and one thing only: guitar god.

His six-string exploits with the Yardbirds, followed by a pair of mind-blowing 1966 albums—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and Fresh Cream—briefly put the passionate young Clapton atop the U.K.’s, if not the world’s, guitar hierarchy.

By the late Sixties, he was sharing the spotlight with such rock deities as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Significantly perhaps, it was around this time that Clapton began incrementally distancing himself from the flashy, lengthy solos of his wild youth, as he segued from Cream to Blind Faith, and then from Derek and the Dominos to a successful solo career. He eventually fell under the mellow spell of J.J. Cale and the Band, put more emphasis on singing and songwriting, and dabbled in country rock, reggae, acoustic music and ultra-slick pop tunes.

Today, Clapton enjoys an enviable spot as one of the most respected elder statesmen in rock and blues. And although he happily handed over the guitar-god mantle decades ago, he’s not averse to melting a few faces when the opportunity arises. Guitar World looks back at Clapton’s 50-plus-year career and pinpoints what we consider to be the 10 greatest guitar moments—thus far. Our list digs deep into his six-string artistry, putting the emphasis on the playing and not necessarily the hits.

We hope you enjoy this guide to Clapton’s cream of the crop. If you'd like to delve a lot deeper into this subject, we recommend E.C. Listening: Eric Clapton's 50 Greatest Guitar Moments. Enjoy!

10. "Sleepy Time Time" Cream—Live Cream (1968)

Cream’s initial inspiration grew from their dedication to a trailblazing, group-improvisational reinvention of blues forms, including Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” and Skip James’ “I’m So Glad.”

This track, which they originally cut in the studio for their late-1966 debut, Fresh Cream, offers bassist Jack Bruce’s singularly twisted view of a swinging 12/8 “modern” blues in a more condensed but no less cutting-edge form, as compared to the 15-plus-minute jams that highlighted Cream’s performances. Live Cream combines four tracks recorded March 7–10, 1968, in San Francisco at the Fillmore West and Winterland Ballroom, plus one studio outtake, “Lawdy Mama.”

Cream played a staggering 200 shows in 1967 and, after just two weeks off, resumed an equally grueling schedule from the very start of 1968. This LP captures them during their 223rd to 226th performances in just 14 months, so it’s no wonder they achieve the purely magical in-sync group improvisation displayed on this track and in evidence throughout this album. Playing through a pair of 100-watt Marshall stacks (using the 1960A and 1960B “tall” 4x12 bottom cabinets), Clapton produced a massive sound.

There is debate over which guitar he used on specific live recordings, as he alternately played his 1964 “The Fool” Gibson SG, 1964 Firebird I and 1963 ES-335 during this period, though some photos from the 1968 tour show him with a Les Paul. Clapton’s soloing here evokes the influence of B.B. King as he moves deftly between phrases based on C minor pentatonic (C Eb F G Bb) and C major pentatonic (C D E G A). His lightning-fast hammer-pulls and heavenly “floating” vibrato illustrate why the 23-year-old Clapton was called God during this period.

09. "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" Derek and the Dominos—Live at the Fillmore (1994)

In 1969, following the implosion of Cream and the short-lived Blind Faith, Clapton found himself at a career crossroads. Disillusioned and directionless, he joined the powerhouse husband/wife-led Delaney & Bonnie and Friends as a sideman, and by that summer he appropriated Delaney Bramlett (with his entire band in tow) to produce his first solo release, Eric Clapton.

Three musicians from this lineup—bassist Carl Radle, keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock and drummer Jim Gordon—formed the nucleus of Clapton’s next band, Derek and the Dominos, who recorded the seminal Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in the summer of 1970 and toured as a four-piece through August. The Dominos’ live shows were filled with long jams, and at nearly 15 minutes, “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?” was one of the longest, opening with an extended wah-infused funk workout. With stellar high-harmony vocals added by Whitlock, this four-piece emits a huge sound. Clapton’s first solo has all the fire, fury and melodicism of his greatest playing, his 1956 “Brownie” Stratocaster screaming pure virtuosity and conviction.

The second half of the song is a seven-plus-minuteD major jam during which the 25-year-old guitarist displays inspired chordal and single-line inventiveness.

08. "Badge" Cream—Goodbye (1969)

Much like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Cream’s “Badge” is the result of a strong and ultimately long-lasting friendship between Clapton and the Beatles’ George Harrison.

When Cream decided to call it quits in late 1968, each member of the band, including Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, was required to come up with a new song for the group’s final album, Goodbye, the remainder of which would be filled with live cuts. Clapton called on Harrison for assistance.

“I was writing the words down, and when we came to the middle bit, I wrote ‘Bridge,’ ” Harrison said. “And from where [Eric] was sitting, opposite me, he looked and said, ‘What’s that—Badge?’ ” Clapton wound up calling the song “Badge” because it made him laugh. For the session, which took place only a month after “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Harrison played rhythm guitar. Clapton, playing a shimmering, Beatles-inspired arpeggio riff through a Leslie rotary-speaker cabinet, enters the song at 1:06 and plays the rest of the way through. His guitar solo was overdubbed later.

The brilliant solo, which lasts a cozy 33 seconds, is a prime example of a “composition within a composition.” It finds Clapton sending his considerable blues chops through a pop-rock funnel, something he’d do on and off for the next 46-plus years.

07. "Spoonful" Cream—Fresh Cream (1966)

Just as “Crossroads” introduced a new generation of music fans to the mystique of Robert Johnson, Cream’s “Spoonful” brought extra exposure to Willie Dixon, who wrote the song, and Howlin’ Wolf, who originally recorded it in 1960.

And while Howlin’ Wolf’s stark-and-dark version is haunting in its own right, Cream’s take on the song—driven by Clapton’s guitar and Jack Bruce’s heavy bass—moves it several steps further along. Clapton’s solo, which starts at 2:23, seems almost playful at first, as if he’s toying with the listener, but at 2:46, things take a sudden and profound turn toward the dramatic. He plays a series of notes—virtual howls and moans—high on the neck, punctuating them with several perfectly timed cracks at his low E string.

At 3:31, he launches into a completely new melody, taking Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker along for the ride. Clapton’s tone on the track, a unique dense, reverb-drenched sound that only a Gibson humbucker could produce, stands alone in Cream’s canon and in Clapton’s entire discography. At Cream’s live shows, “Spoonful,” like several other songs, gave the band members plenty of room to stretch out, as can be heard on the sensational, nearly 17-minute-long version on Cream’s Wheels of Fire.

06. "Layla" Derek and the Dominos—Layla (1970)

Having played with several of the most influential bands of the Sixties, Clapton launched the Seventies with a new group of his own devising, Derek and the Dominos.

He wrote this tune—the title track of their debut album—to express his unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, who was George Harrison’s wife at the time but would leave Harrison for Clapton later in the Seventies. The song’s killer main riff was something Clapton cooked up with legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who guested on the Derek and the Dominos sessions at the suggestion of producer Tom Dowd. The unusual half-step downward modulation from the D minor main riff/chorus key signature to the verses, which are in D flat minor, enhances the despairing mood of Clapton’s lovelorn lyric.

There’s a deep sense of musical telepathy in the way his bluesy Strat lines interweave with Allman’s eerily spectral slide guitar improvisations during the song’s extended solo over the main riff structure. This gives way to the track’s stately piano-driven coda, penned by Dominos drummer Jim Gordon and affording Allman and Clapton even more real estate over which to stretch out.

05. "Let It Rain" Eric Clapton—Eric Clapton (1970)

This tastefully arranged song from Clapton’s debut solo album begins with the guitarist overdubbing a sweet-sounding mini choir of three harmony-lead guitars with perfectly synchronized finger slides and vibratos.

Together they create the effect of one instrument playing a melody harmonized in triads, but with the brightness and clarity that can only be achieved by three separate single-note lines, or “voices.” Clapton recorded this song on Brownie, his Fender Stratocaster, using its bright single-coil bridge pickup for his lead parts to achieve a brilliant tone and crystal-clear note definition. Clapton’s solo over the song’s outro features his signature polished finger vibrato and use of parallel major and minor pentatonic scales (both in the key of A in this case).

He begins by riding out on the high A root note on the high E string’s 17th fret with alternate-picked 16th notes. Clapton then proceeds to travel down the string through the A Mixolydian mode (A B C# D E F# G)—a distinctly different approach to position playing—before gravitating toward A major pentatonic box shapes, using multiple hammer-ons and pull-offs to create a succession of repetition licks with syncopated “threes on fours” rhythmic phrasing that creates an almost banjo-like country feel. While Clapton’s lead tone here is markedly brighter than what he used earlier in his career, his unique style, as determined by his phrasing, string bending and vibrato, remains his signature.

04. "Steppin’ Out" John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton

“Steppin’ Out” is one of Clapton’s best-known Bluesbreakers tracks, and with good reason.

Along with “Hideaway,” it delivers the heftiest dose of Clapton’s solid, mind-blowing tone and ferocious playing. This upbeat, straightforward blues instrumental in G finds him borrowing bits and pieces from Memphis Slim’s original 1959 version. Clapton (along with John Mayall on keyboards) plays the figure from Slim’s piano intro and then references the track’s tenor sax solo. At the 54-second mark, he incorporates an ingenious “scraping” technique from the original guitar solo, which was played by Matt “Guitar” Murphy, who would go on to join the Blues Brothers Band in the late Seventies. But there’s a lot more going on here.

Clapton incorporates some serious finger vibrato on the 12th fret of the G string—which only adds to the sustain produced by his overdriven Marshall amp—and he uses finger slides as he shifts between several positions of the G minor pentatonic scale. The well-paced solo ends with Clapton, much like his idols B.B. King and Buddy Guy, bending high on the neck before returning to the intro figure.

It’s worth noting that he recorded other versions of “Steppin’ Out” with his short-lived 1966 supergroup the Powerhouse and with Cream, including the knockout 14-minute version on Live Cream Volume II.

03. "White Room" Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968)

Penned by Cream bassist Jack Bruce and Swinging London poet Pete Brown, “White Room” provided a suitably glorious opening track for Cream’s third album, 1968’s Wheels of Fire.

From the first notes of the song’s 5/4 bolero intro, it’s clear that this is a landmark recording. Clapton’s mysteriously evocative layered guitar textures set a mood of high drama before the main 4/4 groove kicks in with an irresistible invitation to some serious hippie-era proto-head banging. The descending D minor verse progression is reminiscent of Cream’s earlier epic track “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” which is said to have been based on the chord pattern in the Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 hit “Summer in the City.”

“White Room” contains some of Clapton’s finest wah-pedal artistry. He employs the device to create fluttery, aquatic magic in the choruses and to answer Bruce’s verse vocal lines with incandescent leads that match the fevered intensity of Brown’s lyrical imagery. Breaking with the time-honored tradition of putting a guitar solo in the middle of a song, “White Room” waits for the outro fade to unleash the full fury of Clapton’s slashing, psychedelic blues-wah frenzy. Clearly, they saved the best for last.

02. "Have You Heard" John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966)

Quite frankly, if Clapton’s “Have You Heard” guitar solo doesn’t cause heart palpitations, shortness of breath or at least a mild case of goose bumps, you might want to seek medical help.

The dramatic, 73-second pentatonic masterpiece is hands down the most frenetic, passionate solo of the guitarist’s 51-year career. The solo, which bursts out of the starting gate at the 3:25 mark, strings together a series of spectacularly intense, incendiary bends, hammer-ons, strategically timed position shifts, and slides. Clapton caps it off with a bevy of climactic high notes, an earmark of his solos on Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton.

All of it is delivered via his groundbreaking new sound, a solid, sustained, overdriven tone that he forged by plugging a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard into a 42-watt Marshall 2x12 combo and cranking it up to ear-splitting levels.

On the album, Clapton burns and bedazzles like a futuristic amalgam of his many influences, including Freddie King, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy. Amazingly, Clapton was only 21 (about to turn 22) when Blues Breakers was recorded in March 1966. Even if he had simply vanished or faded away after the release of the album that summer (much like his stolen and still-missing 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard), he still would have earned a respected place in the annals of electric blues guitar.

01. "Crossroads"Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968)

“Crossroads” has long been regarded as Eric Clapton’s most inspired and well-crafted lead guitar performance, and with good reason.

This live, highly reworked cover of Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” features him and band mates Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker performing some intense—and extended—interactive jamming on a 12-bar blues in A, set to an uptempo, double-time groove with a driving even-, or “straight-,” eighths feel. The high point comes during the arrangement’s second, prolonged guitar solo, when the group engages in a rhythmically dense improvisation that represents the exhilarating apex of blues-rock freeform jamming.

Conjuring a killer creamy tone with his 1964 Gibson SG Standard and stacks of 100-watt Marshall amps, Clapton exploits the rig’s available sustain, using his signature vocal-like finger vibrato technique to make his guitar sing. Particularly noteworthy is Clapton’s consistently wide and impeccably intonated bend vibratos (bent notes that are then shaken), especially during his upper-register second solo, which he plays mainly in the 17th-position A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) “box” pattern.

He combines notes from this scale with those from the parallel A major pentatonic (A B C# E F#) to create varying hues of melodic “light and shade,” more so during his first solo, and seamlessly shifts/drifts from one position to the next by using legato finger slides. The result is a performance that ably supports the then-popular declaration that Clapton is God. “Crossroads” maybe a song about striking a deal with the Devil, but this recording shows Clapton in supreme command of his divine powers.

Five of Jack Bruce’s bass guitars will go on the auction block at Sotheby’s in London tomorrow, September 29, including the bass he played at the legendary Cream reunion concert in 2005, as seen in the video below.

The auction will feature his favorite bass, a 1993 Warwick Thumb Bass Fretless, which has an estimated value of $125,000 to $156,000. This was one of two standard basses Bruce played during the last 20 years of his career.

Bruce, who died October 25, 2014, was a founding member of Cream along with guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker. One of the best-known and most celebrated bassists of the classic rock era, Bruce started out as a jazz bassist, and his proficiency on the instrument established a level of virtuosity for rock bass playing.

In addition to the Cream reunion bass, the auction will feature three other Thumb basses and one Jack Bruce Signature bass, a manuscript of the lyrics to “White Room” and “Politician” bearing Bruce’s signature, his Mellotron keyboard and four reels of tape featuring his vocal samples, circa 1975.

For detailed information, visit Sothebys.com and the auction page.

This past Saturday night, the Allman Brothers Band played the fourth of sixth shows at New York City's Beacon Theatre will be that bring their 45-year career to a close.

Toward the end of the the band worked a cover of Cream's "Politician" into "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" as a tribute to Cream bassist Jack Bruce, who had died earlier that day.

Warren Haynes handled vocals on the ABB debut of "Politician." Check it out below.

As we reported over the weekend, former Cream bassist Jack Bruce died Saturday, October 25, at age 71.

Earlier today, his former Bluesbreakers, Powerhouse and Cream bandmate, Eric Clapton, shared a brief instrumental track in honor of Bruce. You can hear the song, simply titled "For Jack," below.

Clapton shared the song via his Facebook page, where he also posted this message:

“He was a great musician and composer, and a tremendous inspiration to me.”

On Clapton’s official site, a page was posted offering a few biographical details and a detailed rundown of some of Bruce's major musical works, as well as the multiple occasions the two shared stages and studio time, in and out of Cream.

Cream was one of the only major Sixties rock bands that could regroup—assuming they wanted to—in 2014. That is, until yesterday.

Jack Bruce, best known as Cream's bassist and principal vocalist, died Saturday at his home in Suffolk, England. He was 71.

His family announced the death on his website and Facebook page, writing, "It is with great sadness that we, Jack’s family, announce the passing of our beloved Jack: husband, father, granddad, and all round legend. The world of music will be a poorer place without him, but he lives on in his music and forever in our hearts."

Bruce's publicist later added, "He died today at his home in Suffolk surrounded by his family." While no other details have been revealed, the Press Association reports Bruce suffered from liver disease. Bruce had received a liver transplant several years ago.

it’s nearly impossible to exaggerate the importance of Cream. They were rock’s first power trio: they gave birth to the notion of the “rock virtuoso,” laid the foundation for heavy metal and inspired several generations of bands, from Black Sabbath to Van Halen to Smashing Pumpkins.

Although guitarist Eric Clapton was Cream's biggest star, Bruce sang most of the band's classic tracks, including "White Room," "SWLABR," "Tales of Brave Ulysses," "Spoonful," "N.S.U." and "Sunshine of Your Love," which he co-wrote with Clapton and Pete Brown. Drummer Ginger Baker made up the final third of Cream.

"He was a great musician and composer, and a tremendous inspiration to me," wrote Clapton in an official statement today.

"I am very sad to learn of the loss of a fine man, Jack Bruce," added Baker in a statement of his own. "My thoughts and wishes are with his family at this difficult time."

Cream released four studio albums between 1966 and 1969—Fresh Cream (1966), Disraeli Gears (1967), Wheels of Fire (1968) and Goodbye (1969). The band disbanded after their farewell show at London's Royal Albert Hall on November 26, 1968.

Cream reunited in 1993 for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and in 2005 for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and New York City's Madison Square Garden. In 2006, the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

After Cream's initial breakup in 1968, Bruce kicked off a solo career with 1969's Songs of a Tailor, which featured contributions from the Beatles' George Harrison, who also co-wrote "Badge," a track on Cream's final album. Bruce released more than a dozen solo albums over the next 45 years, including 2014's Silver Rails.

"I quite like to just enjoy my life," Bruce told Rolling Stone in April. "I'm thrilled to make this album. I put my heart and soul into it, and I'm very pleased with the way it came out."

Bruce was born May 14, 1943, in Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire, U.K. In 1962, he joined the London-based Blues Incorporated, in which he played upright bass. In 1963, the group broke up and Bruce formed the Graham Bond Quartet with Bond, Baker and guitarist John McLaughlin.

After he left the band in 1965, he released a solo single, "I'm Gettin Tired," and briefly joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, which featured Clapton. After his stint with the Bluesbreakers, Bruce tasted commercial success as a member of Manfred Mann; their song "Pretty Flamingo" reached Number 1 in the U.K. singles chart in 1966.

While he was with Manfred Mann, Bruce collaborated with Clapton as a member of the Powerhouse, which recorded a version of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" upon which Cream's famous live version was based. Bruce formed Cream with Clapton and Bruce in 1966.

After Cream and during his solo years, Bruce joined several short-lived bands, including another supergroup, West, Bruce and Laing, which featured Mountain's guitarist and drummer, Leslie West and Corky Laing. They released two studio albums, Why Dontcha (1972) and Whatever Turns You On (1973).

In 1993, Bruce formed BBM (Bruce-Baker-Moore). The band, which released one Cream-inspired studio album (Around The Next Dream) in 1994, featured Bruce, Baker and guitarist Gary Moore.

"Supergroup" is a word that doesn't sit well with a lot of people.

For some, it conjures thoughts of bloated egos battling for creative control. For others, it brings to mind flash-in-the-pan projects that lacked a lasting impact.

That said, in the 48 years since Cream stepped forward as arguably the world's first rock and roll supergroup, there have been quite a few all-star bands that have made an indelible mark on the musical world — independent of their collective members' individual pasts.

So what do we consider a supergroup?

1. There have to be at least three members.

2. They have to have released at least one album — no all-star jams.

3. A majority of their band members have to have been in well-known bands before the supergroup formed.

4. A supergroup cannot be formed by a well-known musician joining a pre-existing band — no Van Hagar.

In making our picks for this list, we tried to take into account the impact the supergroup itself had on the music scene. We couldn't help but take into consideration the profiles of the musicians involved, but — and you can quote this — merely having big names does not a great supergroup make.

As we reported in February, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid and Cream bassist Jack Bruce have started a new jazz-rock project called Spectrum Road.

The band, which also features keyboardist John Medeski of Medeski Martin and Wood and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, wife of Carlos, have announced that their self-titled debut album will be released June 5.

“[It’s] definitely a jazz-rock thing, but it has a rock edge, because one of the architects of modern rock [Bruce] is in the band and he’s singing these tunes,” Reid recently told Rolling Stone.

“It’s kind of an odd combination of jazz-rock as we know it. John Medeski is such an odd keyboardist and so quirky, and one of the beautiful things is his use of the Mellotron on the record, because the Mellotron is not associated with jazz-rock and fusion to a large degree. It’s more associated with King Crimson, Yes and the Moody Blues. It gives the thing a different feel and sonic signature.”

Medeski is also featured on Between The Times and The Tides,the new solo album by Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.

Spectrum Road will perform at Bonnaroo on June 9, with several more shows to follow. For more about the band, check out their Facebook page.

Photo: Jérôme Brunet

Welcome to the first installment of Godfrey's Guitar Talk Corner.

Since this is my first blog for Guitar World, it might be a good idea to start at the beginning with a brief explanation of who the heck I am and what I’m doing here.

I’m just a guy who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in the '60s, started playing piano at around age 9, happened to catch The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show," switched my main interest to the guitar, taught myself to play by listening to and figuring out licks and solos from my Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin albums, and 20 years later, went on to meet and work with most of my heroes of the classic rock and '60s pop genres.

Namely: John Entwistle of The Who, Jack Bruce of Cream, Dave Mason of Traffic, Alan Parsons, Todd Rundgren, Ann Wilson of Heart, Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, Joey Molland of Badfinger and Denny Laine of Wings, just to name a few.

How did I do it? Landing a gig in the early '90s playing in the house band at New York City’s China Club didn’t hurt. The original China Club was on Broadway and 75th Street, right under the Beacon Theater. Many celebrities and famous musicians would hang out there when in town.

As a result of helping to run the Wednesday Night “Pro” Jam, I got to play with tons of folks: Bruce Willis, Mick Jones of Foreigner, Buddy Miles, Noel Redding, Jason Bonham, Steve Lukather, Julian Lennon, Billy Squier, Andy Timmons, Bob Mayo, Corey Glover, Joe Lynn Turner, Skunk Baxter ... the list goes on.

Again, how did I do it? PERSEVERENCE.

What is that? Let’s put it this way: After working in several “original” bands for years without any real success, I decided to pursue a normal life. I got married, got a “real” day job and had kids. But I never lost sight of my goal of making music my career.

I spent my nights writing and recording demos in my living room studio and played the occasional bar gig on the weekend in an effort to try and keep the “live” chops thing together. This went on for about eight years. Then something happened.

It was one of those things that can seem like a catastrophe at first, but then, after a while, you start to realize it’s actually a blessing in disguise. I had gotten laid off from my job right before Christmas 1988.

Almost immediately, I received a call from an old musician buddy who was working the cover bar circuit steadily and was in need of a guitar player/singer.

“Jeez, but I don’t know your song list,” I said. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll call out a tune, yell out what key it’s in, and by the second chorus, you should have it down.”

Wow. "Count me in.”

We worked between five and seven nights a week and made at least $100 cash a night. (That’s $500 to $700 a week, tax-free -- not bad for the late '80s.) I worked with that band for the next five years (and played “Brown-Eyed Girl” more times than I care to mention).

But I was playing my guitar and singing every night, and earning a living doing it, learning more songs than ever and -- best of all -- I got to spend my days raising my kids myself.

Nothing can take the place of experience. Three one-hour sets a night, an average of 30 songs per night; multiply that by five years (or almost 1,500 gigs) -- that’s a lot of playing. It gives you the “ability” to “jump” on a tune you don’t really know, as opposed to having to say, “I don’t know that one.”

It provided the right kind of training to lead up to the Wednesday Night “Pro” Jam at New York City’s China Club.

Next week:An Impromptu Two-Hour Jam with John Entwistle of The Who.

Godfrey Townsend is a New York-based musician who has worked with dozens of rock’s most influential names. In the past decade alone, he has performed nationwide with John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Dave Mason and Alan Parsons. His current instrumental guitar CD, Easy Journey To Other Planets, is available at cdbaby.com, and a new album is in the works. Read more about him at godfreytownsendmusic.com.