CREAMED again…. an appreciation of The Second Coming by Mark McKendrick

Cream at The Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London, 3rd May 2005

Me and the girlie saw Cream at RAH so came to testify.

I’ve tried to ignore all the comments I read following the concerts about their not being “young enough to desire it”.

After the event, there were always going to be ill-founded and utterly nonsensical comments flying around for all sorts of different reasons, after all this really was fairy tale stuff for the generations of people who were there the first time around and for the children, and the children’s children of those, the kids who – unusually for this day and age I feel – just came along to see what the fuss was about and to take the fantastic opportunity to experience a huge long departed chunk of it.

I've since read loads of reviews by a lot of seemingly over excited commentators who probably don't ever really listen to anything given the nature of their assumptions. I don't know whether bias or envy influence these people’s ramblings or whether they are simply naturally over-awed to a point of blindness - or is it deafness?

I am prepared to start a serious row with anybody if I hear anyone else say that Badge and White Room were "Awesome”.

Done live, Badge and White Room were NEVER awesome. It's absolutely impossible for those two tunes to be replicated with anything like the melodic qualities and the power they had as studio recordings.

White Room has about four guitar tracks missing and there was no 'second' guitar to shape the rhythmic underpinning to the bridge and solo section in Badge.

Having said that; As out and out power-trio jams the chord structures in both DO provide excellent workouts for some psychedelic soloing, of which, I do declare Clapton to be rather Godlike. These blokes invented most of that stuff, after all.

I didn't expect this concert to be anything like as brilliant as it actually was.

Pretty stunning deliveries from start to finish with each musician making the odd mistake and Eric occasionally getting a little lost in the more necessarily improvised tunes - namely Badge and White Room.

Given that it was always impossible to perform these tunes live, it wouldn't have worried me had they not been performed at all. It was more than enough that they were so influential as studio recordings in their day. The original solo in White Room is one of those that you know defines the way guitar solos are approached, and have been since he cut this one in 1967. With that solo [Clapton] has a lot to answer for - I’m glad to say. However, that's distracting....

They kicked off with the Skip James staple I'M SO GLAD and this reviewer was instantly stunned. I don't know what it was other reviewers were expecting but they are WRONG. This was the real thing and it was enough. Also real - and if you hadn't ever heard this before, this would have slaughtered you - Willie Dixon’s SPOONFUL turned the place electric. This was brilliant and set a level for the evening, which was only altered by further ascents.

Classy renditions of OUTSIDE WOMAN BLUES and even Ginger's PRESSED RAT AND WARTHOG (First time live????) SLEEPY TIME TIME and N.S.U. picked it up before BADGE came along and reminded me that we are all only human after all.

Next up, POLITICIAN - always one of your reviewer’s personal favourites - did not fail to please and gave us another lift contradicting my recent decision that we are ALL human. We are not.

SWEET WINE was a good leveller after that one. Some members of the audience were in danger of losing it by now. The trio duly left us with our chins on the floor, reminding us that they were also absolute masters of rhythm with a killer execution of ROLLIN' AND TUMBLIN' that quite frankly scared me shitless. Eric and Ginger combining to create a smoking riff on snare drum and slide guitar while - without bass - Jack delivered that trademark whining train whistle vocal and interweaving harp that made this group UNTOUCHABLE in the first place. Play the Blues? This is why Hendrix said Cream had opened the door. This is why Duane Allman said Eric Clapton had written the book for young white blues guitarists. Never mind Tears in Heaven and Wonderful Tonight. Some guitar players only ever needed to do one thing, and Eric Clapton is one of them.

A psychedelic ramble through T-Bone Walkers STORMY MONDAY BLUES was another reminder of how influential this band were, showing as they did, how a tune normally played by at least one more instrument can be given flesh by the application of the musician, in this case Jack was emphasising all those 7th and 9th slurs on the bass that would normally be covered by second and third guitarists and/or keyboard players. He even got in a suggestion of the G, Am, Bm, Bbm, D9, E9 progression while Eric was off again and taking us all the way to Klooks Kleek. Psychedelic Blues by its inventors. There is nothing else to do. This isn't my favourite way of dealing with a tune, but I cannot deny the originality and influence here. Wonderful.

A Cream original, DESERTED CITIES OF THE HEART was next, and reminded us of the very unique style that Jack Bruce and Pete Brown achieved as composer collaborators before Booker-T Jones and William Bells BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN gave another reminder as to why, when it comes to dragging the blues out of the past Cream had only one or two, if any peers at all.

WE'RE GOING WRONG a Bruce/Brown original from Disraeli Gears was delivered with canny accuracy. The six-time drum riff is uniquely Ginger Baker, and Clapton NAILS that lamenting oozy guitar sound, the way it has been mimicked oh so often since with varying degrees of accuracy, but never with such haunting effect. I didn't know if I'd been shot or if I'd shit myself at this point.
People said he shouldn't have been able to do it with a Fender Stratocaster. What they meant was that THEY can't even do it with a Gibson SG, which is the instrument on which Clapton originally recorded it. There is NO substitute for touch and feel - something many, if not most guitarists since the mid-'60s have failed to grasp.

A not too racy CROSSROADS followed with the "Rosedale" verse - which Cream generally tended to do - with good solid solos between the last two verses. I'm glad Eric DIDN'T go off on one here and that he kept it nice and compact, leaving the audience on a nice plateau for Chester Burnett’s SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD which was again performed faultlessly and with an accuracy sometimes lacking in their performances of old.

This was followed by the aforementioned WHITE ROOM and a steaming version of TOAD for which Clapton and Bruce duly left the stage for Ginger Baker to remind us all again just how influential this band were, not only as such but as massively talented individuals with no fear of boundary busting and rule breaking. I was never really one for drum solos and it might even have been the live WHEELS OF FIRE version of this tune that dulled my appreciation. I regained an appetite when I heard Jai Johanny Johannson doing duets with Butch Trucks that eventually took me back there to rediscover the joy of just drums! Ginger did not overdo this, and when Clapton and Bruce re-emerged for the closing chords I found myself almost disappointed that it was coming to a halt. Strictly employing the verse and bar structure of the opening gambits of the tune, far from being the tub thumping many wrongly consider [his] playing to be, what this did for me simply reinforced my notion of Ginger’s undoubted mastery.

The band left the stage to naturally ecstatic applause, although I can't help thinking that some members of the audience were applauding something totally different than I was. Maybe they applauding the fact that Jack made it the stage at all. Maybe they were simply applauding history. Fair enough.

The encore was the not unexpected SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE which, when delivered, was delivered with all the giving and all the knowing that this tune was - and probably still is - one of the defining pieces of music of all time, and it was delivered with such confidence you just knew were seeing and hearing everything you ever wanted to know about how music got where it got following the Beatles. After the Beatles, Cream cast the longest shadow of all over what was to follow. Jimi Hendrix broke into this tune as his farewell to the "group that made it all possible" during an otherwise rather drab performance on the Lulu show, many years ago. He played it just like Cream. The show was cut mid performance with Jimi gesturing just how important this group had been, with an almost uncanny knowing that if it was all over for Cream, it was all over for everybody - including himself. He knew it.

When Cream closed with it last night, we all knew it too. Eric Clapton probably is God The Father. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker probably are the Son and the Holy Ghost – but don’t ask me which one is which.