It Was Fifty Years Ago But Hey...

It was fifty years ago today... but can we please forget it now? Sgt Pepper was an iconoclastic album. But, let's be honest, it wasn't as good as Revolver... or maybe even Rubber Soul... or even the White Album.

Every which way one turns there is Sgt Pepperami. There's an event in Brighton promising to play music from bands influenced by Sgt Pepper.... including Pink Floyd, Cream, the Doors and the Grateful Dead. Pink Floyd? Cream? The Doors? The Grateful Dead? The idea that these bands were influence by Sgt Pepper could only exist in the minds of those who weren't there in the Sixties.

None of these bands showed or needed any influence from Sgt Pepper... unless it was to go way beyond what the Beatles were doing.

Sgt Pepper seems to be being celebrated by people who have no idea what it was like to hear Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds for the first time in 1967. And if they weren't there, they'll never know...

And it's reasonably easy to predict what John Lennon would have said about celebrating Sgt Pepper fifty years on, isn't it?

Winwood Ho

At a time when most rock legends from the Sixties seem to be scarily older than you think – or in many cases, more scarily, dead – one of them still seems remarkably young.

Steve Winwood is still touring and is due in London in July. And though you might think he should be in his seventies by now, he's actually a mere 68.

That makes it more than 50 years since I first saw him on stage – when he was 16 or 17. He was already a veteran performer then, and fronting the Spencer Davis Group.

A precocious guitarist as well as keyboard player, he has had so many incarnations. But his finest hour was with the sadly short-lived Blind Faith, in which the Creamy musical virtuosity of Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker was harnessed to the truly lyrical songwriting and singing of Winwood.

I was fortunate enough to see Winwood and Blind Faith at Hyde Park. And despite all his brilliant work since that time, it is the Blind Faith album that seems perfectly to capture the Winwood essence.

Rich Men's Blues

I love Eric Clapton's guitar playing. He is likely to be the greatest guitarist ever to pass through here... But tickets have just gone on sale for his Albert Hall concerts in May 2017. And the cheapest are £100 each, with a £12 booking fee per ticket.

The £12 booking fee per ticket actually seems more out of order than the £100 for a cheap seat.

So to echo my comments about Buddy Guy recently, I'm sorry but I'm not prepared to pay that much. And how many young blues fans who should see Eric before he goes are going to be able to pay that amount?

I confess I paid over £300 a ticket (from criminal touts) to see Cream's reunion at the Albert Hall (although a lot less to see their first farewell there in 1968). But that was to see Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker as well as Eric.

With Bruce dead and Baker in a bad way, Clapton raking in yet more money seems to stick in the craw – even though he richly deserves to be rich.

Let's not forget that Cream (i.e. Bruce and Baker) made him much bigger than John Mayall's Bluesbreakers ever did. A benefit night for Mr Baker might haver persuaded me to part with £112.

But as it is, I hope all those rich old men enjoy their outing to the Albert Hall.

Mr Baker

The real drummer seldom plays the minimum. He seeks to find how far he can go - not for himself but for the sake of the music. 

I got into this game because of Ginger Baker. October 1967. Ginger Baker. At the Saville Theatre, London. In front of the hippest crowd on the planet. With me there too. Ginger Baker. With Cream. Opening with Tales Of Brave Ulysses. Jack Bruce with a voice borrowed from heavy metal angels. Ginger Baker. And Eric Clapton in Hendrix fuzz and granny shades and playing guitar that was not of this earth. Ginger Baker. 

Ginger would tell me to fuck off if I were ever to get close to him. But he changed my life. Fucking Ginger Baker.

On Ginger’s website there’s a video of him playing We’re Going Wrong. When Cream played that song live, Jack Bruce’s vocals went to the limit. And sometimes Clapton’s guitar did the same. But Ginger Baker. Watch that video and you will see how far a drummer can go - for the song. Because he has to. That is real drumming.

The Juice On Johnson

Robert Johnson... He had to get in here sooner or later... If Sleepy John Estes was scary (see previous post), then Robert Johnson was downright terrifying. He became known to me through the composer's credits on Rambling On My Mind (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the Blues Breakers album) and Four Until Late (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the first Cream album, Fresh Cream).

From there it was a short step to hearing pretty much everything that Johnson had ever recorded in his brief but almost unbelievably brilliant blues career.

There's not much to add to all the thousands of words written about Johnson. It's enough to point out that without him, it's difficult to imagine any of the subsequent evolution of blues/rock. Oh, and can we please remember that it was Johnson, not Zeppelin, who coined the immortal line: "You can squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg."

Wrong Is Right

Thoughts of Sleepy John Estes and making a change led on to We're Going Wrong. It has to be a contender for the most perfect song. Okay, there's Like A Rolling Stone and A Day In The Life and Layla... and everyone can add their own contenders.

But We're Going Wrong, which first appeared on Cream's Disraeli Gears album in 1967, is perfect for its simplicity, for its emotion and, of course, for the musicianship.

Ginger Baker's wonderful tom-tom patterns on a 6/8 rhythm could probably hold the song together on their own. Jack Bruce's bass is largely restrained, but his pure voice is increasingly unrestrained as the song unfolds. And then we get Eric Clapton, at the height of his fuzzy-haired, woman-tone period, with sublime notes played in just the right places.

On stage in the Sixties, the song became a tour de force, and still possessed its power when Cream revived it — and themselves — in 2005.

Many listeners, particularly in 1967, took We're Going Wrong to be a political/philosophical/protest kind of a song. Look at the lyrics and you'll see why. But it is documented that Jack Bruce wrote it after a row with his wife, and that it is simply about a fractured relationship.

Whether it's about the failed relationship between two particular people or about all the failed relationships that make up the world we live in, the song works. And if the microcosm and the macrocosm are all one, then it's not even worth differentiating.

Either way Jack Bruce wrote a masterpiece. For him, it might have been personal. For us, it's a perfect and universal call for change.