Fact #118309
When:
Short story:
Rolling Stone magazine runs a feature which is heavily critical of UK power-trio Cream, describing Eric Clapton as "the master of the blues cliché" and, unwittingly, contributing to the demise of the band.Full article:
Jack Bruce (bassist, Cream) : There was a distinct moment when Cream went sour. There was a very, very bad feature on the band that was in Rolling Stone magazine. It was the old story – when a band is underground, it can do no wrong. Then, when it crosses over and becomes a success, it's a case of 'Let's knock it down.'
Eric Clapton : All during Cream I was riding high on the "Clapton is God" myth that had been started up. I was flying high on an ego trip; I was sure I was the best thing happening that was popular. Then we got our first kind of bad review, which was in Rolling Stone. The magazine ran an interview with us in which we were really praising ourselves, and it was followed by a review that said how boring and repetitious our performance had been. And it was true! The ring of truth had just knocked me backward; I was in a restaurant, and I fainted. And after I woke up, I immediately decided that that was the end of the band.
Jack Bruce : It was a very bad piece of writing and it kind of destroyed the band. Journalists don't realise the power they have.
Some people can shrug those things off. Other people get very hurt by them. Eric certainly was hurt. I got used to being slagged off but Eric was hurt by this piece.
Eric Clapton : There toward the end, we'd been flying with blinkers for so long, we weren't aware of the changes that were taking place musically. New people were coming up and growing, and we were repeating ourselves, living on a legend, a year or two years out of date.
We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely payed as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time. We did a lot of acid, took a lot of trips in our spare time. And we did play on acid a couple of times.
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Eric Clapton : All during Cream I was riding high on the "Clapton is God" myth that had been started up. I was flying high on an ego trip; I was sure I was the best thing happening that was popular. Then we got our first kind of bad review, which was in Rolling Stone. The magazine ran an interview with us in which we were really praising ourselves, and it was followed by a review that said how boring and repetitious our performance had been. And it was true! The ring of truth had just knocked me backward; I was in a restaurant, and I fainted. And after I woke up, I immediately decided that that was the end of the band.
Jack Bruce : It was a very bad piece of writing and it kind of destroyed the band. Journalists don't realise the power they have.
Some people can shrug those things off. Other people get very hurt by them. Eric certainly was hurt. I got used to being slagged off but Eric was hurt by this piece.
Eric Clapton : There toward the end, we'd been flying with blinkers for so long, we weren't aware of the changes that were taking place musically. New people were coming up and growing, and we were repeating ourselves, living on a legend, a year or two years out of date.
We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely payed as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time. We did a lot of acid, took a lot of trips in our spare time. And we did play on acid a couple of times.