Fact #92379
When:
Short story:
The Cream begin eleven nights at The Fillmore West, San Francisco, California, USA, supporting The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and The Electric Flag. The Cream's bassist Jack Bruce has described this gig as "The real beginning of Cream."Full article:
Jack Bruce (bass/vocals, The Cream) : To me, the real beginning of Cream was the ten days at The Fillmore. I would say the most important guy to the development of Cream was Bill Graham. Much more important than Robert Stigwood.
When Bill put us on at the Fillmore, we still didn't have a tremendous amount of material, but the crowd loved us and they wouldn't let us off stage. Although we were not top of the bill, Electric Flag was, the audience was there for us, no doubt about it. Which surprised us, because we hadn't had any hit records or anything over there. So we were forced to jam on the songs we had, and that was the beginning of what Cream became, all that improvising.
After our set, most of the audience left.
(Source : unknown)
-----------------------------------------
Jack Bruce (bass/vocals, The Cream) : The Fillmore had a great PA, and a really good guy doing it called Charlie Button, who did the sound for the Grateful Dead. It was great to hear the wonderful sound. This was when we first started doing the extended improvisations, which was new to the band. We usually played very short three-, four-, five-minute versions of the songs. Quite simply, we were fed up with doing that, and the audience was so great at the Fillmore. They were all so out of it, so laid-back, and would shout, 'Just play!' They wouldn't let us go.
So we just started jamming, and that turned into what we became known for. We didn't sit down and have a big discussion, 'Oh, let's do this.'
Eric Clapton : We'd play half hour solos in the middle of anything. It wasn't just Crossroads. We'd do it in any song. We got into a lot of self-indulgence and a lot of easily-pleased people went along with that. It flattered our vanity and, after that, I think we stopped trying.
Jack Bruce : The Who became known for smashing up their equipment, and that became their albatross. Our albatross was having to do very long solos when you maybe didn't feel like it. Mixed blessings, really. We would sometimes strip it down to where Eric would play completely unaccompanied for quite a long time, and I remember him doing some quite incredible stuff, quite amazing. But that wasn't recorded.
(Source : unknown)
Tweet this Fact
When Bill put us on at the Fillmore, we still didn't have a tremendous amount of material, but the crowd loved us and they wouldn't let us off stage. Although we were not top of the bill, Electric Flag was, the audience was there for us, no doubt about it. Which surprised us, because we hadn't had any hit records or anything over there. So we were forced to jam on the songs we had, and that was the beginning of what Cream became, all that improvising.
After our set, most of the audience left.
(Source : unknown)
-----------------------------------------
Jack Bruce (bass/vocals, The Cream) : The Fillmore had a great PA, and a really good guy doing it called Charlie Button, who did the sound for the Grateful Dead. It was great to hear the wonderful sound. This was when we first started doing the extended improvisations, which was new to the band. We usually played very short three-, four-, five-minute versions of the songs. Quite simply, we were fed up with doing that, and the audience was so great at the Fillmore. They were all so out of it, so laid-back, and would shout, 'Just play!' They wouldn't let us go.
So we just started jamming, and that turned into what we became known for. We didn't sit down and have a big discussion, 'Oh, let's do this.'
Eric Clapton : We'd play half hour solos in the middle of anything. It wasn't just Crossroads. We'd do it in any song. We got into a lot of self-indulgence and a lot of easily-pleased people went along with that. It flattered our vanity and, after that, I think we stopped trying.
Jack Bruce : The Who became known for smashing up their equipment, and that became their albatross. Our albatross was having to do very long solos when you maybe didn't feel like it. Mixed blessings, really. We would sometimes strip it down to where Eric would play completely unaccompanied for quite a long time, and I remember him doing some quite incredible stuff, quite amazing. But that wasn't recorded.
(Source : unknown)