Which, in turn brings us to Fresh Cream and the two singles that preceded the band’s second album, Disraeli Gears. The first thing to note here is the importance of the Top 40 when it came to getting exposure in a market where there weren’t many outlets. We’re talking the pirate radio era here, with very limited avenues to get your music heard on the official broadcaster, so Wrapping Paper and I Feel Free were important elements in getting the name out there and spreading the word, even if they weren’t particularly representative of what the band was actually doing.
Released the same day as Fresh Cream, Wrapping Paper could possibly have been less like what you’d expect from an electric blues-based power trio, but it’s hard to think how. Lightweight jazzy piano rather than heavy electric guitar, Beatles rather than Blues, a Jack Bruce vocal with accompanying harmonies, the song started as a four way co-operative effort but the published version is credited to Bruce/Brown (that’s Pete Brown, as in Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments) much to Ginger Baker’s continuing disgust.
The highly poppy I Feel Free, once the bom bom vocal introduction is out of the way, is a bit more like what you’d expect from a blues-based outfit, though it’s sitting in the realm of pop music innovation rather than the maintenance and continuation of tradition. It is, to me at least, catchy as hell, a classic piece of hook- and harmony-laden pop-rock psychedelia complete with concise Clapton solo. On that basis, even tacked on to the front of Fresh Cream as it was on the American version of the album, it works pretty well.
And it’s at this point, I guess, that we start to disavow ourselves of the notion of Cream as a heavy blues based outfit, though subsequent developments would tend to reinforce the misconception. There was, from my reading of the situation anyway, a conscious move to get away from the limitations and restrictions imposed by blues orthodoxy alongside a definite awareness of which side of the bread had the butter.
So the direction might have been towards pop, but there was still going to be something for the Clapton is God crowd as the trio worked the virtuoso end of the ability spectrum. I’ve contrasted this approach with the American approach to the blues, which was, insofar as anyone was paying attention at all, to emphasise authenticity rather than improvisation or invention.
The best example of that, to me at least, lies in my reaction to Fresh Cream lined up against The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (discussed here). The Butterfield is genuine, authentic harp-driven Chicago blues. Cream, while starting from the same roots, are obviously an outfit that are interested in exploring their individual capabilities. Interestingly, it seems that both bands experienced a seismic shift when they encountered the auditoriums of San Francisco, with Butterfield heading off into East/West’s exploration and improvisation and Cream developing the lengthy extrapolations of a couple of tracks from Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire that have become the basis of an ongoing reputation.