A Little Cream for #12
#12 Sunshine of Your Love – Cream 1968
The English band Cream – drummer Ginger Baker, bassist Jack
Bruce, and guitarist Eric
Clapton tells the story that Jack Bruce came up with the
bass line after hearing The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Saville Theatre in
London. During the track’s recording, the group initially recorded the drum
track with the usual rock beat with emphasis on two and four. However, an
engineer suggested they use a more native American or African beat of two and
four (the backbeat). He plays almost entirely on the tom tom. Later Baker would
claim it was his idea and complained he never got any credit for it. The story
goes that Bruce was working on the bass line, late after the Hendrix concert,
well into the night at the studio. As dawn approached, Bruce was playing the
bass line on an upright bass when lyricist Pete Brown was staring out the
window at the city when the lyrics “It’s getting near dawn, and lights close
their tired eyes” came to him.
Clapton (if you don’t know who he is, well, that’s for
another day) came up with the guitar solo using a sound known as the
"woman tone" on his 1964 Gibson Les Paul SG Standard,
playing (if you listen closely) the melody from “Blue Moon.” A
critic, writing when the song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
called it a balance between the sun and the moon.
The album came out the year before I graduated from high
school, and I had a copy. By that time, I had a stereo record player
and my drums in the rec room down in the basement. I tell my sister that I used
to beat on my drums instead of her. I loved playing the backbeat and used to
bounce on my stool and I flailed away, bouncing the balls of my feet, in my own
little – but noisy -- world. Clapton says it is one of his favorite Cream songs
and often played it in concert. Hendrix sometimes played it in tribute to
Cream, one of his favorite bands. “Sunshine of Your Love” shows up in all sorts
of TV shows like Futurama, The Family Guy, and The Simpsons,
as well as movies such as School of Rock, True Lies, Backdraft,
and Goodfellas.
If you’ve never listened to Disraeli Gears, there’s a little
comic gem tucked away on it – I think it used to be the last track on the
second side of the vinyl album, “A Mother’s Lament.” It’s a hoot of a song
about a mother so poor whose baby was so skinny that he slipped down the drain
during a bath, sung by Clapton, Baker, and Bruce in Cockney accents with sloppy harmony. I know it sounds
dreadful, but it really is funny.
Give “Sunshine of Your Love” a listen. If you access it at
the link below, A
Mother’s Lament is also on the same page.
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