In its combination of studio and live tracks, Cream’s fourth album Goodbye (released 2/5/69) amounts to something of a miniature version of Wheels of Fire. Released in the summer of 1968, the double-LP set consolidated the seminal power trio’s popularity in the wake of their across-the-board hit, “Sunshine of Your Love,” off their sophomore long-player of 1967 Disraeli Gears.
Recorded before Cream’s farewell concert tour in the autumn of the following year, the trio’s 1969 project came at the insistence of Atlantic/Atco Records head Ahmet Ertegun, but only after the group’s manager Robert Stigwood had announced their dissolution. Three studio numbers–one each from Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker–were produced under the auspices of multi-instrumentalist Felix Pappalardi, the man who had overseen (and contributed to as he does here) both of the previous efforts.
The latter, who went on to form Mountain with Leslie West, also collaborated with engineers Adrian Barber and Bill Halverson on the triad of concert cuts that came from the aforementioned road jaunt, specifically Cream’s stop at The Forum in Los Angeles. Two of those cuts are sourced from blues icons the whole group admired, Skip James and Chester Burnett a/k/a Howlin’ Wolf: “I’m So Glad” arrives bereft the eerie falsetto of its Fresh Cream studio version and instead finds bassist Jack Bruce caterwauling in kind with guitarist Eric Clapton, while the threesome’s arrangement of “Sitting On Top of the World,” finds them moving at a much slower tempo befitting its modified twelve-bar structure.
The 5:01 rendition of that latter features ferocious Ginger Baker drumming. Notably, however, the relatively abbreviated duration of these stage performances, extending to just a little over nine at the longest, precludes much of the isolated self-indulgence that marred the concert culls from the preceding Cream offering (hear “Spoonful” where the interaction is almost as often combative as it is complementary).
On the studio recordings, Bruce and Pappalardi play a variety of keyboards (including Mellotron). Both song titles, “Doing That Scrapyard Thing” and “What A Bringdown,” may refer to these final (and forced) efforts of a unit already pronounced passe, but more importantly, they call to mind what a left-field intro Cream gave itself with its first single: the piano-dominated, ragtime derivative called “Wrapping Paper” is a far cry from the prototypical riffing this group rendered au courant at the time (and enduring throughout now some half-century hindsight).
Both later cuts seethe with what is no doubt all-around frustration within a collaboration the participants had already deemed obsolete. But they also compare favorably with the more unusual likes of prior Cream originals like “As You Said” and “Deserted Cities of the Heart,” thereby reaffirming the group could do more than simply hammer down and/or try to outplay each other. Such imaginative versatility was all the more remarkable considering the album was produced under duress, internal and external, including once latent personality conflicts that had become overt over time.
In contrast, “Badge” is Slowhand’s somewhat conventional co-write with his friend George Harrison who plays rhythm guitar on the track credited as ‘L’Angelo Misterioso.’ The fretboard-centric number comes complete with the Leslie speaker effect, its quasi-philosophical cryptic lyrics sung with no little angst (or frailty) by the former member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
With the perspective of a half-century plus years, slightly more than a half-hour of Goodbye (roughly a quarter of the length of its predecessor) documents both the strengths and shortfalls of Cream. Yet in doing so, it reminds us why the group, in existence for just a little over two years, was so influential in ways both positive and negative and, by extension, why it cast such a shadow over the bandmembers’ subsequent projects, including the trio’s reunion in 2005 (a four-night run coda to the ‘farewell’ concert at Royal Albert Hall in November of 1968).
Although Clapton took the lead, literally and figuratively, in a total of seven shows, first four at the esteemed London venue, then three later in the year at Madison Square Garden, he otherwise eschewed revisiting the guitar hero concept in work under his name.
Making the acquaintance of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends during the single Blind Faith tour led him in a direction that proved markedly more successful at least in commercial terms, than those of his former bandmates: Eric emphasized his vocals and choice of subdued material, largely downplaying protracted guitar solos, his calling card up to that point in his career.
Although Baker and Bruce dabbled in the trio concept post-Cream–most conspicuously the latter at two different junctures, first with two members of Mountain and later with Robin Trower –the pair pursued wildly divergent projects in the wake of the disbanding of a triad whose name was chosen without much humility (short for ‘cream of the crop’ of British musicians of the era).
It is a sad irony that the most versatile member of Cream, composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Bruce, was only a little more successful in commercial terms than his reclusive counterpart Baker. Jack did, however, gain progressively more respect from his peers by working with the likes of late drummer non-pareil Tony Williams and guitarist John McLaughlin in the group Lifetime, a seminal jazz-fusion project not all that far removed from his percussion-oriented counterpart’s ensembles dubbed Air Force.
Yet even with Steve Winwood in tow at one point in that band’s existence, Baker mainly sailed under the radar for the fitful remainder of his career, in part due to protracted health issues. The irascible man’s influence on rock drumming is inarguable nonetheless, much like that of the group whose formation he spearheaded back in 1966. The title of this ‘final’ Cream album belies the continuing impact of the three men who produced it.