What's your favorite Cream song?
Bruce: Probably, “White Room.’’ The inspiration for the music came from meeting Jimi Hendrix and his approach to playing. In fact, he came to the recording session of that in New York and said to me, "I wish I could write something like that." I said, "But it comes from you!"
It's a synthesis of things, and not a completely original chord sequence. It's the way we placed certain things in time that makes it original. I had problems with the record company because of the introduction being 5/4, and those suspended second inversion chords. They didn't think it would make it.
Not commercial enough, eh?
Bruce: I've always thought that record companies, in particular, look down on their audiences much too much. In a way, it is a commercial thing. They think, 'well, if the audience gets too intelligent and likes really good musical things, we're going to have to keep finding those things.' So if you can reduce it to a fairly low common denominator as far as the music goes, there's always a bunch of other guys or girls coming along who can do that. But I don't want to overstate the importance - it's only rock and roll, you know [laughs].
Clash: Have you ever met Albert King?
Bruce: When I met Albert King the first time, I wanted him to play on a record. I was in San Francisco and went to where he was doing a club date. This is Albert King, you know, the most frightening blues man in the world [laughs]!
He said hello, and then sort of said, "I never got the money." I said, "What do you mean, you never got the money?" He said he never got [royalties] from “Born Under A Bad Sign.’’ But he didn't write “Born Under A Bad Sign!’’ He'd obviously done it for so long he thought he did.
It was quite new when Cream had recorded it, had just come out on an Albert King record. It's not like he had been doing it for 20 years. He did get credit for [popularizing] it, but the real guys who wrote it were Booker T Jones and William Bell.
Clash: Was King joking about the money?
Bruce: I think there was a certain amount of that. But with Albert King, you never really knew [laughs]. A scary guy, but a wonderful player. He played his guitar upside down and didn't push the strings, he pulled them - quite incredible.
Interview By Jim Clash, Forbes
photo from Bonici Archive
Cream - Born Under A Bad Sign (Royal Albert Hall 2005)
Jack and Genie Franklin 1968 - the tailor from Songs for a Tailor
always worth reading up on Genie and gone too soon . .
