History Archives

History 1966

The Graham Bond Organization

The year began with a Graham Bond Organisation (line up: Graham Bond: Organ, Alto Sax, Vocals etc. Mike Falana: trumpet, Dick Heckstall-Smith (Rillo) Tenor Sax, Ginger Baker: Drums) gig in High Wycombe. This heralded a meeting with soon to be Cream Roadie (& unwitting inventor of the name for Cream’s ’67 album Disraeli Gears Album) Mick Turner. Mick helped get the Bedford ‘bandwagon’ out of the mud and his cheerful demeanour coupled with the loss of their last roadie caused Ginger to hire him on the spot.... as long as the ex-con promised to ‘keep out of trouble’!

The end of the Mellotron - and the band?

The next gig in Southend saw the ‘sorry end’ of Graham Bond’s famous Mellotron. An accident sustained by the Bedford recently on the old A5 road had obviously ‘wrought some damage to this delicate instrument’ Ginger tells us in his autobiography ‘Hellraiser’, causing it to ‘vibrate strangely’ before dying and gushing its insides ‘all over the stage’! Then the rest of the band discovered that Graham hadn’t been given the instrument ‘for free’ as he had hitherto maintained & they now owed Mellotron ‘several thousand pounds.’

These two events can with hindsight be seen as the writing on the wall for the GBO. Nevertheless, the band were as popular as ever & continued to gig around the country for the first half of the year playing their usual crowd thrilling set list culled from the previous year’s ‘Sound of 65’ album, which included ‘Wade in the Water’, ‘Got my Mojo Working’ and one later classic introduced to Cream by Ginger, ‘Train Time.’

Eric Clapton

An eventful gig in Hammersmith, London (in which Mick the new roadie sorted out some heavies who ‘mysteriously’ attacked Graham Bond from behind the stage), was followed by ‘a big university gig’ at which the GBO shared billing with The Yardbirds & The Long John Baldry Band. This was when Rod Stewart was also with Baldry & he and Ginger were hanging out having a smoke when a young guy came along & said, ‘I know you, Baker! You ain’t really a hard nut at all.’ This is how Ginger Baker began his friendship with Eric Clapton.

But it wasn’t until the GBO played The Flamingo in London sometime later & Eric came along with his guitar & asked to sit in, that Ginger suddenly realised, ‘Shit! This guy could really play.’ At the same time, the problems within the GBO intensified as Ginger felt that he & Graham were now pulling in opposite directions and their friendship became strained. Meanwhile their manager Robert Stigwood asked Ginger if he could utilise a track written by Ginger and unused on the very latest ‘There’s a Bond Between Us’ GBO album, called ‘Walz for a Pig’.

Stigwood gave it to The Who for a B-side & Ginger made £1,350..a fortune to him at that time.

Ginger's idea for the new band

Ginger went out & got a driving license & a new car with the money. An article written in Spring that year by John Emery cites Ginger (then still with GBO) as wanting ‘two bass drums’, for ‘the sound’ and not ‘the look’. This again shows Ginger’s then fairly close affiliation with Keith Moon as he was with Moonie at a Duke Ellington gig when they both got this idea. It also puts the double-bass drum concept into the pre-Cream days. Now he had an idea for a new ‘sound’, Ginger decided the time was right to form a new band to make it happen & he knew that he wanted Eric Clapton to be a part of it.

Eric had now left The Yardbirds & was playing with John Mayall’s Bluebreakers. Ginger rang their manager John Gunnell & went down with his wife Liz to see them play in Oxford. Ginger sat in at this gig & the place erupted. Afterwards he asked Eric if he fancied getting a band together & Eric agreed, adding that he thought Jack Bruce would be great for bass, having no idea of the previous rancour that existed between Jack & Ginger.

The birth of Cream

Over a cup of tea at his mother-in-law’s flat, Jack agreed to let ‘bygones be bygones’ & the three of them got together for the first rehearsal in Ginger’s ground floor maisonette at 154 Braemar Avenue, Neasden in North West London, just a stone’s throw from Wembley Stadium where English football history was very soon to be made. It was an auspicious summer. The three musicians found that playing together was instant ‘magic’ & so good was the sound that kids from miles around could be seen dancing out in the fields that bordered The Welsh Harp Reservoir nearby. "Yeah, man we’re the Cream!" said Eric. Ginger’s last gig with The GBO was up in Bradford & he managed to write his new Rover 2000 off in an accident on the way back. It was the end of an era & the beginning of a new age.

The first Cream rehearsal proper, happened at St Ann’s Town Hall, Brondesbury, North London, with Liz, the journalist Chris Welch & a bemused Robert Stigwood (who had no idea of the phenomenon that was about to be unleashed upon the world) in attendance. In no time the story was leaked to The Melody Maker under the heading ‘Eric, Jack & Ginger Team Up’ and as neither Manfred Mann (Jack Bruce), The Bluesbreakers (Clapton) or The GBO (Baker) were aware of this new development, this caused some immediate friction within the embryo unit.

Nevertheless, The Melody Maker of Cup Final Day, 30th July 1966, reports that ‘Britain’s most exciting new group’ were frantically rehearsing from 18th July onwards in a ‘bizarre’ church hall setting of ‘Brownies & Caretakers’ to be ready for ‘the sixth national jazz & blues festival at Winsdor’ on the 31st.

Apparently fans were already ‘excitedly looking forward to their first chance to hear the fiery three’ and Eric Clapton said he was ‘nervous, very nervous’. But in fact their debut gig was actually at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel Club...some say on the 29th & other’s on Cup Final Day itself & this writer can testify that on that day the shouts of the England fans could be heard in Ginger’s back garden in Neasden!

On the 31st July at Windsor the Heaven’s opened, but no one cared about the mud & rain. England had triumphed and now was about to do so again when as The Melody Maker (of August 6th) reported, the moment came that ‘thousands had been waiting for’ & Ginger, Jack & Eric launched into ‘Spoonful’. This was followed by ‘Sleepy Time’ & ‘Train Time’ with Eric’s ‘incredible guitar’ causing the audience to ‘scream for more even when he was playing more’ & then Ginger’s solo ‘The Toad’ apparently ‘sent the crowd potty.’ They’d just witnessed the birth of Cream!

Cream takes over from GBO

From that moment on Cream took over the gigs that had been previously booked for the GBO. On 1st August they played the famous Cooks Ferry Inn, Edmonton, North East London, & on the 2nd they were at West Hampstead’s legendary Klooks Kleek. Ginger got his booking agent to ask for an extra £5 per gig, bumping the fee up to £45 per night & Cream were off on a whirlwind tour, taking the UK by storm.

Friction did continue to be a part of their ‘electric’ dynamic however & before long Stigwood had them in the studio to record their first single ‘Wrapping Paper’. Ginger had invited his friend the beat poet Pete Brown along to help with the writing, but Pete disappeared with Jack & wrote this track that Ginger felt strongly ‘was the most awful song and had absolutely nothing to do with what Cream was doing.’

Immediately Ginger felt that the bands status as a true co-operative unit was being compromised by the song writing credits going to Bruce & Brown, with no mention of himself & Clapton. However, the single did ok & Nick Jones in The Melody Maker of November 5th crows..’Well they finally made it. The much publicised, talked-about, raved about, and listened to group – the Cream – are in the chart.’

Fresh Cream

The fact that the music was so good enabled them to put all differences aside & go into a studio in South Molton Street in London to record their first album Fresh Cream. Ginger remembers in his book ‘Hellraiser’ that overall ‘they were happy times’ & an occasion where they ‘tipped a box of cornflakes over Stigwood’s head, then Eric got hold of some scissors & cut his tie off’!

They continued their meteoric success on endless gigs around the UK for the rest of the year & such was their earning capacity by now that Stigwood even asked Ginger for a loan of £40,000 Cream money to avert his organisation’s ‘imminent’ financial ‘disaster’. This Ginger did without the other 2 band members even knowing & the money was soon reimbursed. Cream played their last gig of 1966 on December 30th at the Double Giant Freak-Out Ball, The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm in London & Stigwood now had his eye firmly on the USA.